back to the sea
I really didn't know if I wanted to write this blog anymore. I was so bruised by the trolls after my "surrendered" piece was published, disillusioned by the reality of what it means to publish in outlets bigger than the small literary journals I was used to, exhausted from telling the story and explaining why I had deleted my Twitter account and stopped blogging.
I was also just tired. But a lot of changes have happened since then, and it got me thinking about writing again. At one point, I started a blog I was really excited about - The Mom Brains - but after the election we were all so weary, and I found I didn't enjoy having to hound my friends to send me their writing (as I was a writer, but also the managing editor).
So I took to LinkedIn, writing about career, and that proved satisfying (it still does - I'm not stopping that anytime soon!). But then I had an idea I really wanted to write about, and then another, and another. It didn't feel right to fill up The Mom Brains with just my writing, since the idea was a community, but I also didn't want to wait until more of the other writers were ready to submit.
I thought about starting yet another blog. Another theme, maybe, or using my married name. But I kept coming back to the idea that sea salt, since 2009, has been a continuous documentation of life, learning, experience, pain, joy. And even if nobody reads it again, I still want to write here.
In my drafts folder, I have several pieces I'm excited to work on. And in my inbox, I found the post below, written last June when I thought I *might* be ready to come back (turns out I wasn't yet).
Thanks to those of you who have stuck with me and encouraged me through this sabbatical, never pressuring me or downplaying the scars of having been humiliated and torn apart online. For the remaining life of this blog, it's for you. I don't want to "make it" anymore, whatever that means - what I want to make instead is an impact, no matter how small.
It's good to be back.
From 6/5/16:
I opened up this blog tonight to end it. I haven’t posted since January, when the piece about the cats spiraled out of control. I wrote, though. In my anger and humiliation and devastation, I drafted an email to the editors of xoJane (I never sent it). In the same state of mind I wrote a piece called “bridge,” about how instead of building a bridge and getting over it, I was going to find a new bridge in a quieter place, one without any trolls hiding underneath.
I vowed to keep writing, but only for a small audience of friends of family, submitting only to small literary journals and not worrying about how many people actually read my work. I quit Twitter. I made my blog private. I hid, while Kevin logged in to the blog to check for stray comments and delete them.
But we were moving. And I had just gone back to work. And it was cold. Everything was a mess and for a little while I wanted nothing to do with the putrid wasteland of the Internet.
So I hatched a new plan. I’d send sea salt back out to sea, tucked safely inside a glass bottle and left to bob along the ocean waves in total anonymity. I’d sift through all the posts (93 published, 29 drafts), print them out, bind them together, and have a little coming-of-age collection to sit quietly on my shelf. Then I’d disable the blog and eventually, when the time was right, start a new one. It would be better this way.
I sat down tonight and opened up the blog to start printing. The house is still and quiet, Kevin out at a rehearsal and Jolene sound asleep in the next room. I clicked on a few old posts from 2009, remembering with joy that time of my life, so free, so expectant of the world, so in love with writing about everything around me.
I stopped on one from October 2009, called “high tide,” written about the ocean during a violent storm. I lived near the beach in those days, and Kevin and I had gone to walk along the seawall, reflecting on how the ocean seemed to be purging itself of garbage, cleansing itself after the storms. Near the end of the piece, I wrote this:
I also believe in cleansing through peace. In quiet reflection, meditation, prayer, true stillness. There are some things that simply sink when we are still, and do not disturb the waters. Things that may have seemed to be as disruptive as a lobster trap, but were in reality no more than a floating leaf, or a shell that finds a place in the sand and is allowed to stay. When these lighter things have drifted away, we have clarity, seeing straight through to the bottom, to the sides, to the sky where the sun reflects like gold on the surface. And in that clarity, that vision, that gold from above, there is joy, and in joy, peace.
I want to return to the ocean when the weekend storms have ceased, when there is peace and stillness again. I want to see what has been purged, what has floated away, and what remains. I want to hear the ocean speak again, sighing, "Peace be with you."
Perhaps for me the weekend storms have ceased. There is peace and stillness in my home tonight, the open windows allowing a cool breeze and the chirping of birds to drift in. It is quiet and calm. I feel safe.
So maybe I will return to the ocean after all, trusting that the heaviest debris has sunk, the floating leaves have drifted away. Maybe the storm is over and the ocean is safe, cleansed of intrusion, poison, and violence.
