Free To Be (You, Not Me)

I don’t love one of my girls more than the other. But I do treat them differently. I wish it weren’t so, but I have to say that I am not sure it is unusual or wrong. Since the first day Eve opened the door a crack to let her personality out I saw myself. When she was two and we battled over naps or bedtime or dinnertime, the crumpling of her eyebrows, the concrete set of her intentions – that’s me. The absolute need to be Right and Win, my particular Kari cocktail running through her veins. Over the years I have worked to remind myself that these traits will serve her well in her life. They will allow her to stand her ground even when she is feeling shamed or alone in her convictions. In our daily interactions, they often lead to unpleasant stand-offs between the two of us and I am left desperately searching the recesses of my brain for ways to temper some of Eve’s most problematic qualities. As I see them.

Which leads me to the knowledge that what I consider to be her most difficult personality traits are the things I hate most about myself. I cringe in shame as I remember times when I rushed, face first into an argument with someone else, convinced I had The Answer and determined to prove the other person wrong only to discover that there were things I didn’t know. Possibilities I hadn’t considered. Or, worse yet, maybe I was “Right,” but in my quest to render that fact in indelible ink, I trampled someone else’s feelings or disregarded their self-worth. I see Eve wearing a path in that meadow, back and forth, more often than not between her bedroom and Lola’s.

Yesterday as I sat on the back porch with my book, soaking up the sunshine, Lola quietly made her way to my side and sat down, forearms crossed over her eyes in a familiar pose of misery. I put my book down and turned to her as she parted her elbows to give me a glimpse of wet, full eyes. She and Eve had fought in front of Eve’s friend and Lola, embarrassed, shoved her and stormed out of the room. Eve followed, some angry words were exchanged, and Eve slapped Lola on the arm. I don’t know how hard she hit her or what they said to each other and, frankly, as soon as I heard that Eve hit her little sister, I stopped listening. I knew I couldn’t punish her in front of her friend and I had the presence of mind to know that any consequence I came up with needed to not come from anger. And I was angry. Really angry.

The depth and breadth of my anger was out of proportion to the incident. I realized that. There was a heaviness in my lower gut that led all the way up to the set of my jaw. I was furious with Eve. Despite what went before, how could she hit her sister! Would I be this angry if she had hit someone else? Nah, that’s not even a question. She would never hit anyone else but her little sister. That realization made me even angrier. I sat on the deck steps, my arms around Lola as her tears dotted my shirt, and fumed.

An hour later, standing at the kitchen counter chopping zucchini for dinner, it hit me. I was angry with Eva because, as the oldest sister, she is supposed to protect Lola, not hurt her. Wait. That was my life. My childhood.A door opened. The thoughts came swirling out like smoke rising from a campfire – as a kid, my siblings and I stuck together so that none of us would get hurt. And even when we did get hurt, we didn’t go it alone. We had each other. We stuck up for each other and looked out for each other and took care of each other. It kills me to see my girls fight. The thoughts bumping up against the ceiling of that hatred for their arguments tell me that, someday, they will be all each other has. Their sibling bond is stronger than anything. Through breakups and fights with close friends and disappointments they are too embarrassed to share with anyone else, they will have each other and they need to protect that bond at all costs. And Eve, as the oldest sister, is charged with being the gatekeeper. The key holder.

Or is that me? When I see so many similarities between us, I wonder if I too often mistake her for a miniature me. Despite the fact that her childhood is not mine, her life is not mine, I think I may be, in some way, reliving my childhood vicariously through her. All of the times I mentally assaulted myself for not doing enough to protect my baby sister, Eve could fix by taking care of her sister better than I took care of mine. And here was the source, the wellspring of my anger. I was upset because I would never have done anything to hurt my little sister. I had given myself the job of protecting her and couldn’t imagine doing anything to make her life more difficult or challenging than it was already.

But Eve is not me. And her childhood is not mine. And I have no right to expect her to fix the mistakes I made in my life by doing them over better. There is some Bubba in this gorgeous girl, too, and I need to honor that. But more than anything, I need to honor the Eva in Eva and allow her the freedom to explore who she wants to be outside of the boundaries I might think of for her.

