Brooke Moen

The Stripe of Courage

Brooke Moen — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 17:07:09 GMT

After the third cancer, which came after moving to the burbs alone, which came after pandemics global and personal, which are stories for another time. For today, let’s just say, after falling and dusting off and falling and falling and falling again, this tiger finally tumbled out of her orange stripe. Indomitable courage, decades of roar, ever biting the head off come what may, those stripes turned all black.

It was as if no one could find me anymore; no roar, no stalking the jungle path, no point. I believed in magic my whole scrappy life, I believed in delight. Perhaps I had screeched too loud for it and finally scared it all away.

So I spent a little time with what friends remained and I dared to travel to a few new places. I could taste just a bit of wine, some gelato. It wasn’t orange, but I dared to have a little bit more, another dash of delight please. And then kind of like ET in that famous scene, my tiny little tiger heart light felt like it could glow again. A faint orange glow, pushing through all that black.

Then one night, daring to prepare to see Gillan Welch sing her beautiful heart out against a backdrop of the beautiful Adirondacks with a beautiful sister-friend, I held an umbrella for the rain of shoes that would surely drop. After all, magic was dead, so why wouldn’t it storm, cancel the show, but only after running into my ex and all those ex friends.

Instead, the crickets backed up Gillian, the mountains backed up the big indigo sky, and my friend backed me. She held my waist gently and firmly while we swayed to songs of heart-aching courage. Courage to find your stripes, courage to glow all orange and full of delight, courage to feel the song of love again.

Courage to live. To travel back to yourself, your roaring self, who knows you can keep walking through life’s awful and beautiful jungle, one stripe after the other.

Remembering

Brooke Moen — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 02:10:20 GMT

In our tiny sunken, brown-carpeted living room, next to the bookshelves made of cinder blocks and planks, my mom would sit on her upholstered brown armchair, a chair faded in its former married, fancy-housed glory. I’d rub her neck or back and she would suspiciously ask me how is it I knew how to do that so well. I didn’t know how I knew, in fact there …

Leeches to Hummingbirds: on Hope

Brooke Moen — Tue, 26 May 2026 01:20:22 GMT

This hummingbird of a young woman, flitting around the hospital bed where I was trapped, at once with her iridescent wings and straight to business pollinator mind. I was on this special floor because of the special outcome of a very unspecial surgery. The transplant of tissue and vessels from leg to chest. A valiant surgeon spent thirteen hours sewing …

Everything in its Right Place

Brooke Moen — Fri, 08 May 2026 14:17:54 GMT

No one expects to have a spiritual awakening in a plastic bird bath of a motel tub in Chula Vista. But I had never felt so vast and alive as I was at 2am in that perfect little container of all that is not, as it turns out, contained.

Of course I was not the first or last party girl to feel utterly alive after taking MDMA or as it is accurately known, Ec…

Haven

Brooke Moen — Sun, 03 May 2026 16:08:48 GMT

Once upon a time through the waterways of Northwest Iowa, the Sioux rode around in canoes that took a long time to make. Dugouts, from a single massive tree, made of cottonwood, maybe sometimes maple or oak. They coasted through fishy velvet liquid that rocked them, floated them, suspended in time, rooted in place. Very likely a peaceful life, over a sh…

The Smell of Rain on Dust

Brooke Moen — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 22:11:59 GMT

The oncologist at the fancy New York cancer center called my left breast frisky. After throwing poison, cut, burn at it over these years, the decade leading me out of adulthood into middle age, these multiplying milk duct cells would not relent. The breast had to go.

Maybe now, the toxic nourishment that so innocently and indomitably flooded my colicky little baby body, from the breast of a terrified mother, from the cells of a too-young Vietnam Vet, could stop. Maybe now, we could finally turn the spigot. Shut off the ancestral flow of Glyphosate, Agent Orange, agents of colonialism and patriarchy, stop the goddamn giving already. All those terrified mothers, all those breasts that just gave and gave and gave, until they too became too frisky to stay.

My best friend Amy, she had the biggest, most beautiful breasts you’d ever seen. And frisky enough to kill her. The only thing bigger on her was her smile. Actually no, it was her heart. When she died, her heart and smile were just the same. Those frisky toxic breasts though, they just gave and gave, until they gave their cancer to her ovaries, brain, spine, consuming her, consuming us.

After my last surgery though, nothing hurt, not for so long, not from where that sassy little breast was removed, or my leg where they cut out the fat to make a thighboob. In fact not even my heart. See, they gave me Fentanyl when I was knocked out for 13 hours, even though I didn’t want it. So then like my dad, in that Southeast Asian jungle, my mom and Amy, the goodest terrified Midwest mama wives, like all of them I didn’t feel for a while, all that I had lost.

Luckily grief, like multiplying cells, is relentless, indomitable. Even more relentless than drugs. Because as it turns out, grief is the gushing forth of frisky, indomitable love. As I’ve been able to feel again, to hurt, oh to hurt so goddamn much, I am losing all of them; ancestors, friends, body parts, but most importantly all the anesthesia of youth. The drugs born of chemistry and culture, that numb out the beautiful, awful truth.

The truth of relentless loss. Or as Martín Prechtel calls it, the smell of rain on dust; the love that only grief can be.

I hurt, so I am still alive.

I hurt, so I still love.

