the Essay archive
Need more essays in your life? Who doesn't?!
Below, I've collected many of my essays from across the Internet.
I write about activism, the environment, climate justice, parenting, mental health, sobriety, and lots more.
Want words you can hold in your hands? I've got some of that, too.
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FEATURED essays
An Ornithology
of Grief
Originally published by Birdcoat Quarterly in 2025, this essay is examines the death of my mother through using an accounting of backyard birds as its framework. The piece received First Place in BIrdcoat's Editors' Choice Prize in the Essay for 2024. My endless gratitude to those editors.
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FEATURED essays
David Attenborough Helps Me Explain
the Climate Crisis to My Son.
Originally published by Catapult in 2022, this essay is about parenting through the climate crisis, risking arrest, and teaching my son to love the world. And it was named a notable in Best American Science and Nature Writing 2023.
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FEATURED Essays
Things That
Able Me
Originally published on Longreads in 2023, this essay weaves its way through a childhood of competitive horseback riding, disability justice, how we choose to identify ourselves, and the value of self-advocacy.
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An Ornithology of Grief (Birdcoat Quarterly, First Place, Editors' Prize in the Essay)
Things That Able Me (Longreads)
Inheritance (The Rumpus)
Reading Addiction Memoirs Fueled My Own (Electric Literature)
David Attenborough Helps Me Explain the Climate Crisis (Catapult, Notable, Best American Science and Nature Writing 2023)
When I Met The Love Of My Life, There Was Just One Problem: I Was Facing A Felony Charge (HuffPost)
“It Wouldn’t Be Good for the Institution”: on Meghan Markle, Depression and Who We Believe (Ms. Magazine)
When postpartum depression lasts beyond new motherhood (Motherwell)
The Nature of a Body (Revolute Lit Mag)
As A Gift To My Son, I Stopped Drinking (Scary Mommy)
I actually love flying solo with my 5-year-old son (Insider)
Privacy, Consent, and Erasure as a Writing Mother (MUTHA)
Becoming a Mom Helped Me Realize I’m Non-Binary (Newsweek)
I am thinking about violence. (Reservoir Road, nominated for a Pushcart Prize)
It Explodes (The Citron Review, nominated for a Pushcart Prize)
Not Legal Advice (Milk Candy Review)
Big & Little (Autofocus)
Make Sure. (trampset)
All That Matters (Barren Magazine)\
THE ESSAY ARCHIVE
Christy Tending is the author of High Priestess of the Apocalypse: a memoir of disobedience and Sobriety Through the Major Arcana. Her work has been published in Longreads, The Rumpus, Newsweek, Huff Post, Ms., Electric Lit, and was named a notable in Best American Science and Nature Writing 2023. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best Small Fictions.
She is a climate justice direct action organizer, and lives with her family in Oakland, California, and can be found at christytending.com
Part memoir, part direct action primer, part love letter to the new world we’re collectively fighting to create, this memoir is composed of short pieces that create a collage of what it means to hold space when it feels like the end of the world.
High Priestess
of the Apocalypse
a memoir of disobedience
Originally published by Sari Botton on her Memoirland Substack, this is one of my most-read essays, about how I used the archetypes of the tarot to guide my sobriety journey—and it will soon available as a standalone essay chapbook from kith books.
Sobriety Through
the Major Arcana
ESSAY CHAPBOOK
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