About Notes From the Edge

Welcome to Notes from the Edge, a home for creative nonfiction that lives between the margins. I write about the realities most people don’t want to look at too closely: poverty, disability, motherhood, bureaucracy, and the quiet ways we keep going when the world won’t make space for us. These essays move between the personal and the political, the intimate and the systemic. They ask what it means to live with tenderness inside of a country that often rewards cruelty.

The edge is the space where I live most days, but it is also where I see most clearly. It is where people show their rawest selves, where the truth stops pretending to be polite.

The Edge Essays

Each essay is a reminder that you are not alone, no matter how dark the world gets. Some pieces are close to the bone, stories of my own life as a single mother and caretaker navigating a system that measures worth by productivity. Others are stitched together with research, data, and the voices of people who deserve to be heard. I believe in writing that humanizes statistics, that builds empathy where there has been distance, that turns exhaustion into evidence.

You’ll find essays about public assistance, health care, food insecurity, parenting, and the strange, ordinary ways love saves us. You’ll also find small reflections, updates, and occasional newsletter notes in between.

What does it mean?

This Substack is both a writing practice and a conversation. It’s a space for empathy, clarity, and stories that hold truth.

If you’re looking for essays that blend storytelling with research, that name the ache and still reach for light, I hope you’ll stay. New essays arrive twice a month, with one shorter post in between. Even on the edge, we’re still here.