Jan 2, 2026
Big Girl Panties
You revisit November 2013, when your grandmother entered a masonic home and your mother disclosed her breast cancer diagnosis, while you were yourself living in an extended-stay hotel struggling to maintain stability. You move through the women in your family—your grandmother, mother, aunt Sheila, and Aunt Judy—mapping the different survival strategies they've adopted and the costs of those adaptations, ultimately recognizing that you and all the other transient residents of that hotel were fundamentally the same: people doing their best with what little agency and resources remained.