Welcome!

For those of you just joining us...

I’m Tara! It’s wonderful to have you here.

I always hoped to be a writer one day. When I was a kid, I sifted through different kinds of writing, and went through phases of confidently telling various adults what I’d be when I grew up.

In second grade, I was gonna be a poet. In high school, I wanted to write creative nonfiction like Chuck Klosterman (I asked a dude at Books a Million for “Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs,” and he choked on his coffee). In college, I majored in Anthropology, because I was a Yalie with imposter syndrome, and it felt like the most dignified way to study and write about human culture. Then I spent nine years working at Harvard, learned about the absolute racket that is modern academia, and sprinted away from that career as fast as my legs could take me.

I’ve been calling myself a writer for two years, but I didn’t really feel like one until this past weekend. Most of my posts here have gotten 15-30 views apiece, and that’s with a hefty boost from my husband, family, and besties. But I wrote a post last week about what it feels like to be a millennial woman whose standards of beauty were written by confirmed pedophiles, and it blew up.

Today that post has enough readers to fill Fenway Park.

“From 13” makes me laugh every time I see it

I am so grateful to each and every one of you, and I’d love it if you stuck around, so I figured I’d introduce myself and my favorite recent pieces for your reading pleasure. I am an anxious person, so I’m now terrified of letting you down with my next post, so for now, an intro and some back-catalog suggestions!

My name is Tara. I’m a 35 year old woman, born and raised in Appalachian Tennessee, and educated at Yale. I’ve lived in Boston with a boy I met in college since 2012, and we have been happily married for ten years. We have two rescue dogs, and I spend most of my time taking care of them, reading, writing, and doing every single chore our household needs done with…minimal resentment towards my husband (he’s finally finishing up his medical residency at Harvard this year). We’re moving to Traverse City, Michigan in the summer, and I cannot wait to live among the trees again.

It’s a difficult time to be a human being right now. It’s been a tough few years for us personally, with a 15 year medical training for Tom and a 7 year battle with Endometriosis for me. I lost my uterus at 33, and had already been sick for so long, I wasn’t able to give us children. At several points in my life, I have been unable to walk. I fell into the deepest depths of depression, and spent months contemplating ending my life. I’ve battled the Boston medical system as a beleaguered wife and as a patient, and I genuinely cannot tell you which was worse. Most of my oldest posts are about pushing through that depression, hence the blog title “Notes from the Pit.”

After writing half a memoir and deciding it was too depressing to sell, I am currently trying to write my first fictional book: a ghost story about a woman whose body and mind begin to turn on her, and her struggle to parse reality while being aggressively haunted by illness and spectres of grief, rage, and white-hot agony. I’ll fold my memoir into the fictional story as her writing, because honestly, I feel a lot more confident in the creative nonfiction space. I know the writing in my memoir is great. Zero confidence in my fictional plotting/writing, though.

Wish me luck; I have absolutely no clue what I’m doing!

Beyond my own life, the world has gotten harder to survive, and I have decided to try as hard as I can to be a light in the darkness. Part of being that light is telling difficult truths, and I know that can be a tough hang. I know you won’t always agree with me. I put as much humor as I can into those posts, to keep y’all going. To keep my own head high, I turn to pop culture every single day. I read, I watch, I write about it all. I am a lover of horror, an unapologetic enjoyer of pure smut, and a devourer of fantasy. I also think The Traitors is some of the most entertaining television of our time. Multitudes!

I’ve never charged for any of my writing. I will now include a paid subscriber model if, and only if, you want to partake. All new posts will still be free! If you like what you read enough to subscribe, please enjoy the warm fuzzy feeling of moral superiority and community in supporting an independent female author.

Before my recommendations, a warning: I don’t coddle readers regarding gender, race, or religion. You are adults, and I trust you to handle your feelings with grace in the comments. Racist, hateful, or sexist speech gets permanently banned.

Have fun!

If you’re into pop culture, I recommend my recent post about Oscar darlings “Sinners” and “One Battle After Another,” two sides of the same coin whose themes crash directly into our own current affairs.

If you’re more of a history buff, I’ve got you covered! History so frequently rhymes with modern life, and my post on Tudor England versus modern America was so enjoyable to write, if also a little horrifying.

If you don’t need a spoonful of sugar with your hot take of the day, here’s my unvarnished eat-the-rich post of the year. To me, nothing is more dangerous in our modern age than the existence of an untouchable upper class. I have a lotta feelings about how on Earth one is able to be a moral millionaire, and how easily we lose the plot on the true enemy: a league of billionaires I with henceforth call the “Epstein Class.” Only a few have been brave enough to try to bring them to heel, and none with more pizazz than Mayor Mamdani of NYC.

A bonus for the millennial girlies: My First Generation Modern Woman series. It’s a three-parter, and not always the easiest read, but let’s be frank: neither was our girlhood! Here’s the first post.

No matter what you read or whether you decide to support me, please know that I see each and every one of you, I read every comment and story you post, and I’m so glad to be here with you today. Your readership makes me a writer, and for that I am joyfully, boundlessly grateful.

-T.