family
Family life from the feminist perspective; can women have it all? Can anyone?
The Nights are the Hardest.
When the rest of the world goes to sleep, the quietest hours carry the heaviest noise. The hardest part of the solar cycle is not the physical grinding of the daylight or the endless execution of the earthly routines that keep a home turning and children living. It is the exact, unyielding moment when the rest of the world safely slips beneath the horizon of consciousness,the house falls utterly silent, and everyone else surrenders to the quiet. When the lights go out, the bedroom ceases to be an earthly sanctuary and becomes a cosmic crossroads. Insomnia is not merely a lack of sleep; it is a compulsory guard shift, an initiation into a forced vigil where you are left entirely exposed to the vast, cold vacuum of the night, and everyone you want to be around is asleep knowing nothing of your existence.
By Syl De'Vil3 days ago in Viva
The Weight of Past Silence
Submission Overview This prose piece explores the emotional architecture of a profoundly transparent, non-physical friendship built on the ruins of a past romance. It confronts the complex transition from a physical history to a sacred platonic bond, the protective instinct to keep the relationship safe at all costs, and the lingering guilt of a four-year withdrawal driven by a toxic ex's jealousy before a raw reunion sparked by uncovered secrets.
By Syl De'Vil5 days ago in Viva
Notes from the Mind Palace
Living with fibromyalgia and dysautonomia means inhabiting a body where the internal thermostat, the alarm system, and the volume dials are completely broken. The nervous system isn't just misfiring; it is shouting constantly. The chronic, widespread pain of fibromyalgia feels like an uninvited current humming beneath your skin, while dysautonomia leaves your autonomic functions—your heart rate, blood pressure, and temperature regulation—scrambled and unpredictable.
By Syl De'Vil15 days ago in Viva
Notes from the Mind Palace
There is a distinct kind of exhaustion that comes from living inside a fortress of your own making. In the architectural layout of the mind palace, the walls are thick, reinforced by years of survival, hyper-vigilance, and an ironclad rule: protection above all else. But when you sit alone in the center of that fortress, the quiet reveals a heavy, frustrating paradox. You can want human connection, safety, and love more than anything else in the world, while simultaneously feeling your entire nervous system lock down at the mere prospect of being perceived or touched.
By Syl De'Vil15 days ago in Viva
Notes from the Mind Palace
The house is dead silent, but inside my ribcage, the engine is still throwing heavy sparks. Everyone else gets to slip away into the dark, trading the weight of the day for soft edges, slow breathing, and effortless drift. For them, midnight is a curtain that drops cleanly, bringing an end to the noise. But for me, the dark isn't a relief—it’s a mirror. It is a wide-open canvas where the shadows start to take shape if I sit still for too long, a quiet room where the past likes to pull up a chair and wait.
By Syl De'Vil18 days ago in Viva
Cosmic Displacement
Beneath the silent canopy of the trees and the cold light of the stars, a lifelong outsider finds her true reflection. There is a heavy, ancient silence that only exists deep beneath the tree canopy after midnight. Out here, away from the synthetic hum of the house, the endless logistics of a large family, and the relentless demands of the daylight world, the air completely changes. I step out into the cold grass, pull my star-covered robe tight against the chill, and look up through the dark, jagged silhouettes of the branches.
By Syl De'Vil18 days ago in Viva
The Armor of the Metalhead Matriarch
Out here in the predictable daylight of the suburbs, a forty-five-year-old mother of seven stands out. People notice the sheer scale of a massive family and automatically file you away into a neat, conventional box. They assume your identity has been entirely swallowed by the endless cycle of groceries, laundry, and schedules. They think the story ends there.
By Syl De'Vil18 days ago in Viva
Rearranging the Broken Furniture Inside My Head
I often find myself thinking about what it means to simply not be here—not in this era, not in this body, not in this heavy, suffocating space. There is a persistent, quiet displacement in my chest, an exhausting sense that I was dropped into the world entirely out of sync, born either way too early or far too late. I exist permanently on the periphery. I don’t fit into the conventional puzzles of society, and I don’t fit within the familiar walls of my own family. When you are an outsider in your own home, alienation becomes your default baseline.
By Syl De'Vil18 days ago in Viva
Notes from the Mind Palace
People see I am the mother of seven kids and think they understand the shape of my life. They see the headcount, the logistics, the noise. But the truth of raising seven children doesn’t live in the obvious places. It lives in the quiet moments—the ones that don’t make it into photos, the ones nobody else notices, the ones that change me in ways I never say out loud. There’s a version of me that only exists when the house settles and the day finally lets go. That’s the mother I want to talk about.
By Syl De'Vil18 days ago in Viva
Notes from the Mind Palace
There are people who ask for your truth gently, like they’re cupping water in their hands. They make space for your shaking voice, your half‑formed thoughts, the parts of you that don’t look pretty in daylight. They tell you it’s safe to set things down. They tell you they won’t let anything spill. And for a moment, you believe them. You believe that someone finally sees you without flinching, without judgment, without the instinct to turn your vulnerability into something they can use.
By Syl De'Vil18 days ago in Viva
