When we launched HuffPost Personal in 2018, we were thrilled to finally have a department that features real people writing about their real experiences. From sharing incredible triumphs to detailing devastating heartbreak to relaying the hilarious, unexpected and sometimes just plain strange parts of life, the hundreds of essays we now publish on HuffPost Personal each year offer readers the chance to discover others’ unbelievable stories and the profound potential to learn about what someone else has been through in their own words and how it’s changed them.
Here are some of our favorite stories from 2022. If you have a compelling story to tell and would like us to consider it for publication on HuffPost Personal, you can find out what we’re looking for here and send us a pitch.
My Wife Of 52 Years Just Died. My Grief Is So Overwhelming, I Can Barely Cope.
By Ronald Paxton
It’s never a good thing when the emergency room staff know you by name. Diane had been experiencing gastrointestinal issues for some time, and had visited the ER 27 times in the past year for nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. Over a nine-month period, her gastroenterologist performed two colonoscopies and an endoscopy. He finally came up with a diagnosis of arteriovenous malformations. “Don’t worry,” he said, “there’s no sign of cancer. Most people with this condition can lead a normal life.” In Diane’s case, he was wrong ― dead wrong.
Read the full essay here.
My Husband Sent Me A Seemingly Innocent Text. It Led Me To Discover He’d Been Cheating For Years.
By Dr. Samantha Gray
Three days before Valentine’s Day 2018, I discovered my husband of 13 years was cheating on me. Just 72 hours later, I participated in a student-led Valentine’s Day Q&A panel at the university where I teach as a psychologist with interests in social technologies.
Ironically, the students wanted the panel to talk about healthy relationships and love. I didn’t experience the panel as painful, but I still have no idea how I got through that event other than the protection provided by being in a state of shock.
Read the full essay here.
I Gained 70 Pounds During COVID. Here’s What Happened On My First Day Back In The Office.
By Emily McCombs
Given all the things that have changed in the past two years of life under COVID, my body is almost certainly among the least important. But that it has changed is undeniable.
When I started to hear people talking about the “COVID 15,” referring to the widespread phenomenon of quarantine weight gain, I thought it was cute because I had already gained more like 40 pounds.
Now, two years into a pandemic that drastically changed everything about the way we live, I’m estimating that number is closer to 70.
Read the full essay here.
This Is What It’s Like To Not Have Any Friends Who Are Your Same Race
By Miun Gleeson
Many Korean Americans have had the comfort of community to weather the assaults on our identity. The heightened anti-Asian rhetoric and violence of the past two years has only cemented those bonds ― the salve of togetherness in our otherness. It’s been a frightening time to look like us, but much of the hand-wringing and crying has been a communal exercise with family and friends who have the shared context of treading this specific body of water. There is a fellowship to fall apart together. For most of us.
But for me ― a Korean American without any Korean friends ― it has been an incredibly lonely experience.
Read the full essay here.
If You Think My Pronouns Are Optional, We Can’t Keep Being Friends
By Kelsey Smoot
Lately, I’ve been embroiled in what feels like constant conversations about pronouns. The wrong ones. The right ones. The preferred ones. Hint: That third category is defunct.
As a nonbinary trans person who uses they/them/theirs pronouns as my terms of address, I suppose I should be celebrating this influx of discourse on the proper usage of pronouns. Truthfully, I’m exhausted.
Read the full essay here.
One Of My Students Asked If I’d Stand Between Them And A Gunman. Here’s What I Said.
By Amanda Mayes
“Ms. Mayes? If a gunman came in here, would you protect us? Would you stand between us and the gunman?”
It was about two months into my third long-term substitute teaching position at my high school alma mater.
Read the full essay here.
My Family Hid The Haunting In Our Home From Me For Years. Then I Found These Photos.
By Jessica Moffitt
When you’re brought up in a household suffocating in secrets, you learn to keep the silence. Or maybe the silence keeps you. You might not learn the difference until it’s almost too late.
My grandmother constantly warned my brothers and me never to speak about anything we witnessed in our home. She always delivered this warning in the trembling, fragile voice of a plea.
Read the full essay here.
I Auditioned At A Strip Club. Then I Found Out What I’d Have To Do To Get The Job.
By Penda Smith
A little over three months ago, my friend Diamond, her friend, and I showed up to audition at a strip club in Florida. I was a nervous wreck ― the promoter made it clear that girls who did not “look up to par” would be sent home immediately. Looking up to par meant that our nails, hair, and makeup were done, our underarms and bikini areas were waxed, and we were each wearing an alluring two-piece.
When we got to the backroom, my anxiety dissipated as I looked in the mirror. I saw a beautiful Black woman staring back at me. I put on a red two-piece, fluffed out my Afro, reapplied my lip gloss, and waited for my turn to audition.
Read the full essay here.
