Mary Kate Miller

I told myself that I was not freaked out. I was not a prude. The truth was I was very freaked out. Yet, getting naked with my friends was so body positive.

Some days I feel like a Botticelli, some days I feel like a sexy, dumpy baby. Even when I am naked, my frame of reference is limited. I have not seen too many positive, mainstream depictions of bodies like mine.

I got my first three-letter disease as a result of a sinus infection. There was no way to know. No way to prevent it. I got my second three-letter disease from a man that I loved at the time. There was a way to prevent it. It’s called herd immunity.

When my grandmother, who I called Gram, came to live with my parents in the fall of 2015, she was in rough shape — you know, the way that you expec

In the past 13 years, I have moved 11 times.

The through line of my life has been the tension caused by my father believing that I should “fall in line” and defer to his patriarchal authority. Nowhere is this more evident than in the ways that he cannot tolerate our spiritual differences.