To my Mother, after all these years.

My mother died a little less than ten years ago, six months after she got me married off. If the last sentence left you wondering, my mother always despaired of me ever marrying because, in my father’s words, “[I] … believed in unicorns”. Dad’s statement exaggerated the case, but I did (and still do to some extent) feel more comfortable in fantasy than in real life.

I believe I got my love of unicorns honestly. My mother decorated the house every Christmas until it resembled a Mary Engelbreit print. She possessed a wardrobe that she collected to wear to the perfect setting, someday, creating the perfect scenario in her mind (some of those clothes still had tags on them when she died.) She created — from sketches of pin-ups while she spoke on the phone to tantalizing dishes for dinner to embroidery projects that owed more to poster art than they did fuzzy cross-stitches of kittens.

Mom created personas — the bold, outrageous woman who hung out in the bar after work; the confident employee who got promoted past her comfort level at the Census Bureau; the slightly hassled mother who nonetheless kept up a witty conversation with my sister’s classmates. Sometimes, however, my mother would show me who she really was: a bewildered woman who never knew if people around her loved her or loved her personas — her chosen, not real, selves.

My mother couldn’t give me what I needed, because she couldn’t give it to herself. She could not give me acceptance of who I was, the student the teachers praised to the point of embarassment; the moody teen who fell in love (unrequited) again and again; the child who looked in the mirror and saw only her own obesity. I grew up with the sense of not-okayness that my mother did.

In the end, illness stripped my mother of all her personas — she grew weak and gaunt. She fell to the ground when trying to walk. She could not see well. The medication caused occasional hallucinations and uncensored commentary. But in dying, she became herself, and she was magnificent. She planned Christmas from a hospital bed (she would not make it) and picked out the jewelry she would wear. She requested (almost demanded) that a priest apologize for the emotional abuse the Church had committed. And her last words to me were: “Go out and have some fun.”

Happy Mother’s Day, Patricia Louise (Hollenbeck) Leach.

Ups and Downs of Writing

The first thing I’ll do here is break a taboo — I have a mood disorder. Specifically Bipolar 2 — half the mania, twice the depression. No, I’m not crazy — I have wonky biology. Just like you do.

Is there a link between bipolar and creativity? Collingwood (2017) reports that there have been many creative people known to be bipolar, but that this may be due to a third variable. She also points out that people with bipolar disorder are more productive and creative when they are managing their condition.

This has been my experience. I could not have written a novel without my medications, which is why I’m a late bloomer (I wasn’t diagnosed till five years ago). Self-maintenance activities such as regular sleep, eating regularly, not overworking myself, and avoiding alcohol supports my creativity as well. In other words, all those things creatives are reported not to do.

My imagination still functions with all of this — better, even. Thanks for reading.

I hope you find
at the end of the day
that the yammering words
chained and rechained in the switchyard
fade into a night of indigo
with the texture of a cotton eiderdown.

Collingsworth, J. (2017). The link between bipolar and creativity. Available: https://psychcentral.com/lib/the-link-between-bipolar-disorder-and-creativity/ [April 27, 2017].

In praise of being ordinary

Yesterday I showed my students a Ted Talk by Brene Brown, a psychologist. She spoke about invulnerability as a major deterrent to well-being in the US. The major factor she cited as the root of invulnerability in the US was the need to be extraordinary.

Think about it: writers not only want to be published, they want to be on the NY Times Bestsellers’ list. That list has only so much room on it, and by its nature it does not mark the best books, but the best sellers. How many hurdles does an author need to jump to get on this list? An agent has to read an excerpt of the book and declarable it marketable. “Marketable” has less to do with its quality than it does how well the book will sell. Then the agent shops the book to potential publishers, who evaluate the book in terms of — yes, marketability. Not that the agent or publisher will ignore quality, but the final criteria is marketability.

I understand this — my book may be the result of blood and sweat and fantasy, but to the publishing industry, my book is a potential moneymaker. As there are a limited number of publishers in the fiction market, the best strategy is conservative — that is, choosing books similar to those that have already sold.

I have had to give up my need to be extraordinary to have the courage to write at all. I would love to be published, but I also know I write on beloved topics that don’t sell well in the mainstream — a pacifist ecocollective, the tension of living with diversity, alternate religious myths, Reason as a deity in the pantheon of human deities, and more. An all-too-human utopia that has become Brigadoon because of its secrets.

I would like to be published, but I know I will struggle. I know I will get more letters that say “… but it’s not what we’re looking for at this time.” And I will relax in my status as ordinary and write some more.

Calling all Creatives

To any reader who considers themselves creative:

1) Describe the moment that you first considered yourself creative.

2) Describe how others reacted to you at that moment.

My story — I could give any number of anecdotes for the first question, but I will pick the moment I wrote my first poems in third grade. My third grade teacher taught us poetry forms, including diamante, sonnet, and haiku; I enjoyed building words into new structures and quickly took to the tasks.

My third grade teacher, I suspect, thought me her prodigy and posted one of my poems on her classroom door. Some classmates and many teachers stopped me in the hallway to tell me it was a nice poem. My sister, ten months older, was livid. My parents hardly acknowledged my accomplishment because they worked hard to keep my sister from low self-esteem.

(Edited for ambiguous pronouns and nouns in the last paragraph, like a good writer 😉 )