Repression by Any Other Name…

Two recent international news items have wormed their way into my consciousness of late and, while I confess that I am uneasy about my relative lack of knowledge on the subject, I am somehow still compelled to wonder out loud. Both issues have at their core, the issue of Muslim women wearing head coverings, often called hajib or naqib.

France banned the wearing of any overt religious symbols in schools in 2004. These were not limited to Muslim headscarves by any means, and the purported reasoning behind it was to somehow erase visual differences between citizens in order to promote a more cohesive society. The most recent proposal would ban women from wearing their naqib in public at all, again supposedly to promote acceptance of others in French society, but also because some lawmakers are offended by their belief that Muslim women are often forced to don these head coverings and they want to rid them of this discrimination.

Today MSNBC ran a story about women in Turkey who are effectively barred from getting jobs because of their choice to wear headscarves. Because Turkey is a “secular” country, these traditional head coverings are prohibited for public officials and women in public places. There is a fragile balance between the Muslim ruling party and the secular bureaucracy and much fear on both sides that the scales will tip in the other side’s favor. The women are left wondering if they will be able to use their education and passion for careers and lives outside of their homes and places of worship.

For me, this issue has very little to do with religious or political beliefs and simply leaves me scratching my head. For the people who claim to be advocating for women’s rights by banning the headwear, I wonder how much of their rhetoric is genuine versus an excuse to get rid of something that makes them uncomfortable. I know the issue is complicated, and it may well be that some women are forced to dress in this manner by the men in their lives, but isn’t it just as repressive to force other women to remove their naqib when they don’t want to? I truly believe in the notion that individuals ought to be free to express themselves in most any way they choose, so long as it isn’t offensive or hurtful to others. And if there really are women who are feeling intimidated or abused by their husbands or fathers, in any way, maybe the French government ought to spend their time beefing up domestic violence resources rather than telling others how to dress. At this point, there is a small minority of French citizens who are being singled out and forced to act in ways they aren’t comfortable with and, as an American, I can only see trouble coming down the tracks.

In Turkey, the issue seems that much more insidious because of the blatant nature of it. There are those who are unashamedly vocal about their discrimination against women who wear headscarves and see no problem denying them access to the professions for which they have trained. I know of no similar way in which men are set apart from society because they choose to display their religious preferences. It seems to me that, while there are some complex issues involved, this is just one more way in which society is attempting to control women and I, for one, hope it backfires by causing powerful women from around the world to band together and raise their voices in protest.

Empowering and Understanding


Lola decided to play lacrosse this Spring instead of softball. She has a good friend who wanted to play and there is much more movement and action in lacrosse – simply more her style. Practices are twice a week for an hour and a half and they play two games every Saturday. It’s definitely a commitment. Especially in the Pacific NW in a La Nina year. They’ve been at it since February and I think I can count on the fingers of one hand (okay, one practice) the times it has been sunny for practice. After the first week, I took to bringing an old paper bag with me when I picked her up so she could put her muddy cleats in the bag before getting into my car. By last week, I was putting a beach towel down in her seat so that her mud-splattered backside wouldn’t ruin the upholstery. And when I say “backside” I don’t mean bottom. I mean that it looks like she stood facing a wall while someone took a paintbrush dipped in mud and flung it at her body, splatter-paint-style.

She is in Heaven.

In hail, strong winds, pouring rain and, yes, even snowfall, her solid 4’3″ frame hurtles across the field, spraying wet clumps of grass behind her as she chases the ball. Without fail, halfway through practice she slows down slightly to unzip her sweatshirt, peel it off, and fling it to the sidelines because she’s sweating from the effort. A grin adorns her face for each and every one of the 90 minutes she is on that field.

Last week as I sat in the car with the heater warming my toes and my heated seat on to its full potential, I wondered whether the coaches would call practice off. The baseball and softball players had long since gone home and the black clouds had that particular electricity to them that warned of a thunderstorm. I half-wished they would call it off so I could get home and start dinner early. But in that same moment, another thought pushed that one away. The boys weren’t going home. Their lacrosse practice was still on – I could see them in the farthest field, crashing their helmets and shoulder pads into each other with abandon, the way boys in middle school do because they know they’re too young and strong to get hurt. Yes, it was wet. Yes, it was cold. But these girls weren’t in danger of suffering anything they couldn’t handle. Of the four teams of girls, only one has a female coach, and none of the coaches, regardless of gender, was about to call off practice. Whatever their reasons, I decided I didn’t care. Knowing that Lola was out there having the time of her life and receiving the message that she was strong and capable enough to practice in inclement weather was terrific.

