On Resilience and Care
This full moon, what can we do for ourselves? What are the whims and desires of inconvenient (not selfish) writers and people?
Happy Full Moon, folks, and TGI Saturday! I know that’s not how the phrase goes, but for us working folk, sometimes I’m only thankful for Friday when it’s over.
There’s been a lot of difficult stuff happening OUT THERE, and the Substacks I read are full of it too, a lot of processing. But I want to talk this month about how we can nurture our silly, innocent, soft, childlike creative selves during all of this. How do we poke our heads up into the world, participate, and then give ourselves permission to protect and seal off the creative self from those terrible enemies of the creative writer— anxiety, fear, depression, rage (see last month), nihilism, existential dread, insecurity, envy, sadness, or despair?
This post is also going to be full of recs for Substacks because I’ve been feeling very bolstered by the community of writers I read. In Stephanie Land’s recent post (see below),
she talked about how community members and protestors can offer resilience to those who are having a hard time, and how telling someone to be resilient when they are having a hard time is like a slap in the face — a prompt to do even more when everything is overwhelming. I loved this. Being given permission to curl up and rest and take a little as opposed to buck up and GIVE MORE when I’m already spent really resonated with me, even if I’m lucky enough not to face the type of hardships Land is describing. But man, the life of a new mom and a full-time educator and a as-much-as-I-can writer/author is not empty. Being tired and wrung out really feels like the norm. So not pressuring myself to be resilient on top of this was great.
Then, let’s move to perennial favorite writers and Substackers, Alexander Chee and Jami Attenberg. Chee writes a Substack I only recently discovered called The Querent, about writing and tarot and other good stuff.
In his post, “On Encouragement,” he recently wrote an open letter to young writing students about encouragement and inspiration and drew some tarot cards to help him out. I loved what he said about how we sometimes steal from ourselves, diminishing what it is we truly want to say because we don’t give ourselves permission to be or feel our full range of emotions, show our full identities, live or imagine or create outside an idea of the status quo.
In her Substack Craft Talk, last month Jami Attenberg reminded us that the page will always be there for us, something that gives me joy and a feeling of coziness.
When I’m ready, my writing is there to care for me too, to nurture me back. I don’t have to attack or hack away at my writing, as I sometimes have in the past, with a sense of obligation or aggression. I can take shelter in it, find solace, burrow in it, squirrel myself away. It can be an escape, a haven, a retreat.
This is not a Substack rec, but I was talking with an academic friend earlier this week and I was expressing some cautious optimism about getting more fiction work (revising, but so big it feels like composing afresh) done this spring and summer. And I laid out my very rational sounding schedule to her, x days a week times y number of words times z number of weeks until August 15 to try to finish draft number two. And she said, yes, but only when you want to write. Don’t write when you don’t want to write. Being a mom is tough. Be kind to yourself.
And I was like, BY GOLLY, YOU’RE RIGHT! Be nice to myself! Don’t write when I don’t want to! What a concept.
And then… last rec I promise… I was listening to Good Inside with Dr. Becky, a parenting podcast that is probably the only podcast I actually enjoy and seek out while cooking dinner because I’m not really a podcast person…. And she did a 2-part episode about being “an inconvenient woman,” which is a woman who allows herself to WANT THINGS. Moms, are you with me? When was the last time you gave yourself permission to want something, outside of the needs and obligations of your kids and partner….. and all other family members?
This episode really took me somewhere, because my mother is someone who has never been afraid to ask for exactly what she wanted (which is often rather particular and sometimes quite inconvenient). And while I probably internalized the backlash of this — I’ll just try to need nothing so no one has to go out of their way for me, since I don’t want to inconvenience people like my mom does — I also learned that it was possible to ask for what I wanted, even if society doesn’t love it.
Society would prefer women and mothers to simply care for others, need nothing, be sexy sirens or pliable good girls or maternal nurturers with no needs of their own (my favorite maternal paradox is “You must breastfeed!! But never in public— gross!”). And when we fly in the face of those norms (I won’t even touch the laws that are now endangering women’s lives by legislating their bodies), people feel uncomfortable.
People feel inconvenienced. When women want to write and be mothers and work, we wonder how they do it all!
(If you are actively doing this, please let me know in the comments how you do it all. Please!! Logistical advice welcomed!!!!)
I was lucky enough that before my husband went back to work from parental leave, he covered full-time parenting for a few days with my mom so I could go to the AWP Conference to promote my book, moderate a panel, see some beloved writing friends, and stoke the creative fires again. For me, the opportunity to be my writing self only for 2 days (pumping breastmilk notwithstanding) was an act of resilience, a glimmer of self care and a hope in this dark time. We can write our way into a better future. Maybe.
We can show up for those who need us when we have the bandwidth. And when we don’t, perhaps we can draw on the resilience of others a bit. Reach out for help. Ask for what we really want. Even if it’s just for 10 minutes, or an hour. It’s okay to take a break from whatever it is we need a break from.
I’m with you in the struggle. I see you. You’re not alone.
Beautiful, honest post. It’s so hard not to believe we are somehow, after years of habit, duty-bound to “hack away.” Thanks for the Jamie Attenberg rec!