I did not have time to write a newsletter this week. I did, however, want to send one out because it’s the first of September and that feels important. And in starting to write this, I realized something profound.
I was committed Monday of Memorial Day. Today is Monday of Labor Day. Someone in the film industry would call these bookends. A closed loop with a nod at the end to the beginning. Yet in between these tidy placeholders is a storm. An entire summer, three months, spent swirling and reeling.
Yet I also realized something else.
Our first night of our first vacation, as we sat at a glass table, looking out at rolling hills, I told my husband that the tears falling behind my sunglasses were because I know I am lucky. I know I am strong. I know we will get through this. The pieces will arrange to a new pattern to fit this new life I'm now living.
I was crying because I know my story is not the norm. I have the audience, the contacts, the ability to turn this thing into something. What would I have done if didn’t have this platform, these women, this place to put it?
What every other woman does. Puts her head down and buries it. Swallows it. Endures the gossip and stigma, hoping one day it will be nothing more than a faded, distant memory. That could have been me. But it wasn’t...
What I realized is that I have not been alone in this storm. Not for a second. In between these bookends are the countless women who have saved me. Not once, not twice, but thousands of times in thousands of ways. I see them as a swarm of hands, a mosh pit, if you will, holding me up, passing me from one hand to another, to keep me from hitting the floor.
If it wasn’t for the women, I would have conceded in that ward. I would have assumed I was wrong. I would have swallowed all the lies and omissions. I would have let them harness me. I would not have said a word. But I knew, all of you were there.
Coming home, however, is where I feel it more. The saving. The hands. When my husband wouldn’t look at me, my parents wouldn’t speak to me, family protective services knocking on the door.
It was the women who spoke to me late at night. The ones who sent me messages and voice notes in the middle of their days. The ones who shared their tips and learnings from their own unspeakable pain and heartbreak. The ones who told me over and over again that I was strong. That I would get through it. That I was not bad. I am not made wrong. I am a woman.
I am not perfect. Every day I am letting in the notion that all of it had to happen. I could have been manic. I was manic? (that is something I cannot say aloud yet, but writing it is the first step). That doesn’t take away how I was handled. How I got there. There are two wrong and two right sides. None of it matters. The details are irrelevant. What matters is how we pick up the pieces and move on. The education we take from it. The people we become from it.
I am a different person now. I have shed a skin. The process has been painful and messy. I have been alone and embarrassed and prouder and more loved than I’ve ever felt in my life.
What I’m trying to say is I owe this summer’s survival to you women—those near me and those far, those I know by name and those who read quietly. You were the safety net that caught me when everything else fell away. You showed me that women, when bound together, create the kind of power that remakes a life.
If this summer of torment taught me anything, it’s that survival is not solitary. We keep each other alive. You have done that for me—and my hope is that I can do the same for you, in some small way, as we step into this new season.
In the words of Zelda Fitzgerald, "Thanks again for saving me. Someday, I’ll save you too."
-Quote of the Week-
"I don't know who it was, but someone, maybe or maybe not Henry James, said that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who upon seeing someone else suffering think, That could happen to me, and those who think, That will never happen to me. The first kind of people help us to endure, the second kind make life hell."
—Sigrid Nunez, What Are You Going Through
-Read of the Week-
Usually I stayed in each place for a day or two after the work was done, if work got done at all. I’d stay in hotels I either couldn’t afford or couldn’t sleep in. Mornings I would get lost and buy local sodas and go to museums and feel determinedly alone, and by afternoons I would break down and cry on the street because it didn’t matter who saw me. Then I’d buy postcards. Nights before I flew home, I wouldn’t sleep. In London, it was because London, even after Fashion Week, made me feel surveilled and anxious. In Barcelona, it was because I did poppers with an English banker who’d retired at 29 to pursue his hobby, which was, I think, being gay.
Read: How To Make Love in America
-TV of the Week-
I have no idea how this show slipped under my radar, but I binged all ten episodes in two days. It's so refreshing and unique and FUNNY. The perfect show to ignite that creative spark and give you some endorphins.
The Studio on Apple TV
-Thought of the Week-
I want to recommend that you look closely at the things you don’t like about yourself, and examine how they function in your life. What if some of your most embarrassing traits are actually strengths and charms, or they’re closely tied to your strengths and your charms? What if some of your most shameful habits reflect deeply felt values of yours? What if the person you’re trying to bury is the person you need to treat with compassion and kindness, to resurrect and embrace?
Ask Polly: I’m Starting a New Life, But There’s So Much Pressure to Get It Right!
-Writing Quotes-
Mary Karr: “A memoirist’s job is not to paint herself as good, but as real — which is often worse.”
Grace Dane Mazur:“You don’t have to explain everything. Let the mystery in.”
Jenny Offill: “The sentence should tilt, just slightly, toward trouble.”