Eve is playing basketball with her classmates this season as well. She is not much of a ‘team-sport’ kid, but when her school fielded a 5th grade team and she realized she could play with girls she knows who are her own age, she got excited. This age brings with it self-criticism and a shyness borne of comparison like no other. Among her peers is one girl who is smaller in size than Eve, several who are slightly taller or bigger, and two who could pass for 7th graders. Two have played basketball before, but the rest of them are newbies. The coach treats them all the same. She mixes up the scrimmage teams, runs drills where she stops each of them at some time to make a particular correction or explain something further, and plays with them. At the beginning of practice, held in a local community center that is usually full of older boys playing the rough, NBA-style ball, she makes sure to shoo everyone out of the gym and shut the doors before beginning practice. She gets it. But while she makes that concession for them, she is tough with them in other ways. They are not allowed to sit down for the entire practice. They can rest and take water breaks as necessary, but everyone on the team works their butt off. She makes sure they know what their bodies are capable of and shows them time and time again. Eve is so proud of her ability to do things she never thought she could. She convinced herself long ago that she is more a “creative-type” than an athlete and, while she enjoys messing around on her bike and shooting baskets in the backyard, she was fairly resigned to the fact that playing a sport on a team wasn’t for her. She’s discovering just how wrong she was about that.

In very different ways, my girls are both learning that pushing themselves in a safe environment is a powerful feeling. I am terribly grateful for coaches and organizations that provide them the opportunity to spread their wings within these comfortable boundaries. It makes me that much more committed to ensuring that girls everywhere find places like these in their lives in order to empower themselves and better understand their own abilities.

Book Review: Hey, Shorty!


Well, it turns out my most recent book review wasn’t my last one for Mandy Van Deven of Elevate Difference. She and two of her co-workers at Girls for Gender Equity (GGE), have written a book that every mother, educator, and lawmaker ought to read. It is my distinct honor to have gotten an advance copy of the book for review.
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“Hey, Shorty: A Guide to Combating Sexual Harassment and Violence in Schools and on the Streets”
by Joanne N. Smith, Mandy Van Deven, and Meghan Huppuch of Girls for Gender Equity (GGE)
The Feminist Press

Most of us think about sexual harassment in the context of the workplace and would be genuinely surprised to know just how prevalent it is in the world our teens and pre-teens inhabit. Of course, there are incidents so extreme, both in the media and on episodes of Law & Order, that we sit up straight and feel the bile rise in our throats: teachers taking advantage of students, gang rape in the bathroom of a local park. But what about the pervasive, everyday climate of intimidation and pressure that exists in the hallways and locker rooms of our nation’s middle schools and high schools? And what does the tacit acceptance (and/or denial) of this culture teach our children about how to interact with each other? Is this how bullying gets so bad that children choose to drop out of school and deny themselves the opportunities to thrive that they deserve? Is this how we end up with teens deciding death is easier than living with a daily regimen of taunting and overwhelming negative pressure to be something they aren’t, don’t want to be, and couldn’t possibly live up to?

“Hey, Shorty” is the story of an extraordinary organization called Girls for Gender Equity (GGE). Ten years ago, they embarked on an ambitious mission: to uncover and define the ways sexual harassment affect New York City’s public school students. Borne out of a desire to give girls equal opportunities to engage in sports and gather together to share their strengths and challenges, Joanne N. Smith started the project. Fairly quickly, she began to realize that, despite the existence of Title IX, there were formidable barriers to overcome. Despite overwhelming agreement that both gender bias and sexual harassment existed within the community, there was little acknowledgement of either of these things as a pervasive problem that prevented girls from exploring opportunities on an equal playing field with boys.

Over a period of ten years, GGE fought to define sexual harassment and help students understand the insidious ways it affected their lives in and out of school. They enlisted student ambassadors to create surveys and educate their peers, all the while empowering these teens as solution-providers. They struggled with beaurocratic obstacles and lack of funding and found ways to energize the communities around them and find partners to join their cause. The amount of light that GGE is responsible for shedding on this pervasive issue in one of the biggest school districts in the nation is astonishing and exciting. As a woman who considers herself fairly open-minded and liberal, I was nonetheless shocked to discover that my notion of what is “acceptable” or “tolerable” behavior in schools was very much colored by my unwillingness to stand out or stand up for myself as a woman.

