Ritual and habit

Power hides in the places we don't look, because we think we already know what's there

Dear Writer,

So I’ve been doing a thing; I’ve been putting the Dear Writer letters off until the absolute last minute on Monday mornings. Often, I don’t even think about what I’m going to write until I sit down that morning. What you get is hot off the cranial griddle, is what I’m saying.

This practice started out of just pure procrastination, but at some point, it morphed into a purposeful ritual. I like writing these letters not as a performance, but as a mode of connection. These are letters from me to you; they’re not essays. They’re not planned, they’re not always even well thought-out. They are a pin in a map telling you where I am in the moment, and if you ever noticed the typos, then you know they’re not highly edited.

I mean… they’re edited. Just not highly.

But because these letters are written with little to no forethought or planning, because I sit down on Mondays and report in to you what I’m thinking about, that means that there is some level of haphazard that’s gonna happen. Today, I’m about to head out of town on a road trip, which means two things: Today’s letter is gonna be quickly written, and there might not be a letter next week, as I will still be on the road.

Then again, there might. I’ve been talking to my workshop students about the value of ritual, and the Dear Writer letter has morphed into a ritual for me. Most days of the week, I have no idea what day it is. But Mondays… that's Dear Writer day, and something about all of this—the extemporaneous nature of the work, the ritual of it—feels right.

So today, I’m going to share with you a big, whopping, Universal Wake The Fuck Up call that I received as part of the process of teaching this workshop.

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They say that the way to get paid support is to hold back content, and that makes sense. If you’re paying, then you want to get something extra out of it. But that just never feels right to me. When I do it, I end up resenting myself, and there are just better things for me to talk about with my therapist.

So, if you can afford it and you think Dear Writer has value, please consider buying a subscription. My doctor wants me to eat steel cut oats for my cholesterol, and that shit is expensive.

The next best thing? Tell someone with money about it, so they can buy a subscription.

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I’ve talked a bit here about the idea of leaning into your strengths as a writer, rather than playing whack-a-mole with your weaknesses. I’ve been preaching the value of “What’s your favorite part?” as the primary role of feedback. I’ve been telling writers that asking beta readers to beat the shit out of them does not, in fact, make them better writers. What it makes them is scared, intimidated, bruised writers.

All of that is true.

But it’s also true of, you know, being a person.

If you’ve listened to my podcasts, you know I’ve been through some shit. I grew up in an abusive household and then went on to eventually marry a very bad person who abused both me and my kids. (This person is not, to be clear, the kids’ dad; that man is a sweetheart of the highest degree.) But between these experiences of the abuse call coming from inside the house, and the many, many years in which I decided that the problems stemming from those calls were because I was somehow broken as a human, my internal psychology has been, to get technical about it, fully fucked.

Don’t cry for me, Argentina. I’ve scratched my way through it and reset most of my thinking, to the point where I no longer know how to behave in the world because my personality was about 90% trauma responses. It was toxic, but I knew what to say in every situation; whatever pleased the person I was talking to. I’m over that, but now, I’m awkward as fuck.

Healing has a cover charge, I guess.

Anyway, the one thing I haven’t been able to get rid of is some basic body dysmorphia. It’s super weird, and I’m working on it, but basically… I can’t see myself as I am. In one 60-second session of looking at myself in the mirror, I will see both a cute lady and a horrible monster. I am both looking appropriately like a 51-year-old woman who birthed two humans, and am old¹, horrendously fat² and ugly³ beyond the telling of it.

This is the one thing in my damaged psychology that I cannot seem to beat. I can’t look at pictures of myself; there is no morphing in pictures, just proof that all the awful things my family said to me when I was a child are absolutely true, and I do not deserve love because I failed to obtain an unobtainable beauty standard that was designed to kill people and make money.

It’s fucked. I know. But pretending it’s not happening doesn’t make it go away, so let’s see if light is a functional disinfectant, shall we?

ANYWAY, the reason I'm pulling back the curtain on this horrendous darkness for you all is that, the other day when I looked in the mirror, I stopped myself and said, “Shut up, asshole, and tell me what’s your favorite part?”

I blinked a few times. The fact that I had suddenly turned this writing concept back on myself in my human form threw me for a minute. I looked at my body, my big⁴ body which made it so much harder for me to hide and shrink and play small my whole life when all I wanted to do was hide and shrink and play small and not let anyone see me lest they use my existence as a weapon against me.

What’s my favorite part? Of this monstrosity? My damage was so shocked at the very idea that it didn’t have a defense ready for it, so I used that opening. I leaned in. I stared harder. The part of me that wants to heal was not letting the part of me that thought the abuse was her fault spit at the mirror and wriggle away.

Not this time.

What’s your favorite part, asshole? Come on.

“Fine,” I said. “You’re strong. That’s a body made to comfort, to carry, to hold. And you’re cute. The pink hair is fucking adorable.”

Every time I’ve looked at myself in the mirror, in a picture, on video, my brain has lit up with insults, shame, and derision.

They were right not to love you. Look at you. You’re hideous.

And I’m not gonna say that doesn’t happen anymore. Oh, it happens every goddamn time.

First.

But now… something else also happens. Something that comes second. It’s odd, it’s unusual but it might be significant.

Now, there’s a moment, after the initial rush of horror, when I look at myself and say, “Bitch, you are strong as fuck. No one can knock that body down. It feels good, it works hard, and it works well. And the hair is fucking cute.”

And you know what? It is.

Travel well and safely, Writer. Until we meet again, either one week or two weeks from now, who the hell knows? The future is clouds and mysteries, so eat a delicious pastry and take a walk in the sunshine.

Everything,

L

1. Yes, I both completely resent the fact that a woman looking appropriate for having survived her youth is somehow a failing, and yet… I feel freaked out that I look like I have survived my youth. Totally fucked, I know, working on it.

2. Yes, that’s fat phobic as fuck, and I know it’s bullshit. I’m not saying this part of my brain is correct; in fact, that’s the exact opposite of what I’m saying. Fat and beautiful exist happily in one body and I’m unlearning, I’m unlearning, I’m unlearning.

3. From the time I was a baby—yes, a baby—the people who were supposed to love me told me I was ugly. I don’t even know what it’s supposed to mean anymore.

4. I’m the size of the average American woman but I’m big according to my internal monitor of what I should be UNLEARNING UNLEARNING UNLEARNING.