Issue #6: "Two Screens" by Sarah Nielsen

July 2025, LIGHT

Introduction by Casey Mulligan Walsh

A multitude of factors made “Two Screens” the compelling read it was for me. The evocative scene that opens the piece, the beauty of the language throughout, and the conflict between a young mother’s instinct to devote herself to being present in those early years of her children’s lives—which all of us who have parented know are fleeting—and the responsibility to a world in deep need all contributed to its impact.

Nielsen’s use of visual, auditory, and tactile details, as she discusses in the Q & A below, brought this piece to life and brought me into that room with her in a way that description alone could not.

Even those of us not actively parenting can relate to the constant struggle to maintain our own sense of peace while grieving the tragedies all around us, whether personal or global. I was grateful to read a piece that brings that home to us and helps us feel less alone as we work toward doing what we can to make a difference while achieving a balance we can live with.

And now, our chosen piece for “LIGHT.”

“Two Screens” by Sarah Nielsen

My skin still smells of his skin, from feeding him back to sleep an hour ago. It's dark, early in the morning, but I'm up for good now, and listening to the rain. My hand automatically reaches for the baby monitor and I click it to life. The green night-vision light beams into my face, and there he sleeps, swaddled in a cocoon. All of two months old, so new he still longs for the confines of the womb. His face is turned to the side. Comfortable. Comforted. I click again. There’s my other love, three years old and sleeping on her back, arms flung out, blanket tangled around her knees, working her hair into a frizz that will stick out from the back of her head when she wakes. I click back to him, and hear the sound machine's gentle white noise. Click again. Soft snores from her. Click. Warm. Click. Safe.

I pick up my phone to head off the morning alarm. Click. It should just be a couple taps, but across the center flashes a news alert about a mass shooting in Maine. Click, boom. The world floods in. Stark black words on searing white. Videos autoplay before I know what I’m viewing. Serious people with somber faces, reporting important things. Distraught people in Maine asking “why?” Click. Opioid overdoses gutting families. Click. The western states, burning. The world seemingly as unstable as when I deployed to Iraq a decade ago, enduring regular bombings and wearing bulletproof vests to go outside. A memory for me, but still the reality for those who live in conflict. Those with families. Children. Babies of their own. My body tenses, pupils narrowing to stem the flood of light. I blink, and my eyes manage to adjust. Better than my heart does. Click. Read. Click. Despair.

I look away, seeking reprieve, and reach for it. The monitor. Click. My stunned eyes can’t see at first, but then the soft light folds back around, and there they are again. Still sleeping. Still warm. Still safe.

I drop both devices to the bed, electric and potent. One says to give up. One says to keep believing.

My eyes do their work and adjust yet again, downshifting from the screens to the predawn dark. My ears are anchored, listening to the rain. The rest of me is stuck between the calamity of the world and the peace just down the hall. The heavy hand of Should admonishes me to pay attention, use what I’ve been given to help others. Meanwhile, the soft touch of Want resents the intrusion into these moments, encouraging me to revel instead.

I lie still, yet my heart pounds. Thump. Peace. Thump. Pain. Thump. Whole. Thump. Broken. Thump. What I can control. Thump. What I can’t.

I decide to shut the world out for a little while. To trust I'll return to the fight another day.

Here, now. Click.

Photo Credit: Sarah Nielsen

Author Spotlight

Casey: Your piece touched me deeply as I read it the first time. I found it relatable for parents at all stages in life, those still in the baby/toddler trenches, and those of us a decade (or many) past those years. Those feelings of wanting to protect our babies from the outside world and enjoy our time with them never really leave us. Can you tell us about the genesis of this piece, what compelled you to write about that specific emotional tension, and how it came together?

Sarah: Thank you. After that early morning I wrote about, I was writing later that day, trying to unpack how the emotional tension had fused with the physical tension in the predawn stillness. I was writing down the experience of flipping from phone to baby monitor, and then I wrote “two screens.” That put such an artful and succinct name to the dynamic I’d been feeling ever since my baby was born—the extreme feelings of maternal gratitude and yet also the cacophony of world strife that is never far away from any of us, through our phones. I tried a few times to turn it into an essay. What finally worked was returning to how the emotional tension was united with the physical—through eyes refocusing, the clicks, the heart thumps.

Casey: You refer to your military service midway through “Two Screens,” which brings us into a part of your story we hadn’t necessarily seen coming. How did that period in your life inform the ways you move through the world as a woman, partner, and mother today?

Sarah: As you know, that reference wasn’t originally in there. It came after some editorial prodding on the underlying conflict for the piece. I think the fact that it popped up shows that she’ll always be there, the soldier who feels a sense of service, of responsibility, and of gratitude for the relative stability and prosperity we enjoy in the U.S. The conflict was “over there.” I got to leave it and come home. As a woman I hold an inner confidence I earned, having been tested and found capable. As a partner and mother, I try not to take anything for granted, from little moments to big wins. Especially the little moments. The lighthearted version of this is, it’s a good day if I didn’t have to use a portapotty. The real talk version is that the soldier in me knows the cost of the freedoms we enjoy and how delicate the system is. It makes you want to fight for it.

