He's not where he is supposed to be. He should be practicing sprints in the desert sun with all the other aspiring Marines, but instead he is here, retreating into the quiet shade of the chaplain's office, the one person who won’t yell at him. Since he was seven years old, he wanted to be a...

At age twenty, I had the fortune of traveling the world. Through a study abroad program, I journeyed to awe-inspiring destinations like India, Cuba, and South Africa. In the process, I witnessed extreme poverty, global wealth, power disparity, and the effects of war and militarism—all while...

I realized I was a woman, or more precisely at the time, a girl, the day in first grade I noticed boys were looking up my dress when I was on the monkey bars. I started wearing shorts under my dresses. I now prefer pants. I realized I liked other women when I was nineteen and noticed I was...

By the time I was in my late twenties, I was convinced that I would never find love. I had had a few boyfriends, but over and over again, I was exiled to the dreaded Friend Zone. I always suspected that it was because I was “too much”: too smart, too feminist, too radical, too fat, too...

There was a period in my life when, within three months, all my major relationships changed. The most joyous of these was getting married; Sarah and I had dated for three and a half years, and I proposed to her at our holiday party....

A few years ago, my ­little sister moved in with me from our native Los Angeles to the coast of Maine. The move brought a lot of firsts for her: snow, the Atlantic Ocean, and seeing me as an older brother instead of an older sister....