Rainesford Stauffer is a writer, Kentuckian, and author of An Ordinary Age.
It’s a strange sort of self-reliance, thinking you can out-plan the grief, and heartbreak, and confusion of growing up.
I squeezed myself in around other people’s priorities and problems, all the while saying: Take up all the room you want. I will make myself fit.
New responsibilities clogged up phone lines and changed what used to be lifelines—how were we supposed to maintain our relationships?
I wanted to be a writer, and I thought my work-life balance was the price I had to pay. I couldn't have been more wrong.
It was the first time I’d ever noticed growth or newness this way: reclaiming, or returning, rather than overhauling and chasing.
Why do we need measuring sticks like college and marriage and leaving home to track our worth?
I drove past the third places that I’d grown up in and, through the eyes of an adult, saw a person shaped by spaces that are in-between.
