Welcome to The Self Steader

Several years ago, at a particularly low moment in my life, I was standing in line at the local coffee shop, feeling pretty sorry for myself, feeling very alone and unloved, and my financial situation was dire. I felt a tap on my shoulder, light enough that I could have ignored it, wanted to ignore it, but I turned and saw a sweet, quiet friend, who handed me an envelope, gently squeezed my hand, and went on about her day. (That’s the movie version of that encounter, but it really wasn’t far from it.)

Inside the envelope was a simple card, and in the card was $200 and a note: Please keep writing.

I spent that cash quick, on cigarettes and wine and gas so I could get to jobs, but in my mind, for these several years, I have held the memory of it, and of the trust and encouragement it conveyed to me.

There have been plenty more low points, and a handful of victories, since that day. Since that day, too, I have had this day - - out of focus sometimes, maybe all of the time — at the end of circuitous detours, often seeming to move away from me with the horizon - - in front of me.

This day, I launch The Self Steader, a blog about all the ways we build ourselves from scratch. I hope that you may find some wisdom in these paragraphs, maybe some laughs, and that you are regularly reminded that you are your own most important DIY project.

Today, May 7th, 2024, is important to me for another reason. It is the 20th anniversary of the day I had a hysterectomy, ending my plans to become a parent in that way.

When you experience a devastating loss of any kind, the world conspires to rush you through your grief, from love, of course. I believe that it is love, but it is also because your grief cannot always be hidden from sight, though we certainly try, and it is uncomfortable to witness. Grief is a glacier, pushing across the landscape and ripping parts of you up by the roots, unstoppable. It is its own time-keeper. When it recedes, (it only ever recedes, and never disappears) nothing is where you left it. Some things you thought you needed are buried forever, and you have to learn to do without them fast. Other unexpected things are exposed, and must be attended to. There is scarring. Not one thing in its path is unaltered.

Over these twenty years, I have worked (and often failed) to remain hopeful and engaged. I have brushed past my grief, I have met it head-on, I have let it sit on my chest until I could barely breathe. I have tried to replace it with other lesser griefs. I have tried to contain the splatter, and I have used it as a weapon against myself and others. Occasionally I’ve even managed it in healthy, if clumsy, ways.

I’ve experienced other losses since. My second marriage ended. Friendships ended. Friends died. Pets died. My mother died. We closed a business. I gave energy and time and dollars and relationships to addiction. I gave up some fundamental beliefs about myself. I closed myself off from things that might have helped me to heal faster, or better. I got sober. I gave up cigarettes.

Yes, those last two things came with losses.

An anniversary can just be a day to remember, and sometimes that’s enough. This one, for me, is an opportunity to renegotiate the terms of my relationship with grief in general, and with this source of grief in particular. To be more open and honest with and about it. To embrace my own creativity as a toolbox for building new spaces in which to meet all the grief and love and joy there is in the world.

Why, yes, I DID throw up in my mouth a little as I wrote that last sentence!

But it is what I mean to do.