Rebecca Donaldson

Dear Little Girl, I’ve Got You: A Letter to my Inner Child

I look at a picture of you and smile at your botched bangs. Whoever cut your hair must have had their eyes closed. The left side is definitely shorter than the right. You’re cute though. Adorable. Your green eyes look just like mine, and I can see we both like flowers. You look a little sad. I wonder why. There’s a hollowness to your eyes. Either you haven’t learned to smile for the camera yet, or you’re trying not to cry. I can’t tell.

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Sofia Stremlin-Adams

Maed

At five years old I had an impressive resume: aspiring coven leader, professional frog wrangler, and avid Michael Jackson fan. Absent from my curious resume was the ability to spell my own name. Even though I would be repeating kindergarten in the fall as a result of my creative spelling, I was in no hurry to uncover what seemed like an impossible cipher.

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Carol Krause

Love Letter for the Broken

When you’ve lost every hope, give thanks. For we will be waiting, with bouquets of light. In your grief, we will rest beside you. We will weep with you, without saying a word. You can cry out in desperation. We will cry out with you. Even if you bury your eyes in the darkness, we will not forsake you. I tell you this, because I know there is a hole in your soul. And I know the world gets inside the hole. Then you feel everything that is outside, inside. This is why you break. I could offer to fix you, but then who would break for the world? Instead, we have come with empty flowers that you can hold in your hands. And a lullaby that can last a lifetime. If you open the bottom of your ear to the sky. We have come to tell you not to change, not really. For the hole in your soul fits our world inside. And when you weep, we rejoice. Instead of making you into something that does not break, how about we show you how to shatter without restriction? Then we can cry out together. For life is cruel and unjust. While every day asks much of the heart. We will hold your hands, in the shadows. And you will hold our hands, in the light. That’s what love is. There’s not much else to say. Just thank you. For the hole in your soul. That tends the whole world, inside. 

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Call for Submissions: MITA’s 2025-2026 Featured Writer Project

Madwomen in the Attic is seeking featured writers for The Featured Writer Project’s 2025-2026 writing year, which will begin in January 2025.

Open reading period: March 1 – June 30, 2024.

This is a non-competitive call for submissions, open to writers from any location across the globe; all who wish to be featured writers and who fulfill the submission guidelines will be included in this project and archive. MITA seeks to offer a space in which veteran writers write alongside novice writers as a form of literacy and advocacy to dismantle stigma and support gender-marginalized people affected by the mental health system, trauma, and stigma. The project features women and other gender-marginalized writers and artists who have been affected by the mental health system, psychiatric diagnostic or other mad-related stigmatizing labels, trauma, or forms of societal oppression that have been othering or alienating.

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Maria A

 Piece 1:

           If I could travel back in time:

Well…if I could travel back in time, there’s too many things I’d like to do, too many places I’d like to go, too many people I’d like to meet. My dreams go big and avoid the possibility of going back to a time I existed in; are my heart and mind protecting me?

Mexico City, Mexico, 1690: I’d do a prayer with sapphic proto-feminist nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and maybe we could even exchange poetry.

Paris, France, 1794: I’d offer comfort and aid to a depressed, lonely, newcomer to motherhood Mary Wollstonecraft, so maybe she could get some sleep and realize pursuing Imlay was a lost cause.

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Sanai Sudlow

The Role of Eroticism

Last year being called erotic would have been something I would run fast away from. The most exciting part is I do not know why. Maybe I would run in fear that I would be perceived as overly promiscuous. Perhaps I would run because that placed me in another alternative society category. Maybe I would just not want to be that kind of woman. Labeling myself as erotic, in the past, felt like throwing myself into a room of undesirable women and locking the door. I was terrified of being someone no longer desired by a specific demographic I unintentionally tried to remain desirable to. At the time, I didn’t know the world’s true meaning.

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Alison Turner

Temporary Safety

  1.  

“Look at me,” you say, holding out your hands. We are separated by a desk with a high ledge that you put your elbows on before the person in front of you can move her purse. Your hands are swollen and a darker shade from exposure, darkest under the nails. “I need to shower, but they wouldn’t let me yesterday. Look.”

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December Letters Project ~ 2023 Call for OWLS

It’s that time of year: December Letters Project preparation time!

We invite you and/or your families, clubs, organizations, schools, and communities to be part of MITA’s annual December Letters Project. This is MITA’s annual local literacy project, but we encourage others to run a December Letters Project in their local communities. The project’s goal is very simple: to send connection, support, and solidarity –in the form of cards and letters– to our neighbors who are in psychiatric institutions during the winter solstice! We do this by making secular but festive cards and letters, with messages of love and encouragement, during the months of November and December, and delivering them to local psychiatric hospitals at the end of December, on or near the solstice. November is the month to prepare for the project, so we invite you to join us in being part of our December Letters Project or to hold a project in your community.

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