The Writing of Rachel Bulkley Rachel Bulkley

I didn’t know yesterday was going to be a defining moment in my life. While it was happening I was pacing between event spaces in the beautiful clubhouse of our new apartment complex, anxiously scanning the activities of a few dozen middle schoolers, and then checking my watch.

When parents came to pick up their children from my son’s twelfth birthday party I joked with them that it had been the longest two hours of my life.

A parent told me they heard a kid exclaim, “This was the greatest day of my life!”

Apparently, it was a pretty rad party. I’m glad that was their experience. I was mostly trying to hear myself think, and keep myself from looking like a cop in a mosh pit.


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For more than twenty years I obsessively searched for my unique purpose, and how to live it out uncompromisingly. My ideas of what would look like always felt complicated and far off. I accepted that it would involve sacrifice and hard work. My frustration was that I never understood how to find the path I needed to be on in order to get where I was supposed to go.

I watched peers achieve impressive accomplishments while I struggled to define who I was, and what I was doing with my life. Eventually, I discovered that the answers weren’t nearly as complicated or distant as I imagined.


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When I was much younger I thought about integrity as a moral virtue. It meant doing the right thing when no one was looking. It was a constant reminder of the need to make sure I was behaving rightly; being a good person no matter what. It was a word that felt out of my league.

In my most authentic moments, I couldn't be confident that I had true integrity.


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January 2019

Every week I meet with a group of murderers, rapists, pedophiles, and other assorted criminal offenders. We sit around tables in a classroom on the fourth floor of a maximum security jail. And we talk about well-being.



For months I never bothered to find out why each of my participants were locked up. I assumed most were for drug related charges. Why I assumed that, I can’t say for sure. Naiveté, most likely. Or maybe because the labels “murderer,” “rapist,” or “pedophile,” invoke images of monsters, not the individuals I talk and listen and joke with.


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My daughter absolutely adores Taylor Swift.

A few months ago we were discussing a scenario where she would actually meet her idol. She couldn't imagine anything but freaking out and nearly having a panic attack. I asked her why and she couldn't say exactly, just that the thought of it totally overwhelmed her. I suggested that it might be that she was thinking of Taylor Swift as something other than a human like her.


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Original Spring 2013


For months I did not sleep in the same place as my babies. Speaking that fact made my throat choke and tears stream down my face. There were moments when I felt confident about my choices and direction. But whenever I felt like torturing myself I would ask, "What kind of mother doesn't sleep in the same place as her babies?" And then I would answer myself by falling apart.


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