On Change
I wanted a table again.
Cassie Westrate (’14) graduated with a double major in writing and international development studies. She currently lives in West Michigan, where she works as a writer, hangs out with her pet bird, and fights crime by night. Just kidding about the crime.
by Cassie Westrate | Jul 15, 2018 | 0 comments
I’m not always good at saying what I mean to say, so here: Mom likes to tell me how you could soothe my crying as a baby by carrying me around the house, pointing out people in picture frames, and telling me stories about them.
by Cassie Westrate | Jun 15, 2018 | 0 comments
And you know what happens next? An adulterous Samaritan woman becomes history’s first recorded evangelist. Church, can we talk about that?
by Cassie Westrate | May 15, 2018 | 0 comments
While I may have left the country a little more informed, I was mostly confused and overwhelmed about how to live life in a broken world with eight billion people who all needed food, clean water, shelter, education, and community.
by Cassie Westrate | Apr 15, 2018 | 0 comments
But one day at work, I was proofing an email and realized I sounded really excited about a new art exhibition. Too excited.
by Cassie Westrate | Mar 15, 2018 | 0 comments
November 19, 2014
I blew strawberry gelatin mix out of my nose today.
I don’t want to talk about it.
by Cassie Westrate | Feb 15, 2018 | 0 comments
Gas stations are where lives intersect, ever so briefly, before going back out into the world.
by Cassie Westrate | Jan 15, 2018 | 0 comments
I look at my expectations from a year, or two, or ten ago and realize that I never would have been able to create a reality so bittersweet, so full of wonder, and drowning in grace.
by Cassie Westrate | Dec 15, 2017 | 0 comments
The scale runs from zero to five cheeses, with five cheeses reigning supreme for the lamest pick up lines and most predictable plots. Warning: contains spoilers.
by Cassie Westrate | Nov 15, 2017 | 0 comments
Isn’t there a certain bit of wonder involved in math when it’s stripped down? Even when solving proofs, the first line is given.
by Cassie Westrate | Oct 15, 2017 | 0 comments
I am irrationally afraid of concrete horrors, like clowns and spiders and people impersonating Talking Elmo, but those veins of fear are hardly the heart of the matter.
by Cassie Westrate | Sep 15, 2017 | 0 comments
Still, grace is not always a shout. Sometimes, it’s a whisper. Sometimes, it’s day zero, rather than the third day.
by Cassie Westrate | Aug 15, 2017 | 0 comments
Throughout the performance, I can understand eighty percent of what he says and forty percent of what he sings because, well … because of his teeth.
by Cassie Westrate | Jul 15, 2017 | 2 comments
I come to a dead end and turn around in defeat. I have officially walked every visible path I can find in this park, and the T. rex is nowhere to be found. I begin walking back.
by Cassie Westrate | Jun 15, 2017 | 0 comments
“Are you happy with how things shook out?” he asked me.
by Cassie Westrate | May 15, 2017 | 0 comments
Sadness drives me toward community in a way joy never has. Sadness bids for honesty, serves as my greatest ally in empathy, checks my anger, and encourages me to look at another side of the story.
by Cassie Westrate | Apr 15, 2017 | 0 comments
There is something about watching people pick out spaghetti sauce, and knowing they will cook and eat a meal together, leave dirty dishes in a sink together, that makes me ache.
by Cassie Westrate | Mar 15, 2017 | 0 comments
Confidence is less like a characteristic trait for me and more like a fluid scale influenced by several external variables that I have a bad habit of internalizing.
by Cassie Westrate | Feb 15, 2017 | 0 comments
I have a significant other. His name is JJ, and he’s a bird.
by Cassie Westrate | Jan 15, 2017 | 0 comments
“It’s just that because the universe is expanding, that means it goes on forever, and forever makes now seem pointless,” I told Luke one day.
by Cassie Westrate | Dec 15, 2016 | 0 comments
When I’m confused, I need the motions. I need to plant the mustard seeds. Watch them grow, and even watch them die.
by Cassie Westrate | Nov 15, 2016 | 0 comments
But the elephant is still there. Always there. And on day four, my co-worker and I decide that we just need to talk about it.
by Cassie Westrate | Oct 15, 2016 | 0 comments
Hi. My name is Cassie. There’s forever a part of me stuck in the loop of crawling in and out of bed.
by Cassie Westrate | Sep 15, 2016 | 0 comments
The woman in the white sedan will go home, call her best friend, and say: “I started crying in the drive-thru today, and they gave me extra napkins.”
by Cassie Westrate | Aug 15, 2016 | 0 comments
Seagulls—by land, sea or any other name—are seagulls. They’re annoying birds, but they’re honest ones.
by Cassie Westrate | Jul 15, 2016 | 0 comments
When I tell people that the high schoolers painted a building, cleaned up weeds and replaced broken doors, people ask me what the building is for. “Nothing,” I say.
by Cassie Westrate | Jun 15, 2016 | 0 comments
Because once you’ve been compared to mayonnaise, things can only get better.
by Cassie Westrate | May 15, 2016 | 0 comments
Let the sky be wide open and full of good possibilities. Wonder why the sky is blue. Wonder how the earth suspends in space. Wonder how you came to live under this beautiful blue sky in this small corner of the universe.
by Cassie Westrate | Apr 15, 2016 | 0 comments
Every time I have doubts, I ask myself where the line is between settling and compromising. Is this really not working? Are we really not right for each other? Or am I just unrealistic, idealistic, and CRAZY?
by Cassie Westrate | Mar 15, 2016 | 0 comments
I’m twenty-four and should move somewhere far away and then move again once I’ve grown familiar enough to know exactly where to find packets of yeast in the store.