“Hey, Shorty!” is a primer for any group intent on addressing issues of bullying and sexual harassment in their own community. With practical advice on how to find supporters and engage individuals as voices for change, this book is one of the most important things any administrator or educator can read in preparation for dealing with tough issues among their students. As one of the authors says, there is no need to reinvent the wheel. The women and girls of GGE have done it already and are happy to share the blueprint.

There is a public book launch on April 13th. If you are interested in attending, please follow this link.

Links for April

Crepuscular raus in GGP 8
I love it when I can find new places to explore on the Internet. It’s not nearly as productive as exploring in the nature or, say, doing laundry, but at least these two places are just as important. The first came to me from a friend who has children with sensory processing issues (as does Lola). If you haven’t already found it, this is a terrific resource and they have vast stores of information in their back issues.

SI Focus is an online magazine that has articles pertaining to all different kinds of issues for kids and adults who struggle with sensory integration issues. The subscription is fairly inexpensive ($25/year), and you can get a group subscription for several families together to make it even more affordable. I found myself glued to the computer while reading the first issue and am tremendously grateful to my friend Isabelle for passing along the information.

The other link I found through a group on Facebook called “40 Days of Mindfulness.” I joined them in their efforts to have each member meditate for 20 minutes a day for forty days beginning April 1. Twenty minutes indulging myself seemed pretty doable, although I will admit that, only eight days in, it has been as much of a struggle to keep my mind still as a boon, but I’m committed. After all, there are all these people I have to be accountable to! My friend Emily found herself fighting to keep from scolding herself for not living up to the 20 minutes a day and went on a hunt for a meditation around self-acceptance. Viola! She found this article. The article led me to the self-compassion website. At first glance, it appears to be a marketing tool for the author’s books, but I would encourage you to check out the information on the right side of the screen. There is a quiz you can take to see just how self-compassionate you are and exercises to download to increase your own acceptance of yourself. It may sound a little woo-woo, but I truly believe we all could use a little more appreciation for ourselves and I’m intrigued by the research being done. I highly recommend both the Huffington Post article and the site itself.

What Are the Stories You Tell Yourself?

This whole lifelong learning thing is coming at me in waves! Unfortunately for me, I often plow through my days busying my brain with so many things that the Universe has to shake me or poke me or smack me upside the head to get me to pay attention from time to time. And with certain issues I prefer to avoid altogether, it is necessary to poke me repeatedly. Money is one of those issues. I am lucky enough to have what I need so that we aren’t living paycheck-to-paycheck like most of the world is and that has enabled me to continue to hide behind the black curtain, blithely continuing to ignore the cavalier way I treat financial issues.

And from time to time, I get the nagging feeling that I’m spending too much money (not on big things, I’m the nickel-and-dime-you-to-death sort: Target loves me, so do the grocery stores where I often impulse-buy, and I love getting little gifts or cards for friends as I see them). Occasionally Bubba (who is the primary money manager in our household) will throw out phrases like, “hemhorraging money,” and a little red flag pops up in my brain. But mostly, I continue on, blissfully ignorant. But last week Bubba was in Canada on business and it was the end of the month (one of those months where we had apparently been bleeding cash from every orifice) and my debit transaction was denied at Target. And later it was denied at the restaurant where I took Lola and one of her friends for lunch. So I went online and checked the balance of the account (barely recalling the password and username Bubba set up for us). Seems that Bubba did a big cash-grab for his trip, cabs and lattes being easier to pay for in cash – especially when you’re in another country. This meant that until payday, my free-wheeling debit card days were over. Wake. Up. Call.
Lying in the tub that evening, I decided that my usual modus operandi (guilt and shame at how ignorant I am about our finances leading to self-loathing and resulting in complete denial of the issue until payday when everything would return to normal) wasn’t going to cut it anymore. So I created this worksheet:
Turns out I have all sorts of “stories” I tell myself about money. That I am horrible at managing it (and so this gives me the excuse to not even try), that it isn’t important to me and I can do without it (and so this gives me the excuse to disregard it), and that I have a partner who is terrific with money and interested in managing it for our household (and so this gives me the excuse to rely on him to tell me what to do with it). Putting that in writing made my skin crawl. I felt like I had just downed an entire bowl of sea slugs in salt broth. ICK!!! I felt guilty, ashamed, lazy, and confused about where these stories came from. And I felt motivated to change them. They are not accurate, but they are ingrained.
I made ten copies of the worksheet and am keeping the original in my office. I know that, as young as they are, Eve and Lola have their own dysfunctional stories they tell themselves about difficult things. I have stories about exercise and health, relationships and conflict, and my own mental health status to name a few. But having the ability to look at the way I find trapdoors for myself and excuse behaviors that perpetuate my own negative self-image around certain things is incredibly powerful. It isn’t easy or pretty, but the simple realization that I have based a lot of my actions on inaccurate stories I tell myself is a huge catalyst for change. That doesn’t mean I’m taking any accounting classes anytime soon, but it does make me feel more empowered about my own behaviors around money and helps me think of ways to teach the girls to do the same.

