Chelsea Schott is an English Teacher living in Texas.  A recent graduate of Rice University and President of the Rice MLS Writer’s Group, she divides her time between conducting workshops and teaching writing craft. When not writing her own stories you can find her at home, curled up with a children’s book reading and writing fables with her own children, Michael, 13 and Frances, 3. All three read and write together, composing, editing and frequenting used book stores, creating tales to share.  It is directly from these experiences that Schott began to record her own childhood stories.

When writing the piece, “Delilah” for My Other Ex, Schott considered friendships and why some dissolve and others do not:

“I think in this piece, the main character struggles with expectations and capabilities. She fails Delilah. She fails herself. [I think] when we cause the suffering of someone we love, the heavy-laden guilt that results is enough to change the dynamic of any friendship of simple-love to something more martyr-like. There’s an unspoken obligation. The result is not an overwhelming thankfulness, but shame.  The kind of shame so deep-rooted and dark, we turn our face from the mirror, from the light, lest we face who we truly are. Friendships can bring out our best nature—to nurture and love, or our worst digressions—into abandonment, blame and loss. This piece deals with all those missteps.”

Schott is a new and emerging writer. In addition to My Other Ex, you can find her writing in such fine journals as Under the Gum Tree, The Winter Tangerine Review and Germ Magazine. You can follow her literary musings on Twitter and Facebook.

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Kristin Shaw is a freelance writer, wife, and mama to a mini-Texan. In 2013, her blog Two Cannoli was named a Babble Top 100 site, and she was recognized as Type-A We Still Blog awards finalist. She’s proud to be a 2013 cast member and now co-producer of the Listen To Your Mother show in Austin. She was recently named a BlogHer Voice of the Year reader for 2014, and she writes for the Huffington Post.

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Jen Simon is a former Kansan who clicked her heels and landed in NYC over 13 years ago. A freelance writer, she blogs at The Huffington Post and has contributed to ScaryMommy, Mommyish, Women’s Health Online, Kveller, The Frisky, and Nerve. Jen lives in Brooklyn with her husband and sons: a 1 year old and a sleep-challenged 4 year old. A former publicist, artist and fun person, she is now a very tired lady. You can follow her on Twitter at @NoSleepInBklyn.

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Katie Sluiter (pronounced Sly-ter) lives in Zeeland, Michigan. She is a wife, mom, teacher and writer who holds a Master’s Degree in English Education and works as a junior high school English instructor, adjunct college English instructor, and an advocate for the Common Core State Standards with the Michigan Education Association. Her writing has been featured on Borderless News and Views, BonBon Break, the Imagine Toys blog, and BlogHer. She was interviewed for TODAY MOMS in 2013. She is also a contributing author to the book Three Minus One: Stories of Parents’ Love and Loss (2014).

Her essay, “A Season of Loss,” explores the ebb and flow of friends into and out of her life as a woman. Right now is, as the title implies, a season of friendship loss, but not because of fights or misunderstandings. Friends move at different speeds in their pursuit of careers and motherhood and friendships tend to be the thing to be left behind.

Follow Katie at her blog, Sluiter Nation, where she writes about her life as a mother, wife, and teacher. You can also follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

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Cheryl Suchors came to writing after a career in business, and her work has mostly appeared in literary journals. At age forty-eight, she decided to climb forty-eight mountains. Her nearly finished memoir (surprisingly titled 48 Mountains) describes how hiking sustained her through cancer and the death of her hiking buddy. She lives with her husband and plants near Boston and visits her daughter, out on her own in Washington, DC, as often as possible.

In Cheryl’s contribution to My Other Ex, “Going Without Sugar,” she describes what it was like to be left by her best friend of 27 years, a woman as close to her as her husband, and how she survived the loss.

Cheryl posts about hiking, writing, nature and life on her blog, Go For It: One Approach to Living.

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Leah Vidal is the author of Red Circle Days and writer at Little Miss Wordy. Her writing covers a range of topics including current events, health and wellness, parenting and daily tribulations. While she enjoys writing about each of these, she is most at home when adding a personal element to a broad topic by sharing life’s little moments…those that plant the thought provoking seed of self discovery. She believes it is these moments that are life’s biggest lessons.

Leah is a 2014 BlogHer Voice Of The Year and her blog has been syndicated on BlogHer, featured on the Erma Bombeck site, Freshly Pressed on WordPress and highlighted on Fitness and Parenting sites. She has been featured on PubSlush Women Of Wednesday and is currently working on her second book.

Leah paused her career in Public Relations to raise her two children and has never looked back, except on the days when it would be nice to have an office to escape to or at least a desk to hide under. Her family recently lives in Puerto Rico, where she is a fitness-focused (physical, spiritual and mental health), mom of two, and wife of one, who enjoys combing the beach for sea glass, avoiding the kitchen, and making words come to life.

Leah’s contribution to My Other Ex is an essay covering the journey of an unexpected friendship which brought a welcome light into her life but eventually dimmed into darkness. Her story touches on the beauty of the instant bond between two women as well as the painful and confusing disconnect that tears them apart.

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