birthmother

My Birthmother, Laurie, as a spiritualist on stage, listening to the dead who are trying to give her messages to relay to those in the audience. Part of the illustrations for the essay.

My essay, “The Dead Viking My Birthmother Gave Me,” is up over at GEIST Magazine online. It’s an essay about adoption, being queer, being lonely in the Yukon during Winter, and spiritual differences between a birthmother and son that include what one might do with a hunky centuries-old Viking spirit guide, and it’s all true from what I can remember.

Some of the illustrations that were published in the article that I did weren’t able to be put in the online version because of technical difficulties, so here they are:

An armor-clad Viking sits in a darkened bedroom of my 60-year-old birthmom, keeping watch while she sleeps.

I hope you enjoy the essay!

Hi Folks, if you look under Radio Series, you’ll see I finally put up the 5 parts of “Adopting my Mother.” It was my first radio series. Be kind. I had a lot of fun with it, but it was my first foray into radio series. It tells the story of when my birthmother found me, when I was 30. What follows is me getting used to having another mother, or trying to figure out how to fit in a person into my life who had a very important role in creating me. It’s not easy adopting a new person into your life–when you have a mom, a happy life, and you think you really don’t have to know where you came from or your own history….