Year four of a new self, day xx of a new life

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domestic violence, fourth anniversary of escaping domestic violence, survival, survivor

I might be blogging exclusively about memoir lately, which I’m good with, but I can’t let a June 15 go by without personal commentary, without taking stock, without holding myself and, as always on this day, buying myself flowers (also my favorite kombucha was on sale so I bought that, too).

Four years ago today, I took my life back. Or did I choose to come back to life? Or did I choose a new life and leave an old one behind? Did I die?

I touched on this conundrum in last year’s June 15 post, when I decided to call it a birthday instead of an anniversary, “a rebirthday, because despite this ongoing healing process, I still feel—I am, I was—ripped into two halves: me before domestic violence and me after.” (Quoting myself is ew but it’s my bday, I’ll do what I want.)

I read the previous three years’ June 15 posts before writing this one, but I didn’t have to do that to know that here I am, a long way out from hell, and I don’t feel that heat anymore. I feel only my own fire, forging a new life.

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100 memoirs project #9: Whip Smart, by Melissa Febos

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100 memoirs, 100 memoirs project, addiction, dominatrix, inspiration, Melissa Febos, redemption, sex work narrative, Whip Smart

People are going to pick up and want to buy Whip Smart because it sounds salacious, gratuitous, sexy. I picked it up because I thought, holy shit, how brave to admit this. I will learn something about how to write the stuff that most scares me to share about myself (spoiler: I’m not a dominatrix).

I was right and wrong. Febos is brave, and makes brave admissions—but not only in the way you think. Her entire tenure as a dominatrix was marked by her attempts at distancing herself from this work she did to put herself through college.

Whip Smart is an addiction narrative. And the addiction isn’t kink or sexual power trips, but every drug you can think of, most notably a serious heroin addiction.

What’s different about this particular addiction narrative is how well the narrator hid, while creating even more elements of her life to hide, all while hiding nothing from the reader.

100 memoirs project #8: Heart Berries, by Terese Marie Mailhot

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100 memoirs, 100 memoirs project, Heart Berries, memoir in essays, Midtown Scholar Bookstore, read 100 memoirs, Terese Marie Mailhot

I’m behind, because life, but I’m reading!

I’m actually bumping a memoir I read two months ago to write this post because the book’s so good that I’ve been talking about it and now someone wants to borrow it. Must write this post before I lend the book away for who knows how long!

I recently visited Midtown Scholar, an acclaimed indie bookstore in Harrisburg, PA. It’s shameful that this was my first time—I, a native central Pennsylvanian—stepping foot into this space, but hey, now I’ve been there. And I’ll be going back.

In a 2010 Publisher’s Weekly review, Alison Morris described Midtown Scholar as “a cavernous space filled with some 100,000+ second-hand, out-of-print, and scholarly (…) books” that combines with an enormous warehouse inventory to make “the largest used book collection between New York City and Chicago.” The store also houses a coffee shop and its owners regularly host readings, workshops, and author events. It’s basically Disneyland for writers and readers.

I walked in, ordered a mocha and a chocolate peanut butter brownie, and immediately found a memoir to curl up with for the afternoon—one that had been on my Amazon nonfiction wish list for some time.

Roxane Gay calls Terese Marie Mailhot’s Heart Berries a “memoir in essays,” among other things.

100 memoirs project #7: Love and Trouble, by Claire Dederer

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100 memoirs, 100 memoirs project, Claire Dederer, female adolescence, Love and Trouble, memoir, young female voice

I haven’t done a memoir post in a bit, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been reading memoir.

I’ve been reading a lot, actually. Since I finished Ta-Nehisi Coates’ two books, I’ve completed my fifth re-read of Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Chronology of Water (someday I will be courageous enough to write a post about what Lidia’s memoir means to me). Based on her recommendation, I then bought and blazed through Whip Smart, by Melissa Febos (another forthcoming post), almost immediately after I finished Dederer. I’m reading essays by Hanif Abdurraqib and poems by Danez Smith and Greek mythology by Robert Graves. I’m reading Carl Jung. I’m reading tarot and headlines.

There is so much to take in, so much to keep us up at night, that I might as well stay up late reading instead of worrying. Most days, this works out.

I worried a lot while reading Dederer. Love and Trouble comes with a subtitle: “A Midlife Reckoning.” At first I thought, I’m not going to relate to this. Silly me. I am almost 37. I’m unafraid of being 37, but it should be noted that while I am approaching what we think of as middle age, I don’t feel like I am. I am often mistaken for a college student on the campus where I work. I still get carded more often than not. I climb mountains and blast the same music I blasted 20 years ago—and I dress like it’s 20 years ago, too. I don’t feel 37.  Take that for what it’s worth to you, even hate me for it, if you will.

For so many women, being hated is nothing new.

A Response to Jia Tolentino’s “The Personal-Essay Boom is Over”

“…to say that the personal is no longer political seems like just a new way of telling women to shut up about themselves because there are more important things in the world to talk about.” All the yes. Don’t shut up. ❤

BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog

By Zoë Bossiere

A couple of weeks ago, a piece by Jia Tolentino came out in The New Yorker called “The Personal-Essay Boom is Over.” The title alone was enough to deluge social media feeds with writers stepping forward to defend the vitality of the personal essay in spite of the article’s assertions, or otherwise agreeing with Tolentino that the personal essay is, in fact, “dead.” The only problem is, the article isn’t actually about what we writers know as the personal essay at all, but rather a separate subgenre of nonfiction called the “confessional essay.” If we want to get even more specific, Tolentino’s article is talking specifically of the confessional essays typically printed in online “women’s” publications such as xoJane, Jezebel, Salon, and others. To compare the personal and the confessional is a common false equivalence, and a great underestimation of all that first-person nonfiction writing encompasses.

