Essays by Shatrasha Butler
56 essays, and a new one most weeks.
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The Child, not the Star, Nobody Saved
Child star. A term that packs complex and often contradictory psychological, social, and commercial meanings. The inherent contradiction between these two words is exactly why the term is so loaded. A child is biologically...
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You Already Caught Death
There was a season of my childhood where death sat at our kitchen table like a regular guest. My parents didn't whisper about it. They didn't wait until someone got sick or until a...
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Chemistry Is Not Compatibility
Chemistry is powerful. It can make conversation effortless, attraction immediate, and a new relationship feel full of possibility.But chemistry can also make us rush past information that deserves our attention.We become so focused on...
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Finding Value
We ask people all kinds of questions when we are getting to know them.What do you do for fun? What kind of music do you like? Do you want children? What are you looking...
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God Doesn't Believe in Therapy?
I have sat across from women who described panic attacks like they were confessing a crime. Heart racing, hands sweating, and convinced something was wrong with them at a spiritual level, not a chemical...
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A Year of Showing Up
This week marks one year. One year of writing something almost every week, sometimes multiple things for the following weeks. One year of my sisters and I getting on Facebook Live, talking too much,...
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Stop Bragging About the Mud
Have you ever heard “I got it out the mud” as a way to describe being successful? It means nobody handed you anything, you struggled, you figured it out, you worked with what you...
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One of the Most Powerful Manipulation Tools
There is a scene near the end of The Green Mile where Tom Hanks plays Paul Edgecomb when he relives John Coffey’s memories and learns the true killer of the little girls mistakenly believed...
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Discovery in Decades
Nobody tells you that you are building a person in your 20s. You think you are just living. Taking a job, losing a job, getting on a plane to a country where you barely...
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What Do You Do With the Truth?
Imagine this. You and your sibling grew up in the same house, under the same roof, and you lived through some things that no child should have had to live through. You have memories...
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You Are Not Your Environment. But Can You Prove It?
Everybody has an origin story. The question is whether you're still living in it.There's a question I think about more than I probably should. Not a legal question. A human one. It goes like...
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We Gave Our Kids a Diagnosis Before We Gave Them a Chance
There is a measurable increase in mental health challenges among children and teens. This isn’t just language inflation. However, is it just me or did something shift when we started putting names on everything?...
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