I Had My Breasts Removed. I Didn’t Realize It Would Affect Me The Way It Did.
By Jaime Lazich
“That’s … awesome,” I said, looking into the huge floor-to-ceiling mirror in my surgeon’s office and seeing my new chest for the first time.
I was at my first post-op appointment, three days after my top surgery. I was struck by the normality of my chest. It felt so familiar, a seamless accompaniment to the rest of me. My chest was there the whole time, waiting to be uncovered under the weight of what was piled on top. Like excavating a fossil in the earth. There it was. There I am.
Read the full essay here.
I Discovered My 11-Year-Old Patient Was Pregnant. Here’s What I Knew I Had To Do.
By Dipti S. Barot
It was my first year in practice doing bread-and-butter primary care. Sophia’s mom had brought her in for stomach pain. When I got to her menstrual history, her mom said Sophia had gotten her period but then it had stopped. I reassured her and said sometimes at the start of menstruation, there can be some irregularity and that is not uncommon at all. The mother then left the room and it was just me and Sophia.
Read the full essay here.
I Was One Of The Most Famous Pop Stars In The World. No One Knew The Secret Pain I Hid.
By Darren Hayes
To the casual observer, I appeared confident, full of swagger with my vaguely ’70s blow wave and a blue-black dye job that could rival Elvis in his prime. But my bravado was a carefully crafted persona, built to protect me from years of bullying at school, denial and shame about my sexuality, and a mask to hide the rapidly increasing depression that would soon become overwhelming.
Read the full essay here.
My Best Friend Disappeared From My Life Without A Trace. I’m Still Trying To Find Out What Happened.
By Stephanie Elliot
The last email I sent to her was a simple note:
Looking for you. That’s all.
This is a love story of sorts, but not in the way you think it might be. A story of how we met, how our relationship grew over 15 years and how I lost her. She was my first internet-turned-real-life friend.
Read the full essay here.
My Gentle, Intelligent Brother Is Now A Conspiracy Theorist And His Beliefs Are Shocking
By Sue Muncaster
Last April, my sister-in-law texted me to warn me that my brother was heading, unannounced, to my doorstep in Idaho, where I care for our elderly father. I knew he believed “everyone on the planet who received the vaccine will be dead in a few years,” but I had no idea of the depth of his fantastical beliefs.
Read the full essay here.
I Was A Virgin At 59. I Chose A Controversial Way To Have Sex — And I Couldn’t Be Happier.
By Leah Shefoe
I had my first date when I was 25 years old. The guy was someone I’d shared a class with in college. We had a chance meeting and chatted for a few minutes, and he asked me out. After seeing a movie, we drove to a park with a view of the moonlit river.
I liked this man, but I tensed up. He put his arm around me, drew me close, kissed my neck and stroked my hair. I froze. He whispered to me to relax, and I wanted to, but by the time he kissed my lips, I was trembling so much that he stopped and drove me home. I never heard from him again.
Read the full essay here.
I’m Biracial, But Rejected My Blackness For Years. Here’s What Convinced Me To Stop Passing For White.
By Eleanor Beaton
The school bus screeched to a halt. My mother, a Black Fijian woman who proudly embraced her natural ’fro, was waiting for me at the bus stop.
“Bye, n***a,” another kid said loudly, as I got up from my seat.
Read the full essay here.
This What It’s Like Going To The Gynecologist When You’re Black, Trans And Live In Texas
By KB Brookins
I am 26, living in the middle of the shit show that is Texas politics, and the number of laws that criminalize me being Black, trans, and able to give birth are mounting up higher than my 5-foot, 9-inch frame. I am making the brave choice to live in a time when many people in power would rather me not. I haven’t gotten a Pap smear in years due to a lack of health insurance, time, or the spoons to go through with the process, and I maybe want kids someday. So I’m going to the gynecologist to know my options.
Read the full essay here.
Women Pay Me To Teach Them How To Give Great Head. (And Their Boyfriends Thank Me.)
By Bill McKinley
Whatever I’ve called my classes over the past 20 years, I’ve taught women (and a few men) how to give world-class head while also becoming self-empowered and having a blast.
It started in 2002, when I was acting at a major regional theater.
Read the full essay here.
We Didn’t Say ‘Gay’ At My High School. It Nearly Cost Me My Life.
By Noah Michelson
I’ve been gay since the second I sauntered out of my mom at St. Luke’s Hospital in July 1978. Not just gay ― gay gay. The kind of gay that people would whisper about. The kind of gay that people would worry about. The kind of gay that I could do nothing about. And for the first four or five years of my life, the kind of gay that I didn’t ever think to think about because it was just who I was and I still didn’t know I needed to hate or hide it.
Read the full essay here.
I’m A Trans Man. Here’s What I Risked For The Chance To Get My Wife Pregnant With My DNA.
