Read the Opening Chapter of My Book!
Or listen along as I read it to friends around our fire pit.
I’m writing a memoir about parenting for those who are a parent or have a parent. It includes the difficult and uncomfortable conversations or scenarios I’ve faced together with my family, including topics like death, faith, racism, and mental health, among others. For a little while, I’m using this newsletter to help me focus on finishing the first draft. You can read other excerpts from my draft HERE.
Hi, it’s me.
I’m excited to share with you a pretty solid draft of my memoir’s introduction, creatively titled, Why I Wrote This Book. I’m dangerously close to being precious about this chapter because I believe my voice is strong & distinct, and my tone sets the stage of what’s to come (I wonder if you’ll agree). When done with this chapter, I feel like the reader will either love it or give it away to that weird girl at the weekly Bible study who scares her.
But though I may feel precious about it now, I know there will be edits. I’m still writing the book and may need to adjust for what I haven’t figured out yet. For example, I had an epiphany just last week that what I’m really writing about is family culture — the one we grow up in and the one we create — hence the shift to being a book about parenting whether you are a parent or have a parent.
If you like listening to audio, I recorded myself reading the chapter (but not this intro) to a group of friends around our fire pit in the backyard — a gathering we host weekly. I intentionally kept it low key, using my iPhone’s voice memo app on speaker. As I started reading, I panicked because I didn’t have my reading glasses and it was getting too dark for my non-glassed eyes to see the tiny print. In other words, I was reading like a robot with extra long arms until about minute 11:15 when my friend handed me the flashlight on her phone.
In the comments (or reply to the email), I’d love to know if…
this intro gives you a good idea of what’s to come. If it doesn’t, what do you think is missing?
based on this intro, you can think of someone in your life you’d want to give this book to, and why.
based on this intro, you can think of someone you know who would hate this book or at least not appreciate it, and why.
(Don’t need you to spill the tea on anyone, just surveying your thoughts on readership.)
Thanks for reading!
Until next time,
Jen
Why I Wrote This Book
“What I find interesting about rowing,” Dr. Mason was saying, “is that it’s always done backwards. It’s almost as if the sport itself is trying to teach us not to get ahead of ourselves.” He opened his car door. “Actually, when you think about it, rowing is almost exactly like raising kids. Both require patience, endurance, strength, and commitment. And neither allow us to see where we’re going – only where we’ve been. I find that very reassuring, don’t you? Except for the flip-outs – of course. I could really do with fewer flip-outs.”
“You mean flips.”
“Flip-outs,” he insisted, getting in his car. “Yesterday one of my kids hit the other with a shovel.”
Dr. Mason, in Lesson In Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
“I’m not going to be friends with black people anymore,” my then five-year-old said.
We were crossing the street at a busy intersection on our way home from the school bus stop, and she was walking ahead of me. I can still see the bounce in her step – she was always full of extroverted energy after a full day at kindergarten – and she says this matter-of-factly as she might matter-of-factly choose grilled cheese over peanut butter and jelly.
She had just stepped up to the curb on the other side, and I was in the middle of the intersection with my foot hanging in mid-air step. I lurched forward awkwardly, the circuits in my brain having focused so much attention on not reacting that they forgot to tell my legs how to walk. I contain the flush of adrenaline running through me with the stillness in my face, jaw clenched as tight as my chest, projecting calmness through the internal tidal wave.
whatdoido whatdoido whatdoido
I step onto the curb and take a breath.
“Tell me more about that,” I say.
— 🌼 —
There’s a scene I love in the movie, Trainwreck. Amy Schumer’s character is at a baby shower for her sister, and the ladies gather in the living room to play a baby shower game.
If you’re unfamiliar with how baby shower games work, think of them as team building exercises for the mom-to-be and her friends – like The Amazing Race, but the final destination is a 4am drive to the hospital across town over every pothole that exists in the city while someone yells JUST RUN THE RED LIGHT NOBODY IS AWAKE RIGHT NOW and someone else points out that it’s against the rules and we’ll get there when we get there.