Casey: You touch on the idea of privilege—the luxury of being able to switch off the news and return to caring for your small children. Did writing this essay help you process the emotions that can arise from witnessing global suffering while living in relative peace?

Sarah: It still makes me uncomfortable that my conclusion was that I’d shut out the world for a while. But I suppose now that I’ve articulated that and shared it, it’s helping me harness those emotions more productively. Because of course I care, all of us do. But I’ve concluded that I’m not doing the world any good sitting in my house and just being sad. When I read the news and sink into social media, I try to stay focused on what I can do about it—with my actions and dollars. And then I try to leave it and focus on what I can do locally in my community and hyper-locally within my own four walls. It’s not perfect, but it’s my working draft for coping.

Sarah Nielsen

What Our Co-Editors Had To Say

Nina: Goosebumps popped up on my arms when I reached the end of “Two Screens” because the author’s use of the perfect onomatopoeia, “click,” made the moment so real and relatable. We are too often tied to screens, and also the act of “clicking” constantly has become part of our daily M.O. The use of “click” is also so effective as it underscores how our attention switches constantly…almost like machinery, between what scares us and what sustains us, what we fear and what we crave. But most of all, I swooned with “...but then the soft light folds back around, and there they are again. Still sleeping. Still warm. Still safe.” It reminds me of Leonard Cohen’s line, “there’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in,” and I felt relief seeing the narrator able to recover/re-discover the beauty of this small, but glorious moment of blessings that enable—or urge us—to go on.

Leanne: “Two Screens” beautifully expresses the push-pull that so many of us feel. How much of our mental and emotional lives must be tangled up in the far away, when we are viscerally needed in the here and now? The essay doesn’t answer the question because it’s fundamentally unanswerable. We all know that balance is both needed and impossible to achieve.

Cindy: Reading “Two Screens,” I was struck by how the language of war has seeped into our vocabulary and at times, approaches poetry:

green night-vision light/sound machine white noise/morning alarm/regular bombings/ bulletproof vests/flood of light/ears anchored/listening to the rain/stuck.

When the writer tells us that ten years after her deployment to Iraq, she lives in a world (seemingly) as unstable as the one she hoped to save, I feel her despair. I too wonder how to balance my own safety with the need to help others.

Kate: This piece so lyrically illuminates the tension between despair at the injustices of the world and channeling those feelings into concrete action to help change them. I especially loved the repetition of Thump and Click, which infuse such a moving sense of immediacy to “Two Screens,” and give us a real sense of the angst the narrator feels at switching between the two.

Author Bio

SARAH NIELSEN lives alongside the Colorado mountains with her family. She began her career as an Army medical officer, which you already learned, worked as a management consultant, and now works in the energy industry—because our stable electric grid is another American privilege she doesn’t take for granted. Now she’s working on turning her writing habit into a career—piece by piece, story by story.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahnielsen/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarah_nielsen717/

Website: www.sarahrbnielsen.wordpress.com

Submission Calls

Enjoyed Sarah’s essay? YOU could be our next featured author!

We are now open from July 1-15 on the theme of HOPE!

From August 1-15, please submit pieces on the theme of COMMUNITY.

—No submissions in September—

From October 1-15, please submit pieces on the theme of PORTALS.

From November 1-15, please submit pieces on the theme of ROOTS.

Before submitting, refer to our Submission Guidelines page. You can also find prompts to go along with these themes in our June 1 “Updates” issue.

What’s Going On With Us

Read Kate Lewis’ recent essay in The Wall Street Journal about how a back injury led her to reconsider the notion of ‘for better or worse.’ This summer she’s loving Erin Swan’s novel Walk the Vanished Earth, a moving family story told over multiple generations - and planets.

Casey Mulligan Walsh was interviewed by Amy Paturel in her Substack, Writing What Moves You. Eileen Vorbach Collins’ review of Casey’s memoir, The Full Catastrophe: All I Ever Wanted, Everything I Feared,was published in The Sunlight Press. Casey’s currently reading Ann Hood’s The Stolen Child, the story of a duo traveling through France and Italy in the 1970s to solve the mystery of a child’s fate. She’s also immersed in a forthcoming memoir she can’t wait to share!

Leanne Rose Sowul is spending her summer working on her historical novel about Sara Josephine Baker; traveling with her family; and reading voraciously. She’s currently reading What Kind of Paradise by Janelle Brown.

This summer, Cindy Allen is excited to read co-editor Nina Lichtenstein’s new memoir Body: My Life in Parts. She’s also reading The Bear by Andrew Krivak -- a beautiful, post-apocalyptic tale of a girl and her father living “in the shadow of a lone mountain.”

Nina B. Lichtenstein will be in Chicago at Secret World Books on July 20th for another book event for Body: My Life in Parts. She is teaching webinar “Your Body, Your Story: Diving into Your Exclusive Archive” at Craft Talks on July 16th, and a (hybrid) workshop through Maine Writers Studio on July 27th, on the theme of “Writing Our Siblings: Our Best Friends, Our Worst Enemies.” In Nina’s summer reading stack you’ll find Elissa Altman’s Permission: The New Memoirist and the Courage to Create, Abigail Thomas Still Life at Eighty, and John Irving’s The World According to Garp, and a pile of hand-me-down back issues of The New Yorker (at least the cartoons!)