Raised by Honey Badgers

My parents were broken in the ways that people get broken when life doesn't go easy on them. They were also the people who loved me the most they possibly could, which sometimes looked like armor and sometimes looked like a door and sometimes looked like dinner on the table when I didn't know how they managed it. I am a honey badger too. I got the toughness, the showing up, the not-flinching. I'm just trying to be a little better each day where it matters; softer in the places they couldn't be, honest about what I inherited, and unwilling to pretend the inheritance was simple. These are those essays.