Baby shower game examples include: guess the chocolate candy bars brands that are melted into diapers like poop (is that a raisin or a peanut?); memorize all the baby-related items on a tray, then write them down from memory (treasure your beautiful short term memory while you still have it); and my personal favorite for women who can’t see their feet much less put on their own shoes: guess how big the pregnant lady is by eyeballing the length of toilet paper that will wrap around a growing belly that may or may not be the cause of some complicated feelings about how her body is changing.
Back to Amy Schumer at a baby shower…
Their game is to confess something they’ve never told anyone before. Schumer looks visibly nervous as the first gal shares how she sometimes eats Skinny Cow Ice Cream Sandwiches after everyone has gone to bed. The second gal confesses that she let her six-year-old watch Glee. GASP! SHOCK! TOO SOON!
It is now Schumer’s turn. She puts on a fake voice and says, “I don’t know how I can follow these. You guys are so brave! Thank you for trusting.” Her sister (played by the fabulous Brie Larson) gives her a suspicious side eye.
Then Schumer’s character proceeds to tell the story of how she had sex with a guy and three days later realized the condom had been “pounded up there” and was stuck in her cervix. After googling how to get it out, she explains how she had to bear down, hook her finger, and dig it out.
There is silent shock as the group absorbs this confession. Schumer sips her Pinot Grigio.
Then the gal next to her breaks the silence and confesses, “I let Tim and his brothers tag team me on Christmas morning. And you know what? It was wonderful!”
[I will pause here for those who are laughing. There is more of this ahead, but I think you can handle it. Keep reading and let’s laugh together through the awkward moments. If you are already offended and drafting a Facebook post about how offensive you find me and this story to be, I will wear your Amazon One Star Review like a badge of honor. If you raised your eyebrow in speculation but are still here, keep reading. Your curiosity may unite the world.]
I love everything about this scene. When I look past the comedic absurdity, I see a circle of women who are willing to exist in the shallow end of life, then Schumer’s character cannonballs into the deep end with her authentic self. She’s offensive, and maybe a little mocking, but she’s incapable of existing outside of something real.
As I reflect on the meaningful connections I’ve made with other women over the years, I can see now that I made them from the deep end, a place where I feel comfortable -- and perhaps even compelled -- to swim. I didn’t understand this when I was younger. My inability to Small Talk made me awkward at parties and useless as a small business owner whose livelihood depended on networking to bring in new clients. I know now that I’m wired for deep connections, but for a long time I thought I was failing to do what everyone else could do with relative ease.
This played out for me in online circles as well.
A long time ago when I was struggling to find my writing voice, I started a blog. It was 2004, the wild west days of the internet. It may be hard for some of you to imagine now, given the whole “influencer” culture that makes us all feel shitty about our basic lives, but back then we were just a bunch of moms writing about our daily struggle online. Being basic was “in.” Barely getting through the day with our sanity intact was the struggle that united us. We felt seen, even if we came across a little whiny and depressed. We had strong opinions on free range versus helicopter parenting, or the pros and cons of drinking wine with other moms while on “play dates” (I always hated that term).
It was during this time that I heard a radio interview with an author who’s been hugely influential to me: Anne Lamott. She talked about how the essays and memoirs she writes are her own personal stories, but they’re also universal stories. She writes them because she knows others will see themselves in her experiences and not feel so alone.
As a developing writer, this helped me understand what I was experiencing in the comment section of my blog. Women thanked me for sharing the messier side of parenting and mental health – some version of “I thought I was the only one.” I had been worrying that I talked about myself too much, but Anne Lamott helped me see I was writing things that resonated.
(I think this means I’m just like Anne Lamott and we should be friends and sit together by the dessert table at parties.)
