Sarah M. Wells is the author of Pruning Burning Bushes from Wipf and Stock Publishers (2012), and a chapbook of poems, Acquiesce, winner of the 2008 Starting Gate Award through Finishing Line Press (2009). Sarah's work has been honored with three Pushcart Prize nominations, and her essays have appeared in the notable essays list in the Best American Essays 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015. She recently completed a memoir-in-essays, American Honey, about marriage and the complications of being a wife, mom, career person, and woman. Sarah is the managing editor for Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University, associate editor for River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative, and regular blog contributor at Off the Page, a ministry of Our Daily Bread. She resides in Akron, Ohio with her husband and three young children.
I went to bed last night after watching this exclusive on the events in Charlottesville thinking about the passive racism in areas like where I grew up. No one wants to believe they’d be swept up in a tide of hatred and violence, but what if you’re gradually moved, one inch, one speech, one tweet at … More How the Current Moves Us
Anyone else remember Dennis the Menace or Alvin the Chipmunk and their respective guardians, who yelled so the whole neighborhood could hear, DENNNNNNNNIS! ALLLLLVIIIIINNNN! Yeah, I’ve got one of them. The child you have to watch the most when he’s with friends. The child of “You’re grounded,” and “If I have to tell you one … More Raising a Child Who Learns the Hard Way
The Old Testament of the Bible is hard. If you’ve taken any modern science classes, married for love instead of property, or heard about Jesus’s call to love your enemy, you probably struggle a little bit with the God of the Old Testament. The God of the Old Testament seems finicky, impatient, and intolerant. The … More How to Read the Old Testament without Wanting to Throw Something, or Drink, or Give Up Your Religion
Being a Type A, INTJ, 1W9, etc., I really like lists, and checking things off my lists, and adding things to my list so that I can check them off. So here we are, nearing the middle of the year! Time to check on my 17 Resolutions in ’17: Start a new job! ✔️ Knock the … More Joy Full and Filling
I notice it more and more as I get older, how important making stuff is to me. – Paula Scher, #Abstract I’ve been watching the Netflix series Abstract on and off, generally when no one else is around. Every time I watch an episode I remember again how much I love to create, how much … More Creation
Earth Day lands in April, and in honor of the great big planet that hosts us, Off the Page is posting lots of Earth-oriented articles this month, including mine – “Picking Rocks and the Cosmic Christ.” A few other earthy articles of mine have appeared various places the last few years. Here are excerpts from … More Earthiness
My son is afraid I’m going to die. This fear leaks out right about the time he shuts his eyes at night. He’s worried because anything can happen. Tonight’s specific “anything” is accompanied by fear of violence and death in general. He can hardly utter the words. It makes him gasp for breath, wide-eyed and choking at … More When Fear Paralyzes, Love’s Got Legs
It’s International Women’s Day, and I don’t own any red shirts. The closest I’m getting is a maroon button-down cowgirl shirt I wore to the George Strait retirement concert before he came out of retirement. I could stay home and strike, but my CEO already gets the message that women matter, that equal pay is important. … More 5 Ways to Stand for Women in Small Town America
I began reading The Bible Tells Me So by Peter Enns today, and in the midst of my own similar writing project on reading the Bible I feel as if I’ve found a kindred spirit. This comes early on in his narrative: “Sweating bullets to line up the Bible with our exhausting expectations, to make the Bible … More Abide
I picked up cross-stitch again after the new year, partly because I bought Lydia a small cross-stitch project for Christmas to teach her the fine art of counting stitches, and partly because of this picture: It reminded me of the days after my second miscarriage, when I lost faith in the promises I had believed, … More Facebook Stabbing