Expanding Waistline! Good For The Brain?


This news just in! Well, it isn’t exactly news and it’s not scientific. But each and every one of the following mini-epiphanies I’ve come to this week started with my own inability to fit into any of my favorite pairs of pants comfortably. It seems I’ve taken too many liberties with the carpool snacks I provide for the girls and the stash of Theo Chocolate I have in the cupboard. Add to that the crazy schedule I’ve had over the past few months that makes it difficult to get to yoga regularly, and more often than not in the past week I have found myself almost resorting to lying on my back to zip my jeans up. Not acceptable.

So I have decided to conquer this latest bulge with mindfulness. I am not very mindful about food as I’m putting it into my mouth. I am terrifically conscientious about planning and cooking meals, making sure they are healthy and well-balanced (and gluten-free), but once it comes to the eating stage, all of my thoughtfulness goes out the window. And snacks are my kryptonite. This week, I have resolved to stop and think before anything gets consumed by me. Do I need this? Do I even really want it? Why am I eating right now? Will ten of them necessarily taste ten times as heavenly as one?

Seems that mindfulness regarding food consumption is contagious to other parts of my life. Here is what I’ve discovered this week so far:
  • The things that my girls do that make me gnash my teeth the most? It turns out that they know those things make me batsh*t crazy. But even more profound is the fact that, when I examine the issue, those are the things I most despise about myself. Hmmm. Ick. Am I trying to change them so I don’t have to see them reflecting me back to me?
  • For several months at the end of last year I began wondering whether I was having early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, and that’s not a joke. Both of my grandmothers had it and it is truly frightening. I was having difficulty recalling things from my short-term memory and took to bringing a notebook with me wherever I went so that I could write down tasks I needed to remember, things I needed at the store, and writing prompts for later. Mostly I talked myself out of panicking, saying that it was normal aging, but I really was worried. Then I went off of my anti-depressants and now, four weeks off of them, my short-term memory is greatly improved. They say writers need to have some angst and while I’m doing fine off of my meds for now, I wonder if they made me a better writer or a worse one. On the meds, I didn’t begin every day wondering when the depression was going to smack me upside the head, but I had difficulty recalling simple things. Off the meds, I’m a little more nervous about impending doom, but I can at least keep track of what I wanted to write about.
  • Success (mine, anyway) can only be had one moment at a time. All I have is this, right now. I can beat myself up for the handful of dark chocolate raisins I ate last night without being mindful at all, and use that as an excuse to eat another handful or think poorly of myself. I can worry that there are more in a bag in the pantry and I will surely want them again later. Or I can sit in this moment right now and acknowledge that I don’t want them right now. This moment, right here, where I am doing what feels good to me (writing, listening to the clothes tumble around in the dryer, furry dog on my bare feet) is a success.
I don’t know if all of this is going to help me fit into my jeans better next week or next month, but I do know that each baby step I take toward living in this moment and being honest with myself about what I’m doing and why can only help.

