jmadmin – Jess Moran

49 years later

My partner woke me up the other morning with a little heading he found on Reddit. Something about some congressman calling women “earthen vessels sanctified by God”, and while the comment made us both cackle with laughter for a little bit it also left me with that sinking despair feeling I often get when I […]

Haunted

I stopped writing in anything other than the journal he helped me make, but it’s winter now, the Sunday morning to the Saturday night of Summer, and I guess it’s time I address my absence. Not to an imaginary audience, or even to the friends who aren’t on speaking terms with me anymore, but to […]

Ed goes climbing.

Lately I feel like I’m seeing a lot of op-eds and exposés of eating disorders in the climbing community. It started with Beth Rodden, certified badass and hero to a generation of climbers. Then we got Cathy Karlo’s podcast episode about them, in which she got a bunch of us to send in little voice […]

One Week.

I haven’t smoked a cigarette in a week, but I did want one so badly I cried about it on Wednesday. Here’s what it was like; It was like it’s been this horrible, broken year of reckoning and failure and fear and anger, and I’ve been smoking a lot. Like, yeah, Covid affects your lungs […]

Capital

December 11, 2020
by jmadmin

Something happened last night. I want to talk about it. First, let me tell you about this debate I lost in high school. See, I’d dropped out in my freshmen year so I could earn dual credit at the community college and also spend all my time riding horses, but they still let me be […]

Smoke screen

November 8, 2020
by jmadmin

The wildfire season this year was out of control. It was the scariest, most apocalyptic thing I’d ever seen…or not seen. I mean I could stand at the trailhead leading down into Smith and couldn’t see the rocks for the smoke. I drove extra slow because I couldn’t see more than a car or two […]

About Last Summer

(We could all use a break from politics and impending doom, so here’s a funny personal story I wrote a while back and never shared.) Last Summer I had a sexual experience with a guy that I’ll never forget. It sparked so much learning and growth and a new wave of trust and excitement I […]

Unmasked

My new roommates and I went to Whole Foods the other day. We wore our cute, personalized cloth masks and after waiting in line out front of the store, six feet apart from other parties, we got inside and quietly roamed the store, giving space to all the other masked shoppers. Everyone was in a […]

Just breathing

A woman at my work recently told me her therapist had told her that quitting smoking was so difficult, because smoking is the one time during the day you take conscious, deep breaths. Breathing is important. Intentional breathing is healing. Have you ever finished a yoga class and gotten into Savasana and started crying? I […]

If it changes your life, let it.

I wrote this for my friend Lizzy, who owns She Moves Mountains. I figured I might as well share it here as well. 🙂 I want to avoid cliches, but climbing has absolutely changed my life and I’m gonna spend my last breath ranting about it. I started climbing in a gym because I was […]