I wrote things on my blog like, “I thought long and hard about abandoning my four year old in the deodorant aisle at Target today,” which made people laugh, but also nod and inhale deeply. I’ve encountered plenty of moms who react to me like the baby shower ladies in Trainwreck – GASP! SHOCK! TOO SOON! Sometimes I’m offensive, maybe a little mocking, but I know I can’t exist outside of something real, and real is sometimes messy.
For women, and for moms in particular, reading and writing blogs online marked the first time we heard from each other unfiltered by publishing companies. The world was getting bigger as the internet opened it up. I could share the messiness of life as it was happening and receive real-time encouragement in the comments (comment trolls had not presented yet). I could read the messiness of your life and feel in good company.
I was not alone.
Fast forward a decade when I was invited to participate in a Facebook group for moms of little ones. My kids were older, and someone thought it might be nice to have a few people in the group who’d already been through the preschool years. I had quit blogging by then and was delighted to connect with other moms again. While in this group, I observed and was reminded of how difficult parenting can be on your sense of self and confidence. Reasonable women with brains and excellent decision making skills and badass careers are all systematically leveled by the fear and anxiety of not only keeping a human alive, but wondering if it will thrive.
At this point I was several years out of the toddler and preschool stage, but I still remembered my own fear of ruining my daughter’s life as we faced each decision that impacted her. Was she ready for kindergarten? Was our neighborhood school good enough for her? Are we bad parents for making her ride the school bus at age six or are we bad parents for not making her ride the school bus? She’s really into wearing shoes with a slight heel, but is nine too young for heels? Are shoes with heels at age nine the gateway style for working the pole at Girls Girls Girls downtown?
I’m in my twentieth year of parenting now, and my new working theory is: Who’s to say?
*shrug emoji*
Let me explain.
My thesis on parenting is that it’s all just one big experiment.
We try a little of this, we try a little of that, and we wait to see what happens. If this doesn’t work, we try something else. If that doesn’t work, we adjust again. Our children are not algorithms. We don’t input a bunch of data points to achieve an expected result. They are complex humans who are impacted by experiences, who have feelings that interpret those experiences, who have curiosities that lie outside of our parental control panel.
A clear example of this is from our oldest daughter’s elementary school days. The HPV vaccine had just hit the scene, and it was recommended for girls around age eleven. The thing is, HPV was known at the time to be primarily transmitted through sex. This led many parents in my faith circles to refuse the vaccine for their daughters, because they, of course, were raising good little Christian girls who would absolutely not be having sex until they were married.
There was a clear expectation that the data they were inputting into their eleven-year-old daughters would produce a seventeen or nineteen or twenty-one year old daughter who would continue to refrain from having sex. I thought this was bananas. How in the world could I predict how my now eleven-year-old would act when she is seventeen? I mean, I can hope, I can advise, I can dictate, I can even lock her in the basement (maybe that last one crosses a line), but I felt it was irresponsible for me to refuse her protection from a sexually transmitted virus based on the expectation of future behavior.
Because… who’s to say?
*shrug emoji*
This is my twentieth year as a mom, and I’ve been thinking about succes.
When you work for 20 years at most things — like gardening, a career, or a sport — you can usually call yourself an expert. And when you’re an expert, you can charge more money for what you do, or coach teams, or manage people, or teach skills, or become a strategic advisor in your field of expertise.
Can you call yourself an expert at 20 years of parenting?
I’m certainly not getting paid more for my experience! And what’s the benchmark of parenting success, anyway? In other words, at what point do I measure an outcome and declare myself an expert (or not)? Do I do it now, when they’re 18 and 20 and both launched into university? Or later, if/when they graduate and land a job? Or is it when they get married (What if they don’t get married?!)? Do I get extra points if they go to church and lose points if they smoke pot? Do we measure milestones and achievements or friendliness and character? Is it a success if my daughter graduates college, or a failure that she’s not a doctor?
