Katherine Turner's Blog

Do you ever stop to think about the things you’re not? Or maybe catch yourself talking (out loud to someone else or silently to yourself) about those things you aren’t? I have since some of my earliest memories, and I don’t think it’s all that uncommon, either, though what those things are can vary significantly. And I’ve been thinking a lot about all those things I’ve not been in my life after a recent—rather unexpected—experience.

In the fall, I was contacted via my website about giving...

As the one-year anniversary of the release of my childhood memoir, resilient, approaches, one of my editors keeps asking me how I feel. But the truth is, I don’t feel any single emotion. And when I look back on the journey that writing, editing, and releasing this memoir into the world has been, I see a tumultuous path that has been both triggering and rewarding.

When I first drafted resilient, I had it separated by topic. I had my experiences with poverty in one section, sexual violence ...

Since I started writing again several years ago, I’ve received comments on social media and blog posts, direct messages via social media, and even emails from my readers about how a particular piece of my writing impacted them, what thoughts my words inspired. I’ve been honored to be a safe place for several women who have told me about assaults or abuse in their pasts, my own story having encouraged them to share theirs for the very first time… sometimes decad...

What do you think of when you hear the words “my first time”?

I expect some people will flash back to that very first time they had consensual sex. Some may be propelled back in time to the first time they were assaulted. Perhaps others who are acquainted with my writing and my penchant for alternate meanings with my blog titles may be wondering where I’m going with this one.

I assure you I’m not going to talk about my first experience with consensual sex. How...

In the introduction to my memoir, resilient, I talk about how there’s so often a story behind what people like or don’t like, whether it’s food or colors or flowers or weather or locations or words.

And that’s the thing, really… we all have these stories that make up who we are. What may sound odd on the surface, like my abhorrence of canned peas, suddenly makes so much sense when you have the backstory, the necessary context. When we forget that there ...

Chanel Miller wrote the words below in her memoir, Know My Name, about societal expectations that we only focus on the positive, that we only tell the “happy” parts of our stories and shy away from anything unpleasant or uncomfortable. Anything that isn’t uplifting, heartening, inspiring. Anything that makes us cringe or feel pain or anger.

“You will find society asking you for the happy ending, saying come back when you’re better, when what you say can ...

Years ago, before I started therapy and before I started writing for others, I made a decision. I had a parenting moment which demonstrated to me that my life of “being fine” was a lie, and—most importantly—that I wasn’t going to be the only person hurt by that lie. I had to make a choice: face my past, or continue to shove my head into the sand and pretend nothing was wrong, assuring I’d pass some of the trauma I was trying to forget to my children.

There’s a question I’ve wrestled with since some of my earliest memories, though I can’t pinpoint exactly the first time it rose in my mind. I know it was before I was ten because that was the year I wrote a novella with this question at the heart of it:

Where do my rights end and yours begin?

Wait—did you just wrinkle your nose when you read that? I did after I typed it. Something about it seems off, right? Let me try again.

Where do your rights ...

When you flip a coin for something, you choose heads or you choose tails, but it’s still the same coin flipping. One coin, two sides. But which side you choose can make all the difference. Maybe you’re flipping to decide if you’re having pizza or pancakes for dinner, or to decide if you’re watching a thriller or romantic comedy before bed, or to decide who’s getting up to change diapers at 2:00am. Either way, you’re still having dinner, you’re still watching a...

Recently, I’ve been focused heavily on my forthcoming memoir, resilient. As is the case any time you are writing about personal experiences, I’ve had to relive many periods in my life in order to write them in such a way that the reader is right there with me. And if you read my last blog post of 2020 (We are the Storm), you already know what an unexpected emotional adventure it has been, though it has become easier to sit with those past experience...