Building Community


Everyone wants a village. In fact, I’m convinced that it takes a village to raise us all – not just our children. When I tell people about the neighborhood I live in, (six houses, fifteen kids, eight dogs, three miles from downtown, neighbors who are willing to wait for your kids at the bus stop if you’re running late…) they turn all shades of envious. We aren’t nosy or in each other’s faces, but we do know that if someone is hurt or sick or in need of a good book to read, there’s always someone willing to share. When Bubba was in the hospital, they brought meals, mowed our 1.5 acre lawn and offered to watch the girls. We carpool from time to time and have communal garage sales and care for each others’ pets when someone is out of town. It rocks. And when Bubba and I discuss moving from time to time, I am struck with worry that I might not find this again.

So when I was listening to an interview with Peter Lovenheim, author of the book pictured above, I was glued to my seat. His book chronicles his own attempt to create a tight-knit, invested community in his own neighborhood and the changes that came about for everyone as a result of it. Later in the conversation, the NPR commentator brought in a social anthropologist (forgive me, I forget his name) who pointed out how American communities have changed over time, citing commutes, distance from family, and dual income households as some of the reasons we have grown distant from our neighbors. Whatever the reasons for this phenomenon, it is clear to me that most Americans want what I have, but not many of us know how to go about getting it. And beyond desire, it is even more clear to me that we all need this kind of connection in our immediate backyards. Who couldn’t raise their families better with support from their neighbors?
One comment made during the program that struck me was regarding women as the social center of the family. The social anthropologist noted that, before women went into the workforce in vast numbers, it was their “job” to connect with neighbors, join the PTA, volunteer for civic organizations and plan social engagements for the family. They were the ones who spent time in the immediate vicinity of the home and had the greatest opportunity to become engaged in the life of their own community. I think that that is still true for most of us. While there are many fathers who volunteer as coaches for their children’s sports teams and who join the PTA, it is the women who tend to find ways to get entire families together to socialize or help one another out. Bubba might initiate an invitation to his co-worker’s spouse, but it is me who puts together an invitation to dinner at our house. It is me who arranges carpools to sports practices and hears about the cancer diagnosis someone’s mother just received. It is the women in our neighborhood who call around and set up meal calendars to help out the family suffering from illness or injury. I might recruit Bubba to help out, but it isn’t in him to organize a community effort like that.
I am not saying this to be disrespectful or disregard men’s efforts in social engagement. I simply know that, if Bubba were in trouble, he would not reach out to another guy for help with meals or carpools or household chores. He might, maybe, possibly ask his mother (who lives 300 miles away), but he wouldn’t think to approach a neighbor. And while he would have no problem helping a neighbor out, he isn’t likely to flat-out ask if one of them needs help. Whatever the reasons, I learned long ago that people are more than happy to help when asked. I used to feel ‘weak’ or ‘pathetic’ when I couldn’t manage my own life every second of every day and it was for that reason that I resisted asking for help. But when I was forced to, I noticed that my neighbors felt better about themselves when they could pitch in. And my kids learned to trust these “strangers” because of their willingness to help out. They also learned to ask if they could help when they saw that someone was in trouble.
It is satisfying to send a check to the Red Cross for relief efforts when some natural disaster happens. But it is so much more rewarding to head over and mow your neighbor’s lawn for them when you know that Dad is away on business for two weeks and Mom has her hands full working 40 hours a week and raising three kids. There is no tax deduction for that, but there is the knowledge that you’ve done something tangible for someone who really needed it and, without keeping score, the next time you could use an extra hand, you know that another neighbor will be there.
Beyond pitching in to help each other out, the trust that is established between neighbors like this leads to fun as well. In the summer, I often look outside to see that an impromptu soccer game has begun on our back lawn and the bucket of sidewalk chalk is splayed across the driveway as a street mural is created throughout the cul-de-sac. On any given summer evening, the girls might be out riding bikes with some of the other kids from the ‘hood and I can bring out a bottle of wine and some extra glasses. The next thing you know, there are a few other parents sharing the lawn with me as we catch up on each other’s lives and watch our kids goof off.
I’m certain that growing up with this village around them will help my girls to feel connected to their wider community and continue to seek this kind of neighborhood throughout their lives. I know that they will think nothing of asking for help when they need it and offering it when they see someone who could use it. Learning so early on that we are stronger together is one of the best things I can teach my kids. Learning to trust others and know that you have a safety net close by is so valuable.

