by Amelia Loken | Apr 11, 2026 | Disability Models
What is your first reaction when you encounter a disabled person? What are your instinctive beliefs about them? How do you interact? Are you natural? Fake-friendly? Do you ignore them? Do you try to figure out “what happened” while not seeming to stare? Welcome to the...
by Amelia Loken | Apr 7, 2026 | Writing
Last Fall (2025), my writing group decided to do its own NaNoWriMo, and my stomach clenched with dread. National Novel Writing Month was born the same year as my oldest child, twenty-six years ago. NaNoWriMo started as a writing community in 1999 and later became a...
by Amelia Loken | Apr 4, 2026 | Hope
I am a Star Wars fan. I watched A New Hope when it was just called Star Wars. I was tiny. After watching it, I asked my mom why they never showed the lions. She was confused. There are no lions in Star Wars and no reason to think there should be. I kept asking about...
by Amelia Loken | Feb 28, 2026 | Hope
Good Intentions I wrote a short little essay on hope in January 2025. It wasn’t polished, but it was from the heart. I wasn’t sure how to wrap it up. I decided to let it sit and then I would figure it out. The weather channel was predicting a snowstorm that would shut...