Maybe I will return. But I will not go seeking revenge. I will go seeking peace, as I always have, and I will trust that I will find it.
I was also just tired. But a lot of changes have happened since then, and it got me thinking about writing again. At one point, I started a blog I was really excited about - The Mom Brains - but after the election we were all so weary, and I found I didn't enjoy having to hound my friends to send me their writing (as I was a writer, but also the managing editor).
So I took to LinkedIn, writing about career, and that proved satisfying (it still does - I'm not stopping that anytime soon!). But then I had an idea I really wanted to write about, and then another, and another. It didn't feel right to fill up The Mom Brains with just my writing, since the idea was a community, but I also didn't want to wait until more of the other writers were ready to submit.
I thought about starting yet another blog. Another theme, maybe, or using my married name. But I kept coming back to the idea that sea salt, since 2009, has been a continuous documentation of life, learning, experience, pain, joy. And even if nobody reads it again, I still want to write here.
In my drafts folder, I have several pieces I'm excited to work on. And in my inbox, I found the post below, written last June when I thought I *might* be ready to come back (turns out I wasn't yet).
Thanks to those of you who have stuck with me and encouraged me through this sabbatical, never pressuring me or downplaying the scars of having been humiliated and torn apart online. For the remaining life of this blog, it's for you. I don't want to "make it" anymore, whatever that means - what I want to make instead is an impact, no matter how small.
It's good to be back.
From 6/5/16:
I opened up this blog tonight to end it. I haven’t posted since January, when the piece about the cats spiraled out of control. I wrote, though. In my anger and humiliation and devastation, I drafted an email to the editors of xoJane (I never sent it). In the same state of mind I wrote a piece called “bridge,” about how instead of building a bridge and getting over it, I was going to find a new bridge in a quieter place, one without any trolls hiding underneath.
I vowed to keep writing, but only for a small audience of friends of family, submitting only to small literary journals and not worrying about how many people actually read my work. I quit Twitter. I made my blog private. I hid, while Kevin logged in to the blog to check for stray comments and delete them.
But we were moving. And I had just gone back to work. And it was cold. Everything was a mess and for a little while I wanted nothing to do with the putrid wasteland of the Internet.
So I hatched a new plan. I’d send sea salt back out to sea, tucked safely inside a glass bottle and left to bob along the ocean waves in total anonymity. I’d sift through all the posts (93 published, 29 drafts), print them out, bind them together, and have a little coming-of-age collection to sit quietly on my shelf. Then I’d disable the blog and eventually, when the time was right, start a new one. It would be better this way.
I sat down tonight and opened up the blog to start printing. The house is still and quiet, Kevin out at a rehearsal and Jolene sound asleep in the next room. I clicked on a few old posts from 2009, remembering with joy that time of my life, so free, so expectant of the world, so in love with writing about everything around me.
I stopped on one from October 2009, called “high tide,” written about the ocean during a violent storm. I lived near the beach in those days, and Kevin and I had gone to walk along the seawall, reflecting on how the ocean seemed to be purging itself of garbage, cleansing itself after the storms. Near the end of the piece, I wrote this:
I also believe in cleansing through peace. In quiet reflection, meditation, prayer, true stillness. There are some things that simply sink when we are still, and do not disturb the waters. Things that may have seemed to be as disruptive as a lobster trap, but were in reality no more than a floating leaf, or a shell that finds a place in the sand and is allowed to stay. When these lighter things have drifted away, we have clarity, seeing straight through to the bottom, to the sides, to the sky where the sun reflects like gold on the surface. And in that clarity, that vision, that gold from above, there is joy, and in joy, peace.
I want to return to the ocean when the weekend storms have ceased, when there is peace and stillness again. I want to see what has been purged, what has floated away, and what remains. I want to hear the ocean speak again, sighing, "Peace be with you."
Perhaps for me the weekend storms have ceased. There is peace and stillness in my home tonight, the open windows allowing a cool breeze and the chirping of birds to drift in. It is quiet and calm. I feel safe.
So maybe I will return to the ocean after all, trusting that the heaviest debris has sunk, the floating leaves have drifted away. Maybe the storm is over and the ocean is safe, cleansed of intrusion, poison, and violence.
Maybe I will return. But I will not go seeking revenge. I will go seeking peace, as I always have, and I will trust that I will find it.