Lifelong Learning


When I was a child, I looked forward to the day when I could stop “learning” and just be secure in my knowledge of, well, everything. For a while during my teenage years I put on a good show that I already knew everything, but to that girl in the mirror I admitted I was frightened that I only had a few years left to learn so much more.

Lucky me! Turns out there is no “all” to know. Fully present in my fourth decade on this planet (yes, I don’t turn 40 until October), I often feel as though my learning has accelerated in the past five years. I’m not exactly sure why, or what is to come, but I do know that I am much more open to new experiences and perspectives than I ever have been before in my life. I am genuinely curious about a vast range of things and somewhat frustrated that my brain isn’t nearly as absorbent as it was when I was eight or nine or ten.
More than the actual collection of data, though, is the way in which I understand things as an adult. Thanks to the knowledge have gained from a variety of sources about many disparate things, I am often able to put together pieces I wouldn’t have in the past.
This realization has come to me recently as both a fascination and a curse. When I completed the rewrite of my manuscript a little over a year ago, I took off my “Writer” badge and replaced it with a “Salesperson” one. I had polished the book thanks to help from an editor and was ready to find an agent and publisher. In the meantime, I’ve donned the “Writer” badge for other projects – blog posts, essays to submit to various publications and contests, and a new nonfiction book project – but haven’t really revisited the first manuscript except to update the introduction to reflect relevant changing political issues.
For the last couple of weeks, I have felt a tugging on the “Salesperson” badge. I have found myself wondering if I ought to look over the manuscript again and give it some more attention. After several agent rejections, I thought maybe there was something they were seeing that I hadn’t. Then last week, I spoke with someone who might be able to help me find an agent (it’s not what you know, but who you know…) and I found myself describing my project in a much different light for some reason. By the time we hung up, I realized that my personal evolution in the months since I completed the edits might do well to be reflected in my writing. Before submitting the first two chapters, I decided to take a good, hard look at them.
I was appalled. The chapters read like a newspaper story – facts squarely at the forefront, devoid of most emotion, and completely lacking in any communal human, spiritual (not religious) context. I spent most of the weekend rewriting these two chapters to express the deepening knowledge I have come to have about what it means to be a woman, a human being fearful of consequences and repercussions, and how emotional isolation compounds that fear. I know that these chapters are much more powerful and meaningful because of this new perspective and, while I know I have much work ahead of me to weave those threads through the rest of the manuscript, I am grateful to have had this past year or so to stretch my awareness and understanding. Of course, this all leads me to wonder whether twenty years from now I’ll pick up my own book somewhere and laugh at the naive almost-40-year-old who wrote it.

Book Reviews

I have two new book reviews up on the Elevate Difference site and will have two more before we’re all done there. The founder, Mandy Van Deven, recently took her “dream job” with a nonprofit agency in New York and decided she doesn’t have the energy and time it will take to continue to maintain the site as well. If you’ve been to Elevate Difference, you’ve seen the terrific book, product, music, and movie reviews posted there, all with an eye toward celebrating uniqueness and differences and raising awareness of women’s issues. I am deeply indebted to Mandy, both for creating this site and for taking a chance on me as a reviewer. Review 1 and Review 2

When I left my paying job last summer, I had no idea what was in store for me as a writer, and the regular deadlines I had for book reviews gave me the structure I needed to write every day, not to mention the luxury of two free books a month. I love having the regular editorial feedback and the instant gratification of publishing book reviews online and reading comments from visitors to the site. More than all of those things, though, writing reviews for Elevate Difference gave me permission to call myself a “Writer.” Despite spending over five years researching, writing and rewriting my manuscript, without a physical book to present to anyone, I resisted giving myself the title of writer. Seeing my name attached to book reviews opened that door a crack and, shoving my way through it before anyone could cry, “Foul!” I began work on my second book and have started submitting work to magazines and anthologies. I am still seeking an agent for my book-length projects, but Elevate Difference has afforded me validation in my own mind and that is something more valuable than any book deal. Not that I’m going to turn one down if it comes my way, mind you.

I am working on two final reviews for the site and will be sad when they are complete, but I hope you’ll come by and check them out along with all of the other great work that exists at Elevate Difference. Thanks for your vision and dedication, Mandy!