PUBLICATIONS | jenny-williams

My Stories

Surrender to War After an Uneasy Peace

-The New York Times, April 8, 2012

“IT’S O.K.,” I said to my husband, not knowing if I was being brave or stupid. “Go.”

So he did. The commanding general of a new task force in Afghanistan was looking for someone with Dave’s background. Dave volunteered, and on Jan. 14 off he went.

Fifteen years earlier, when we were 19, in college, not dating, and standing in the grocery store, Dave told me he had joined the Army. I don’t remember what I said to him, but I later told my roommate how he had changed for me in that moment.

“I didn’t know he was that kind of person,” I said. I didn’t mean it in a good way.

The Pie Shell

-10,000 Tons of Black Ink, January 29, 2015

By two o’clock on a February afternoon, the sediment of the day sits on every surface in the house—coloring books on the kitchen table, plates and cups on the countertops, mail and papers half-sorted on the dining room table.

I have been in want of words for months now.

I am halfway through my first year at home with my kids, without the full-time job I left so I could spend more time with them and write too. When my husband and I tell people about my decision to quit my job, I say it was for the kids. He says it’s so I can write. The confidence in his assertion makes me squirm.

Dilemmas of a Haveitallmom

-Psychotherapy Networker, January/February 2013

Three and a half years ago, the night before I went back to work as an English teacher after seven months of maternity leave, I registered the name “Haveitallmom” on Blogger. My idea was to share my own trials and successes as a working mother with others and maybe resuscitate the passion for writing that had wilted under the demands of a burgeoning teaching career.

During my pregnancy, my mother had been clear: “You won’t want to go back to work,” she said. “When you were born, I couldn’t imagine leaving you to go back to a job.”