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redrosethorns journal
Conscious raising, frequently utilised by feminists, involves individuals sharing their experiences to enhance awareness of social, personal, and political matters. This method has proven highly effective in fostering unity, building communities, and shedding light on broader issues affecting diverse demographics worldwide. It's a means of expressing our identities and experiences, ultimately empowering us.
Inspired by this approach, redrosethorns launched an online journal publication aimed at facilitating conversations about mental health, gender, sexuality, self-care, and empowerment.
If you would like to submit your work
to redrosethorns journal, click here.
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Flapping in the Wind
My husband said he didn’t want to die and leave me flapping in the wind.
(He actually did want to die, suffering from vascular disease in his legs which caused him pain and the inability to walk without occasionally falling. He also suffered from COPD, kidney cancer and depression.) Even though he said it on more than one occasion, I never knew what to do. If I said “I’ll be fine,” he might take that to mean he was free to blow his brains out with his Colt revolver.
Connie Woodring
Jun 272 min read
Watching the Birds on the Lagoon in Boca Raton, Florida, With My Father
You are a shadow here, a specter from my past, watching me
flip the pages of the bird book, looking at the difference
between a crow and a grackle, listening for the sharp wail
and screech of the limpkins or the squawking of ducks,
the wind rustling the leaves of the live oak sheltering the porch
from the tropical sun. I read with you, search the waters with you.
You’re long gone for many years. Your last words to me were at least ten years old.
Jan Zlotnik Schmidt
Jun 272 min read
Cis
“It’s magic,” the girl squealed with delight; the sunrise was amazing. It was the first one she’d seen this year, or even the year before, she said. Meghan had been sequestered away from her friends and family for what seemed like years, but in reality had been only four weeks. Her friend Darla stood near the window with Meghan and watched the sun peep over the horizon, the pinks and magentas giving way to the oranges and yellows of the fiery ball of unspent hydrogen.
Bill Tope
Jun 277 min read
Awakened to a Castrato Singing
Like a lamb he stayed close
To home, sweet and dainty.
Skin like he bathed in milk.
Walked away as the boys chose
Sides for baseball in the street.
Even a coy look in his eyes,
Mannerisms like a novice nun.
Joshua Meander
Jun 271 min read
I Judge Other Women
Have you ever seen a woman elegantly stroll through the world with a shine; a gold foil that covers everything they are and do in radiance? Or have you seen the infamous Cookie-Monster-pajama-pants woman and got the faint odor of cigarettes on the wind as she passed? I’ve seen both — and every woman in between — and always, without fail, I take my mental ruler and judge where I lie on the (conservative white supremacy) beauty standard scale.
Allie Ailis
Jun 274 min read
Choreo-Dysphoria
The dance expressed through her girl body murmurs I perform. It evokes candy floss flirtation and head-cocked hair twirls. Our hips move for visual consumption by an amorphous “him”. My curves appear designed for her step sequence, but they resist the interpolation. Mind and structure split. I am on the ceiling watching myself struggle in the spotlight of amplified femininity.
F.T. Rose
Jun 271 min read
By Blow
My great-grandmother beat her daughters with a stick, but my grandmother had the guts to steal away to a dance contest, a rebellious girl, on the cusp of the Second World War. The dance contest she won, but from this defiance my mother was born, out of wedlock – in a thunderstorm, Mom would say, with a touch of melodrama – in a stranger’s house in another town. And my grandmother’s name became an omen, overshadowing our lives.
Linda Ann Strang
Jun 272 min read
The Four Acts of Being a Tomboy
The adjectives I'd use to describe myself when I was born
Are Purple and Screaming.
Everyone else in the hospital used
Baby and Girl.
Girl was good, because my parents had a boy already,
And was fitting because my father had had visions of me
In a dream before I existed:
A girl.
Sophia Indelicato
Jun 276 min read
Self-Harm
I was married when we met. It was supposed to be something light, just for a couple of months. But we fell in love. When we broke up, my mom said that some relationships are like chickenpox. The sooner you get over it, the easier it goes away, and it leaves fewer scars. You can only get over it once, because then you develop immunity.
Aisylu Chanysheva
Jun 2710 min read
Recipe for Therapy
Serves: one life worth living.
Prep time: approximately 2 years.
Equipment needed:
1 virtual safe space.
1 black tape recorder.
1 well-loved Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) manual to treat Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).
Daphnée
Jun 275 min read
Cut Short
My head feels a lot lighter. As she moves the front pieces of my hair to fall behind my ears, I am staring into my own eyes. Parts of my heart sink as I do not recognize the person in the mirror. The long locks of hair with split ends and blonde strands were now on the ground. Social media always says that hair holds memories, but there is something about me that is changing. I look in the mirror and see my natural hair for the first time in years.
Kayla Agcaoili
Jun 276 min read
Shushed
I speak, loud and proud and vocal,
For those who have no voice.
For those who have been shushed,
Squelched,
Stomped down,
Silenced by a world focused on
Meaningless models of
Empty externals.
Mary Beth Magee
May 222 min read
you turn on the radio
you turn on the radio
hoping, i gather, to make me angry,
everybody knows how i feel
about rock and roll—it just makes
you want to drink and smoke
John Swofford
May 221 min read
On Being Plagued by Recurring Nightmares
Things I did and didn’t say or do still haunt me like candles flickering at the periphery of my psyche, bearing with them those things over which I never had control. Calculated, cold, and condescending, these thoughts that plague my slumber are only incorporeal in spirit; each word they carry cuts like a razor blade, jarring me from sleep. My anxiety bleeds in shallow breaths spent lying awake and wondering if the outcomes could have been different, the dark recesses of my
Jennifer Weigel
May 222 min read
Please, Keep Me
I sat up with a jolt of pain in my abdomen. My eyelids begged for relief, but my stomach ached as if I had been kicked by a steel-toed shoe. 6 a.m. My alarm clock glared at me. I had disturbed its time off, its peaceful dawn. I am not some newscaster who needs to roll out of bed and drive down dark, desolate streets toward the station. I do not need to be up this early, I don’t want to be up this early. Vacation does not require some strict wrangling of the teenage sleep sche
Juliette Brookman
May 229 min read
As If
Premise: Who is the protagonist? What do they want?
I wake up as a girl, I don’t know who. Woman, woman. The thing we all want is a story to tell. A reason to be the main character in our own lives, for someone to be watching. The thing we all want is an audience.
Exposition: What is in the way of what the protagonist wants?
Rowan Tate
May 226 min read
The Girl Who Learned How to Disappear
Don’t be afraid to open those notebooks.
You think you only remember the pain.
But even in the darkest places, there was light.
You loved. You were loved.
That’s what matters.
You are Dee. That’s enough.
Denise Dalfino
May 225 min read
Magpie
Maggie was at the gynecologist when she realized she might not be a feminist. With her bare feet propped up on the stirrups, her underwear bunched up inside her purse, and Dr. Jennings’ gloved hand currently prodding at the space between her legs, her thoughts were decidedly un-feminist in nature. She was not thinking about womanhood, or sisterhood, or the advancements in reproductive health that allowed her to be here now; she was thinking about how much she regretted not sh
Ella Newell
May 2211 min read
Into the fold
I am living large
In a time of split lips and bruised oranges
Like a bug caught in amber, suddenly revived
Anthy Strom
May 221 min read
Will You Be Mine?
I asked you to see me. Suffocating. My breath stuck somewhere in over-expanded
lungs, dying to exhale- gorged to the edge of implosion-
Not with noxious refuse of the blood,
With truth--Begging for light.
Jill Euclide
May 222 min read
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