Open in app

Sign In

Write

Sign In

Karen Leonard
Karen Leonard

142 Followers

Home

About

Mar 3

Birthday Blues

I got me some birthday blues. Blues like sorrow. Blues like swimming pool. Blues like not swimming in a pool. Blues like drowning. Blues like lost at sea. Like sea. Like m/other memory don’t you know that every birthday I pass through takes me farther from you? From us? I…

Adoption

2 min read

Birthday Blues
Birthday Blues
Adoption

2 min read


May 4, 2022

I Wish For Us Choice

I’ve sat down to write this many times in the last almost two years. The night I stood in the cold outside the Supreme Court Building and watched the crowds fight over their beliefs as Amy Coney Barrett was sworn into the highest court of the nation. I wasn’t there…

Adoption

5 min read

I Wish For Us Choice
I Wish For Us Choice
Adoption

5 min read


Feb 7, 2022

Today

I have been trying to write about this for the past couple days and can’t seem to package this grief as coherently as I would like. Something about it feels like an undoing past the point of already being undone. Headlines, led by the white gaze, full of the latest…

Black History Month

4 min read

Today
Today
Black History Month

4 min read


Nov 5, 2021

A Case for Renaming Ourselves

There is a responsibility to naming. A sacredness usually reserved, at first, to those that brought us into the world. But before that happens we are born title-less. I am sure of it. We are scrunched up infants that are some sort of something that is nothing until it is…

Adoption

5 min read

A Case for Renaming Ourselves
A Case for Renaming Ourselves
Adoption

5 min read


Jul 27, 2021

The Mundane Motions of Preventable Platonic Breakup After I Share How Queer I Am

I am shirtless on my porch. Double-fisting mugs of tea in this summer swelter. Determined. I have built up a well of unshed tears and sweating seems to be the least painful way (if it even works like that) to rid my body of this excess of fluid. I do…

LGBTQ

6 min read

The Mundane Motions of Preventable Platonic Breakup After I Share How Queer I Am
The Mundane Motions of Preventable Platonic Breakup After I Share How Queer I Am
LGBTQ

6 min read


May 3, 2021

Go With Love

*I thought I had more time to say goodbye. So I wrote and addressed this to Sheila Roberts-Veatch to read while she was alive. I wish we had more years and I am profoundly thankful for the ones we had. Since she died before this could reach her, I am…

3 min read

Go With Love
Go With Love

3 min read


Apr 19, 2021

I Wrote My Own Eulogy In Case They Kill Me Too

There is not enough time in the day to write all of the eulogies that need to be written. But at least let me write my own just in case they kill me before I’m ready. They meaning the state, most specifically, the police. …

BlackLivesMatter

6 min read

I Wrote My Own Eulogy In Case They Kill Me Too
I Wrote My Own Eulogy In Case They Kill Me Too
BlackLivesMatter

6 min read


Mar 19, 2021

When They Call Us Dead Before We Die and We Call Them Monsters

when they call us dead before we die but our hearts are still beating where do we go if not the grave / in minds underground. foundation. …

Poetry

2 min read

When They Call Us Dead Before We Die and We Call Them Monsters
When They Call Us Dead Before We Die and We Call Them Monsters
Poetry

2 min read


Feb 24, 2021

I’m Gonna Stay Right Here In This Becoming

I had another voice before this. I believe it to be true. Somewhere in some womb, forever unknown to me, I heard a mother-tongue calling. But that was in another life I barely remember. A life briefly lived where I stayed. I mean, I was kept and I was not…

Black History Month

3 min read

I’m Gonna Stay Right Here In This Becoming
I’m Gonna Stay Right Here In This Becoming
Black History Month

3 min read


Jan 8, 2021

This is the Heartbreak

If I wrote the piece I am scared to write it would go something like this: I was adopted into a white family that claimed they had unconditional love. I was brought up in white communities and even lived in Oregon, founded to be a white utopia, for a brief…

Racism

5 min read

This is the Heartbreak
This is the Heartbreak
Racism

5 min read

Karen Leonard

Karen Leonard

142 Followers

Athlete. Artist. Writer. she/her.

Following
  • Hannah's Adopted thoughts

    Hannah's Adopted thoughts

  • Sage Plante

    Sage Plante

  • Ruiyuan Feng

    Ruiyuan Feng

  • Hikeogall

    Hikeogall

See all (6)

Help

Status

Writers

Blog

Careers

Privacy

Terms

About

Text to speech

Teams