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What an online safe space is and isn’t

I belong to and help moderate a safe space group on Facebook called Link Your Life (LYL). The mission of this group is to provide “a safe, non-competitive space that is fueled by mutual support and compassion.” We are writers (who share our links, hence the group name), survivors, humans, who want to be lifted and lift each other up in a world that would silence, shame, and push us back down.

Our brilliant and compassionate admin, Shawna Ayoub Ainslie, recently asked us, the LYL moderators, to reflect on what exactly a safe space is to each of us. We realized that while we all share the core concepts, we each have different lived experiences and so approach the notion of safety through varied lenses. And that’s a good thing.

I have blogged about safe spaces before, here and here. I’ve considered what safety actually is, because of course, as I just said, it means different things to different people. And of course, there are real brick-and-mortar safe spaces, and there are online safe spaces, and literary safe spaces, and the safe space underneath my favorite, impossibly soft, charcoal-with-yellow-leaves throw blanket, the safe space of my increasingly solid tree pose, and even underneath my tattoos and leather and poetic “speaker” voice.

Today, I’m going to address only online safe spaces, specifically Link Your Life, and I’m going to start via negativa, to clear up misconceptions.

Must read: Indivisible-A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda

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activism, Indivisible, Must read, resist, resistance

Printed!

My must-read post for this week is not a quick skim. It’s a manual for navigating activism after Jan. 20, and it was written by four former congressional staffers who saw firsthand how the Tea Party effectively organized against President Obama.

I first heard about Indivisible through Common Dreams, and immediately read everything on its website, where you can download and print the 25-page guide for free. Do so.

From the creators of the guide: “…the following chapters offer a step-by-step guide for individuals, groups, and organizations looking to replicate the Tea Party’s success in getting Congress to listen to a small, vocal, dedicated group of constituents. The guide is intended to be equally useful for stiffening Democratic spines and weakening pro-Trump Republican resolve.”

Unlike the Tea Party, though, Indivisible promotes “a resistance built on the values of inclusion, tolerance, and fairness”–and its writers give practical tips for clearly communicating with one’s MoCs, or Members of Congress.

New-old protest poem as I gear up for The Women’s March and writing resistance

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new poem, protest poem

Collective protest for collective bargaining in Madison, WI, Feb 2011. Photo by Flickr user Zach Chisholm (Creative Commons license).

Ever have one of those moments when you think a bad thought that you have no intention of carrying out, and you kind of horrify yourself for even thinking it but you let yourself imagine the fallout nonetheless, and then also feel strangely empowered by acknowledging, if only in your own weird mind, what you could do?

I wrote the following prosy little poem during my self-imposed November daily writing challenge, about a week after I wrote this one. I had in mind the upcoming Women’s March on Washington on Jan. 21 (will I see you there?), as well as the last time I attended a protest with more than a few dozen people.

If you’re marching/gathering/organizing/protesting now or any time soon, please be safe, be vigilant, be loud, and be proud.

Parenting is hard and sometimes I mess up

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broken leg, listen to your kid, messing up, not a perfect mom, parenting is hard

I will be a better listener too, little man. Photo by Flickr user Ky (Creative Commons license).

Jax had been wearing his cast less than two hours when I realized, damn, this broken leg could be a big setback in potty training.

Little man was averaging one accident per week before he broke his right tibia. We hit potty training hard last spring and by mid-summer, had tackled no. 1. It took a little longer for him to recognize the urge to go no. 2, but we got there. Jax’s main obstacle to mastering the potty is one he shares with many kids: he doesn’t want to stop playing to go sit on the toilet. As such, he often waits until the last possible second, then bellows, “Mommy I have to gooooo peeeeeeee!” and tears through the house, tripping over shorts and undies he’s pulling down while running (for real, how did he not break something sooner than this?).

It’s entertaining, as long as he actually makes it to the potty, which he does 95% of the time.

A broken leg means there is no running to the potty at the last second.

Motherhood: Part Dragon, Part Grace

Sarah Certa with first-day-of-school musings on motherhood and a lovely poem for her daughter, Evelyn: “…oh / tiny dragon, forgive me, it was me / who woke you, it was me who fed you first.” ❤

SarahCerta

This morning I dropped my daughter off for her first day of second grade, and, like every year on the first day of school, I’ve spent the morning steeped deep in my emotions about motherhood, & growth, wondering how it is that this child slipped from the stars down through me & into this life.

Looking at her is like looking up.

Motherhood is the most challenging realm of life on Earth that I have yet encountered. It scares the hell out of me. Is there anything more intimate, more astonishing, more terrifying, than growing a human body inside you & then spending the rest of your life watching it take form outside of you, a part of you yet apart from you? Talk about balance! I still haven’t got it figured out, except to say that maybe children are here to teach us there is nothing to “figure out” –…

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