I am Worthy of Love and, Oh God, Maybe Some Money, Too??
Ok, this post is giving me the honesty sweats, so I know I have to share it.
It’s recently dawned on me that my husband loves me just for existing, that I can cost instead of just pay, and that it’s OK that I want to write. Whew. It’s been a busy emotional few weeks.
I’ve been married to and loved on by this man for over twenty years. I’ve been writing for at least a dozen. Neither of these things are new, I just hadn’t been able to accept them…(me). I struggle with believing that I am lovable and worthy, and it feels too bold, too arrogant and presumptuous to say I can add anything to the world of literature that I respect so much. There is ample evidence of both his love and my writing aptitude and goals, and yet, I doubted that both were real, were meant for me to put my faith on, were sustainable. I could recognize that I’m needed, that I’m wanted, even, but loved without a transaction? A return? Just for being me, not for what I do for you? To acknoweldge that I’m already giving the world my gift of writing, before I have a book, an agent, a publisher, a following…what if I’m not a fraud, I’m just early in the game?
Being sick on the couch/bed for the past few weeks afforded me a lot of time to reflect, meditate, read, and cry. I couldn’t DO anything. I wasn’t sure if I deserved, could justify, had earned this down time. I was lethargic and unfocused and every time I tried to talk (or in the case of the kids, yell), I would cough for an hour. I was just a pile of need. It stirred up my deepest shames, feeling or worthlessness and being a burden, being too much and not enough, worries that if I didn’t stay in service mode, I wouldn’t stay relevant and people would stop wanting me around. Typically, when I’m shame spiraling like this, I get defensive, anxious and mean. And I probably would have, if I could talk, but instead, I heard Robb very clearly and without hesitation, over and over, telling me to just rest and heal. That I didn’t have to do anything other than that. That I wasn’t a piece of shit disappointment, selfish and vain partner, that I didn’t have to work for this rest. I had to just accept his care and reassurances that my healing was enough for that day, that he saw me and he would help me see myself.
“What do you need?” he kept asking.
I responded as I always do, “Well, I need to/I should be/I really ought to…”
“Nah,” he said. “What do you need?”
It turned out I needed to read in bed all day. And I did, for two whole days. I needed to sit by the fire and watch some Avengers movies and sob like it was MY family Thanos had killed. I needed to eat and drink when I was hungry and thirsty and not worry about it being too much or if I was using up groceries someone else in the family might want. I NEEDED, and I let that count. I needed him, and I (gulllpppp) got fine with it, and felt loved and honored and flattered and floored that it was OK. More than. He was relieved.
And it became very clear in my feverish revelations that I need to write. Instead of apologizing and excusing and fretting about how much I can not, should not, AM NOT, I am leaving it there. I need to and I want to. So I am.
I’ve been working with a brand manager on a website (to be revealed soonly) and it’s been giving me anxious tummy fits to put myself out there like this. Not least because part of the strategy is asking people to sign up for an email list where I WILL BOTHER THEM PERSONALLY ON A REGULAR BASIS DEAR GOD and, if they want me to BOTHER THEM MORE, they will pay me monthly the price of a cup of fancy coffee.
WHY would anyone want to read my shit enough to pay me!?!?! For fuck’s sake! Well, because I have something to say and I say it in a weird, honest, funny, sometimes beautiful, way. I pay for that in writers I love. I want to be taught about the world from their unique slant.
Why not me? Why can’t I be one of those writers? Why can’t I offer that to people?
The truth is- I already do. I’ve been blogging for a dozen years and have written for multiple publications, and most importantly, over and over, readers have said, “Your words make me feel less alone, less crazy, less like I’m failing.” That’s really valuable. I’ve been honored by friends, some who only know me through my words and have never actually met me in person, to help them find the right words; for coming out, for obituaries for people they couldn’t afford to lose, but had, for helping them understand and share themselves. My way of defining pain with language is what they needed. I could give them that.
When asked to write my “origin story” as a writer, I wrote this.
I started writing when I was doing clinical rotations for my Master’s in Physician Assistant studies. I needed to document what I was witnessing; the 2am call to the oncology unit to pronounce a death, the teen who came into the E.R. having lost his hearing snorting heroin, the first time I was trusted to hold a scalpel in the O.R., to present a newborn baby to her parents, all of the times I forgot or didn’t know things I was meant to know, and how it felt in my gut; the pain, hope, and fear that is so apparent on people in the hospital setting…you can taste it in the air. Humanity at its breaking points. I found it exhilarating, confusing, and I needed to write it all down.
As my career started, so did my first attempt to get pregnant. Each month, each cycle, was a dry, failed lifetime. I took meds that made me sweat and rage. Pregnancy finally landed, but then there was blood. It was gone and the hope, the future, with it. The experience of being a patient instead of a provider seemed important. The excruciating pain of the loss. I had to write it all down.
Another miscarriage; despair, doubt…I started finding other women who knew those feelings, who’d been there in those bathrooms finding blood on the toilet paper when there shouldn’t have been, who understood life being broken up into 30 day chunks and everything depending on the results on the plastic stick.
I wrote and it healed me. I wrote and it healed them. Because we were doing this together, even if we were across the country, across the world. We all felt less alone, less crazy, in our suffering and fear.
Eventually, I completed two pregnancies. I wrote about the exhilarating, terrifying feelings of pregnancy and birth, infancy, breastfeeding, and parenting real actual human people.
I’ve been writing for thirteen years- and a lot of life has happened in that time. In the process of documenting and sharing my heart, I’ve left a concrete account of my life and how I felt about it, and also given others words they may not have had, to describe our shared experience. I love the vulnerability and community of it all. I have to write.
And now my kids are both up and my 70# dog is on my lap, so I have to stop.
So…through a LOTTA work, I’ve determined that I am worthy of writing. Now, how to make it work? To pour myself into it in the way I want to, I need to spend some money on it (hence professional pictures and a new website), and I need to make money from it.
I’m in the middle of writing another draft of my book, but Lord knows if that will ever find publication/profit. I will start requesting payment for some of the essays through my website (soon). Freelancing is stressful, but I will also continue doing that…if you’ve never freelanced, it’s like this: you craft this essay or story you believe in. You send it out to an editor with the DREAMS of getting paid, maybe $100 for it, but in reality, they may/may not ever read it, may ghost you all together, and if they do respond it’s usually to tell you no, go away. It feels like you should send a follow-up email after the submission, like, “I sent you this thing, I hope that’s OK, if it’s not, please send it back with a note telling me to kill myself, and I will GLADLY do so and send you $5 for your troubles.”
So…here I am. Writing. Working on being comfortable spending the time and money and energy it takes. Working on being comfortable asking for recognition and payment, taking up space, and sharing my needs and wants.
It’s all scary as hell, but here I am.
