Guilt Scar

No scar, no story. A multi-genre collection edited by Ariel Gore and Dusty Bryndal.

"Eloquently illustrates the universal nature of this complex emotion, reminding us of our shared humanity and the power of storytelling."—Julia Rothman, New York Times columnist

Includes work by Ayun Halliday, Elisa Sinnett, Megan Moodie, and many others. 

From Dusty Bryndal:

Ariel was in Brooklyn and we met up for lunch at a Chinese spot way down Seventh Avenue in Park Slope. The conversation was good and got deep fairly quickly. Then it turned to talk about the dead and the spirit world where they reside. If I am talking about that stuff with anyone, then I am for sure going to be talking about my dead son. This led us to the topic of guilt. There’s so much guilt I carry, I told her between slurps of bean curd homestyle, that at times I feel it weighing me down. She shared with me some of the guilt she carries which helped me to share some of mine.

The next day I texted her and told her that I hadn’t shared half of the guilt around my son’s death that is plaguing me—that I gave her the watered down version. That I was working on it in therapy. She texted back: I bet you can shed 90 percent of it and then keep a workable guilt scar.