Miracles

Brooke Moen — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 18:18:17 GMT

We walked across the stage to shake the hands, hold the diploma, and hold the shining, shaking future in our hearts. Then one of our professors told the sun washed lecture hall full of fresh Chinese Medicine Doctors and our friends and family this: don’t forget, you will be treating sick people, from start to finish. Every interaction, everything you sa…

Return

Brooke Moen — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 16:05:51 GMT

We Stayed

The lonely parts, tiny voles, the luscious bunny on the front stoop each morning, screaming crows. We stayed because despite not belonging, so much worked. Like a prison wall, like an unredacted file, like an invisible fence, like a trapdoor, it worked.

We Repaired

The therapist, oncologists, the plumber, neighbors. Patching inner and outer homes.

Lineage, Redefined

Brooke Moen — Sat, 07 Feb 2026 20:47:52 GMT

Oh we, the caretakers. Women of women of women. Now, it’s called unpaid labor. But not so long ago it was called the working mother. And before that, the ideal housewife. And before that, just a woman. Of course I did not set out to swim down this stream. Unlike my blood mothers of prairies, forests and fjords, the frozen and harsh survival stories of s…

Becoming Human

Brooke Moen — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 23:43:40 GMT

“We are equal to our lives”--unknown

Waiting quietly just before dawn, sitting on the edge of the blank gurney in my papier-mâché cancer girl costume, I felt calm. Washed properly with Dial soap, adequately starved for eight hours of heavy drugs, I was ready as anyone never wants to be for the slicing and dicing of her body. So little to love in the sams…

From Swimming to Soaring

Brooke Moen — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 15:02:53 GMT

I was a bird born to water. Everyone with his head in my feathered lap. Well, not everyone, just the ones with something to waggle around, to the tune of false premise. Promise of my pleasure, reality of my domination. He grins and tells me he mostly just played the trumpet all day, then falls peacefully asleep in my lap.

I’m rocking, like grandmother so…

Just a Little Light and Water

Brooke Moen — Sat, 17 Jan 2026 16:10:11 GMT

I don’t remember for how many years I’ve been ever-so-gently placing needles into his sensitive body every week, him howling, me holding his hand, us laughing. But I remember when my patient Scott told me, in the same breath, that his perfectly healthy wife had cancer, and that her father had been the head of DuPont Chemical. I held my breath, we held o…

The Sweet Scent of Death

Brooke Moen — Mon, 21 Jul 2025 03:57:30 GMT

In this Year of the Snake, right before my latest bum mammogram, I was struck awake by a vivid dream. Jasmine from grad school was there; my colleague in deep studies with lineage teachers, but whom I hadn't seen in twenty years. She cleared out my entire bedroom, including the bed frame built by my abusive ex. Dream-Me was surprised; oh wow, you change…

Prayer

Brooke Moen — Thu, 17 Jul 2025 02:14:19 GMT

Priorities scream, like the seagulls during rooftop yoga the other day. How we try to keep saluting the sun, even when nature itself bellows us into immediacy. Spreadsheets and appointments, a myriad of preparations in order to head toward a chopping block burn like the July sun. But under my breath I’m begging the gods or universe or at least surgeons …

Storm

Brooke Moen — Sun, 06 Jul 2025 12:58:20 GMT

In Chinese Medicine, we say “Wind” is the character of all disease. After all, health has a certain order to it, right? Not exactly a metronome, more of a jazz beat. Nevertheless, too much chaos blows in trouble, eventually.

Living in the watery world of Vermont, we have wind, but mostly we are soaked. Pressed under damp weather, but also steeped in the …

On Kindness

Brooke Moen — Sun, 29 Jun 2025 01:41:45 GMT

I first noticed the energy of his body; hulking, out beyond momentum, formidable. Then I recognized an oddly familiar face, son of a demon, charming spawn, slick snake slithering through the elite waters in which I found myself adrift. As I feebly tried to digest the fancy octopus on my plate, I was also digesting the impending medical appointments I wa…

To Death and Back

Brooke Moen — Sat, 10 May 2025 16:55:15 GMT

When you came for the grandmothers I was so young and far from you. I thought you were reasonable and I might miss them, just at holidays. And when you came for the grandfathers I was an adult, already closer than I knew to you because that's what depression is, just your snuggle. But also a cozy self-involvement that kept me feeling nice and exempt. Po…

Love: soft and crusty

Brooke Moen — Tue, 29 Apr 2025 00:00:29 GMT

My grandmother’s pancakes were so soft in the middle, crusty around the edges. At first bite that mouth-melting simplicity of squishy sweet felt like her. As she would say, “gramma luz ya.” There were other phrases and recipes that seemed simple, like “the rich just get richer while the poor get poorer,” and that noodley beef dish she called goulash.

I …

On Shame

Brooke Moen — Mon, 21 Apr 2025 00:38:23 GMT

“She believed then that love had to feel like hunger to be true”—C.A. Adichie

Friends say I didn't love you, I loved your potential. Poking at that shame, it still leads me to pick at my face and pick you out online and pick with my humiliated mind around your new perfect life with the easygoing athlete. Even revisiting it now is like ripping the scab of…

Desire

Brooke Moen — Sun, 13 Apr 2025 14:01:08 GMT

Give me my birthright. The first truly free woman in this long line of givers not takers, shutter-uppers not trouble-makers. The first to decide, not only should I bring more life into this shitstorm (the answer rings like a beautiful NO bell), but what book shall I read? What do I want for dinner? Who can I leave behind because I have my own money, and…