Chicago Story Press

09/12/2025

A mother’s love, unraveling and unyielding. In this essay, Jane Barnard describes the reality of parenting through addiction, guilt, and fragile hope. From late-night prayers to knitted blessings, it's clear how much love there is between a mother and her son. LINK IN COMMENTS

09/05/2025

What happens when your ex-husband dies—and there’s no one else to handle what comes next? Liz Behlke steps into the wreckage left behind by a man she once loved—and lost long before his death. What begins with a missing person call from the dentist becomes a story about unfinished business, legal chaos, and the reluctant weight of grief. LINK IN COMMENTS ***de

08/29/2025

What happens when a child’s worth is measured in inches?
In Tall: A Fight to Grow, and the Grace to Understand, Mohan Sikka traces a boyhood shaped by relentless expectations of height and strength, and the quiet rebellion of nurturing art, imagination, and authenticity instead. This essay explores the weight of family hopes and the ways we learn to stand tall, even if we don’t measure up.
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08/22/2025

What happens when books become your closest companions? In this essay, Holly Maurer-Klein reflects on growing up motherless in a chaotic home—and how the dusty novels on her shelves became her escape. They shaped how she saw herself and the world, offering comfort and identity. But they didn’t always get it right. LINK IN COMMENTS.

08/15/2025

Goldfinches squabble at the feeder while democracy frays at the edges. In Birds of a Feather, Susan Z. Ritz draws on lessons from history to explore how ordinary people live and act when the world begins to shift beneath them. LINK IN COMMENTS

08/08/2025

Sometimes nature gives us what we can’t give ourselves—shelter, stillness, and the strength to keep going. The Cove That Held Me is a tender reflection on how one hidden place by the sea helped a child survive and a woman heal. LINK IN COMMENTS

08/01/2025

What happens when the ache of an absent parent lingers for decades? When the questions you never dared ask come roaring back in midlife? Rev. Reginald D. Burgess shares the story of finding his father after forty years of silence. What begins as a quiet longing becomes a journey of vulnerability, courage, and healing—a reminder that it’s never too late to seek connection or offer forgiveness. LINK IN COMMENTS

07/25/2025

Scars are more than marks—they’re stories, maps of where we’ve been and how we’ve survived. Tara Hashagen reflects on the many forms of scars—physical, emotional, invisible—and what it means to live fully within a body that remembers everything. This essay will change the way you view scars. LINK IN COMMENTS

07/18/2025

Anne Stark Gallagher’s true story about her marriage is stranger than fiction—fraud, betrayal, and a mob hit that turned her life into something out of a crime thriller. This isn’t just about surviving a toxic marriage; it’s about finding the courage to tell the truth. LINK IN COMMENTS

07/11/2025

What does it mean to come to terms with memory, with blame, with the stories we carry from girlhood? White Roses by Teresa Castro begins with a murder—and becomes something far more personal and haunting. LINK IN COMMENTS **e

07/04/2025

This is a piece about a woman’s quiet resistance in a roadside bar—and the uneasy space between perceived safety and real danger. This isn’t just a road trip story. It’s about boundaries, discomfort, and the weight of being a woman in a world that often expects women to go along with men’s entitlement, attention, and assumptions. LINK IN COMMENTS.

07/02/2025