70 Staples – Not broken. Rebuilt.

Funny when possible. Honest when necessary.

Some people reinvent themselves quietly.

I, apparently, required surgical hardware.

70 Staples is a home for personal essays about survival, reinvention, resilience, and the general indignity of being a human being with a memory. I write about the things that leave a mark: illness, recovery, fear, family, travel disasters, aging, bad timing, worse luck, and the occasional moment of grace that slips in uninvited.

The name is literal. After one particularly dramatic chapter, I was held together by seventy staples. It was not symbolic at the time. It was just medically efficient. The symbolism showed up later, once I had the energy to be annoyed by it.

This is not a site devoted to polished inspiration or aggressively cheerful nonsense. I am far more interested in the truth, especially the kind with scar tissue, side effects, and a slightly inappropriate joke lurking in the corner. Life, in my experience, is rarely one thing at a time. It is often heartbreaking and ridiculous in the same breath. Sometimes profound. Sometimes humiliating. Occasionally both before lunch.

So that is what I write.

I write the truth as I know it, with all the jagged edges left on. Stories about being broken open, stitched back together, and learning that resilience is less about becoming shiny and new than about becoming honest. Preferably with a sense of humor, because without one, a good portion of this life would be completely unacceptable.

If you have ever survived something, lost something, rebuilt something, or laughed at precisely the moment decorum suggested you should not, you are in the right place.