Midwest Mimi

  • Survival Is Not the Same as Safety: What We Forget When We Praise Strong Children

    When we praise children for being strong, we do not always ask what made them need that strength so young. Reading Demon Copperhead made me think about my daughter Rae, about the burned pot of macaroni and cheese she tried to make for her brother, and about the difference between a child being resilient and…

  • Not Cosmetic

    A personal essay about illness, poverty, motherhood, Medicaid, medical dismissal, and what happens when visible survival gets mistaken for failure.

  • My Daughter Is Not Half of Anything

    Mixed children should not have to prove they are enough of one thing to be treated as whole. As her white mother, I cannot know every layer of my daughter’s racial experience from the inside, but I can tell the truth about what I have witnessed. She is not half of anything. She is herself,…

  • The Life I Want Is Not Fancy. It Is Safe.

    The life I want is not fancy. It has dirt in it, a modest house, a garden, a porch, woods, pasture, and enough safety for my family to breathe. I am not chasing luxury. I am trying to build stability, space, financial security, and a life where safe is not treated like a luxury.

  • I Am Practicing the Life I Want Before I Can Afford It

    I did not know it was abundance. I thought it was dinner. Homemade bread, canned pears, fresh tomatoes, animals, woods, pasture, and food that came from the work of our own hands. I do not have the land yet, but I can still practice the skills, rhythms, and values of the life I am building…

  • I Am Learning to Build Without Burning Myself Down

    The old me knew how to hustle, but hustle taught me to measure everything by immediate payout. Now I am learning a different kind of discipline: building a life my body can sustain. One that makes room for chronic illness, family, rest, creative purpose, and the stubborn return to the work that still matters.

  • He Sounded Like Home, Even When Home Was Chaos

    When people say they love Jelly Roll, I know what they mean. But when I say it, I mean something different. I mean his music found me when I was still in the middle of my hustle years, back when survival felt like adrenaline and invincibility. This is not just about fandom. It is about…

  • Why I Still Call Him Father

    My abuser went to church. For years I wrestled with what that meant about God. This is the story of why I still call Him Father, and how protecting my children became the clearest expression of my faith.

  • No Neat Justice

    When powerful men are accused, the internet debates. The women who survived are not debating. Their bodies are remembering. I do not control federal prosecutions. But I control my boundaries. Hope does not live in headlines. It lives in what we enforce in our own lives.

  • Refusing Erasure: When Silence Protects Harm

    When headlines about abuse surface, my first reaction isn’t political. It’s physical. My body remembers before my mind can catch up. This is about silence — and what happens when harm is named but comfort is protected instead of truth.

  • The Rules Trauma Wrote

    Sexual assault does not only leave memories. It installs rules — rules about safety, blame, and ownership of your own body. Those rules are written under duress by a nervous system trying to survive, and they can outlive the danger that created them. In this essay, I explore how trauma embeds itself quietly in the…

  • You Cannot Lose What Was Taken: Purity Culture, Abuse, and the Silence That Followed

    Purity culture taught many survivors that something taken from them by force made them “damaged.” This essay reframes purity, consent, and shame, and explains why silence protects harm, not holiness.

  • You Are What You Consume

    The world asks us to witness everything, all the time. But constant exposure comes at a cost. This essay explores why discernment matters, how what we consume shapes our nervous systems, and how we can model healthier boundaries for our kids without turning away from truth.

  • Neurodivergent Conflict Styles, Part Two

    When one person needs to talk and the other needs to shut down, conflict can feel personal even when it isn’t. This piece explores how different nervous systems seek safety, how misunderstanding escalates conflict, and what changed when we learned to regulate first and communicate later.

  • Neurodivergent Conflict Styles, Part One

    I wasn’t arguing as a child. I was explaining. But explaining myself was often mistaken for defiance, and being misunderstood didn’t just hurt emotionally, it dysregulated my nervous system. This piece explores how neurodivergent conflict styles form early, and why the need to be understood can follow us into adulthood, shaping how we handle conflict…