How do we factor life’s natural derailments into our success metrics — the trauma that comes out of nowhere, a bad decision that leads to jail time, or the mental health diagnosis that takes years to understand? Are we grading on a curve?
Who’s to say?
*shrug emoji*
Most of us are at least good parents. Or we pretend to be as we keep smiling in photos, hoping no one discovers we feel way in over our head.
Anyway, this stuff is hard, which is why I’m writing a memoir about my experience, not a parenting how-to book. Sometimes we don’t need expert advice, we just want to know we’re not alone.
— 🌼 —
None of us are good at parenting right out of the box, but we forget this in the middle of a 2am scream feeding when we’re panicking because How do I get this fucking monster back to sleep again? doesn’t feel like a very warm and fuzzy thought to have as a mother. We forget this when our five-year-old white child tells us she doesn’t want to be friends with Black people anymore and we worry that our next sentence will be the wrong sentence and result in a white supremacist origin story.
(I’ll finish that story in a later chapter and get into more topics like it, such as faith, death, sexuality, and mental health, among others.)
This is why I wrote this book.
Throughout 20+ years of parenting, I found myself in a handful of challenging parenting predicaments, and these are stories about how I responded, for better or worse. It’s not a parenting how-to book. If you’ve come here looking for me to tell you how to do it, you’ve bought, borrowed, or pirated the wrong book (Please don’t steal. It’s rude.). In fact, you might read this book and decide I’m a little out there for you like Amy Schumer at the baby shower, and that’s okay, too. I look forward to your one star Amazon review.
I wrote this book because I’m a cannonballer who exists in the deep end of life, pretending to be good at it. More than anything, I hope this book is an encouragement for you to let go of the stress you may be feeling. You’re not “doing it wrong.” You’re doing it the best way you know how to do it.
Grab a beverage, put on your favorite cozy clothes, and let’s go. Have I got a story to tell you!
In the comments, I’d love to know if…
this intro gives you a good idea of what’s to come. If it doesn’t, what do you think is missing?
you can think of someone in your life you’d want to give this book to, and why.
you can think of someone you know who would hate this book or at least not appreciate it, and why. In other words, who do you think would give this book a negative review, and what would they say? Totally being serious here - I’m collecting fake negative reviews of my own book to help me identify my ideal readers.
Thanks for reading!
In the comments (or you can reply to the email), I’d love to know if…
- this intro gives you a good idea of what’s to come. If it doesn’t, what do you think is missing?
- based on this intro, you can think of someone in your life you’d want to give this book to, and why.
- based on this intro, you can think of someone you know who would hate this book or at least not appreciate it, and why.
Oh wow, this was really fun. I saved it for when I had the right time and mind-space. And I wasn’t far into it when I realized what I like about your writing, which is to say what I like about you: that you dive into the deep end. I think I’m like that too. It’s too freaking boring in the shallow end. Anyway, as always, your writing voice conveys this beautifully, and I think you’ve perfectly prepared the reader for what I expect is to come. No one can read this introduction and tell them they weren’t warned.
Having said all that, I will say that the book is probably not for me, and it’s not because I’m old and have already done all the good/damage to my kids that I can do. No, it wouldn’t have been for young me either, for two (maybe related) reasons. First, I’m a guy and you are very clearly signaling that this is a book for Moms. There’s nothing wrong with that at all, but it does tell me that it’s not for me. It’s always not for me because for whatever reason, I don’t struggle with self-doubt or second-guess myself very much, and you’ve also signaled that this book is for people who worry about whether they are doing it right. I (like you) always figured things were gonna work out so I’d just do my best.
I can think of a few people who would probably enjoy this book (or would have when their kids were younger), for sure. I’d tell them it’s funny and it makes a convincing case that you can’t screw parenting up too bad if you love your kids and give them your time. I wouldn’t tell them to quit being so damned neurotic about parenting and lighten up!
Anyway, I liked it. Hope it continues to go well for you.