By James Bennett
“Your eggs will be scrambled,” the doctor told me dismissively as she handed me a pamphlet on egg freezing options. I was 25, terrified of what was next, yet eager to begin my transition from female to male. I was two months out from top surgery, a double mastectomy to remove my breasts, and had been painstakingly weighing this decision for years. My gender was wrong, and I had to fix it no matter the costs.
Read the full essay here.
Yes, Fat Asians Exist ― And I’m One of Them
By Jenn Meylan
My appearance confuses everyone, Taiwanese and Americans alike. And it’s not just because of my skin tone. It’s also because I’m fat, and I’ve been so to varying degrees my entire life.
Despite my terracotta skin and black hair, my body’s rounded shape makes me look decidedly un-Asian to casual observers. Stereotypical “Asians” are supposed to be skinny and curveless. I’m definitely not that.
Read the full essay here.
I Dated My Camp Boyfriend For 3 Summers. Years Later, His Sister Found Me — And We Fell In Love.
By Nikki Weiss-Goldstein
I joined Facebook in 2008 with curiosity, searching and scrolling through names of the past to see what had become of friends I once knew, discover who peaked in high school, and find out which former nerd turned into a hot thirst trap as an adult.
Not long after, I got a notification: “You have 1 new message from Jill Goldstein.”
“Hi. Is this Nicole Schlenger from Camp Nock-A-Mixon circa 1982? If so, a warm hello from your first boyfriend Matt and his little sister Jill.”
Read the full essay here.
I Went To A Brothel With My Boyfriend. It Was Nothing Like What I Expected.
By Melissa Duge Spiers
When I met a lover who knew his way around a paid hookup … a whole new possibility presented itself. Rod and I headed to the brothel outside Reno, Nevada, to celebrate my upcoming birthday. And it was not at all what I expected.
Read the full essay here.
I Posed For A Nude Centerfold In My 20s. I Was Elated, Until My Co-workers Found Out.
By TJ Butler
I did my first nude photo shoot a month after I turned 18 and aged out of the foster care system. I circled an intriguing ad in the back of a free weekly paper: Nude model wanted. I called. I didn’t consider that it could be dangerous, nor did I tell anyone where I was going.
Read the full essay here.
My Great-Grandpa Killed My Great-Grandma Giving Her An Abortion On Their Kitchen Table
By Linda Black
In 1919, my 7-year-old grandmother was startled awake in the early hours by her father. “Come say goodbye to your mother,” he told her. He brought her and her siblings into the kitchen, where their mother lay dying on the kitchen table. The room, table, and her mother’s lower half were awash with her blood. This is the only memory my grandmother had of her mother. Any positive memories were shocked from her system in that moment.
Read the full essay here.
I Took My White Husband’s Last Name. I Didn’t Realize How It Would Affect The Rest Of My Life.
By Allison Shiozawa Miles
I didn’t want to change my last name. I dragged my feet as a young 21-year-old bride, waging an internal battle between my desire to maintain my identity with the desire to embrace my new husband, which, tradition insisted, included his name.
For months after our wedding, I fought the decision, playfully suggesting that my new husband take my surname, Shiozawa. But the idea of a white man taking a Japanese surname when I had three brothers to carry it on — as though that would be the only valid reason to consider it — seemed absurd to everyone else. Never mind that my white mom and sisters-in-law have dutifully taken on a Japanese name without a second thought.
Read the full story here.
My Son Asked Me How Two Men Have Sex. My Reaction Surprised Me.
By Emily McCombs
I am very much a parent who says gay, because my son’s sexual orientation (and potentially, gender identity) has yet to be revealed to me, and it’s imperative to me that he knows I will love and support him no matter who he turns out to be attracted to.
So, the other night, when he asked me if two men can have sex together, I had no problem telling him enthusiastically: “Of course they can!” It’s when he asked me HOW they do it that things got hairy.
Read the full essay here.
I’m Deaf And I Have ‘Perfect’ Speech. Here’s Why It’s Actually A Nightmare.
By Rachel Zemach
Everywhere I go, people compliment me and say they wouldn’t have known I was Deaf if I hadn’t told them. They say it kindly, but it’s like they’re giving me a cupcake without realizing there’s a razor blade inside it.
Read the full essay here.
Felecia Phillips Ollie DD (h.c.) is the inspiring leader and founder of The Equality Network LLC (TEN). With a background in coaching, travel, and a career in news, Felecia brings a unique perspective to promoting diversity and inclusion. Holding a Bachelor’s Degree in English/Communications, she is passionate about creating a more inclusive future. From graduating from Mississippi Valley State University to leading initiatives like the Washington State Department of Ecology’s Equal Employment Opportunity Program, Felecia is dedicated to making a positive impact. Join her journey on our blog as she shares insights and leads the charge for equity through The Equality Network.
