Author: Jackie Pick

Jackie Pick is a former teacher and current writer living in the Chicago area. She is a contributing author to multiple anthologies, including Multiples Illuminated, So Glad They Told Me: Women Get Real about Motherhood, Here in the Middle, as well as the and the literary magazines The Sun and Selfish. She received Honorable Mention from the Mark Twain House and Museum for her entry in the Royal Nonesuch Humor Writing Competition. Jackie is a contributing writer at Humor Outcasts, and her essays have been featured on various online sites including McSweeney's, Belladonna Comedy, Mamalode, The HerStories Project, and Scary Mommy. A graduate of the University of Chicago and Northwestern University, Jackie is co-creator and co-writer of the award-winning short film Fixed Up, and a proud member of the 2017 Chicago cast of Listen To Your Mother.

Here in the Middle is out!

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Jackie Pick's avatarJackie Pick

I always thought middle age would be softer.

I thought my hair would be poofy, my body would be poofy, everything would have an easy-to-sink-into quality to it, like an overstuffed chair.

With the exception of my body, I’m finding middle age to be hard and sometimes sharp – and that’s when I acknowledge that I’m in middle age in the first place. I am edgier. My opinions are strong. Getting through the day can be hard. I feel increasingly unsure about the world as I grow surer of who I am. It is a great reversal, as I used to be confident about what the world was all about and have a tenuous sense of self.

That crisscrossing of certainty and uncertainty, of confidence and grasping, of hard and soft runs throughout the new anthology Here in the Middle, which was released yesterday and to which I am…

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