😭❤️ Thank you, Lyz. This morning, especially, after a ridiculous debate with my partner (triggered by Taylor Swift) where I found myself defending feminism and he walked out (he's back, silent, pouty). All night and this morning, my mantra has been (will always be), I will not mute myself. Not for him. Not for anyone. Never again. If that results in a bad back from a leaky air mattress, it will still be worth it.
I don’t have your gift with words, but I can read your words again and again, and feel validated. I wish I could have read them 45-50 years ago and learned that I was not the problem. I was not crazy. Your words have helped me. Thank you.
Researching for the memoir I'm writing, last weekend I re-read three months of email correspondence between my ex-husband and I just as everything was falling finally and spectacularly apart. As I was moving out of the house I thought I would die in. As we were negotiating custody. As he was introducing our young children to his mistress as his girlfriend in retaliation for my filing for child support. As I was surviving on child support, food stamps, borrowed money from my parents, cigarettes snuck on the front porch after bedtime, and vodka with grapefruit juice.
Witnessing the dynamic between us all these years later was both disorienting and sobering. How he would do something controlling and horrible, like moving the direct deposit of his paycheck out of our checking account leaving me with only $500 to my name, then calmly inform me that if I needed more I could "ask for it". I would respond like an unsuspecting cat pitched into a bucket of icy cold water, hissing and spitting and scratching desperately to get away, get out of this horrible situation and he would insist, "I'm not doing anything to you. Why are you always so angry? Why do you always have to play the victim?"
My rage and grief were nearly equal to my self-doubt. Was he right? Was I the problem? Was my trauma-spiked rage the issue, just like he had spent more than thirteen years insisting over and over and over again? I didn't honestly know anymore. I had no idea what was true. He angrily shot at me, "Oh, so now a week is seven days?" and I actually wondered, inside myself, "It is...isn't it?" At the same time that my rage reared up and shot back, "Are you fucking kidding me?" It was like months (years) of continual whiplash, and the pain and disorientation of it crawled back over me like a shroud as I read those emails.
How do I convey that feeling properly, I wondered. How do I show how trapped and confused and consumed with grief I was? And how do I honestly account for the ways in which a lifetime of trauma and gaslighting was, in fact, fueling the fire of my rage so much hotter than it might have been otherwise, which didn't make my rage at him unjustified?
How do you explain to people that being a woman here and now, in this godforsaken country, is just more of the same? More rage. More self-doubt. More desperation to get away and more surety that there's nowhere safe to go.
Assuming I can finish this thing before it kills me, if only one woman (one!) reads it and thinks she's not crazy or alone. One sees the life I have now (which is real and hard but also fucking great) and thinks, Okay. Maybe I can make it. Maybe I should go. If one woman also decides to tell her story then it will truly all have been worth it.
😭 Oh wow. Thank you. A box in my garage holds the pages I wrote in frustration as I lost myself in my marriage. I’ve been divorced for nearly 16 years. I have not been able to read those journals. I think I will read them now. I think the contents will strengthen my stories. My story.
Thank you, Lyz. I found and read your book (ex-wife) while re-writing some old essays from a writing class back in 2008. It was just the boost I needed to assemble them. Getting closer. But I do need to open that box to remind me (specifically) why I left it all behind. Like you, gaslighting was a big part of it. I’ve pieced myself together again but it sure took a while. Thank you so much for your voice as it is so valuable to others. 💕
Every time I read this story of your things being hidden, it grieves me so. So much of my motherhood story is shutting myself away and becoming an unrecognizable person. I have worked so hard to reclaim parts of myself as my boys have become teens and young adults. I face an empty nest in a couple of years, but I will be whole again.
My 73-year-old mom went through Hurrican Helene in September. She didn't have a river of water wiping everything out, but she did have no power for 11 days and no communication. Last week, she sent me a folder wherein she had written an account of every day of those 11 days. She wrote to remember. She wrote to fight the trauma (because now even a little wind during a storm has her panicked). She wrote because she went through an event. And so, her words have been entered into our family history. It was so important that her story was told, and I am grateful to receive it.
I also live in the path of Helene, and the first day my work re-opened we had power, but no internet, no internet-based phones, and no cell service. It was shockingly difficult to coordinate restarting our factory without digital communication. I started hand-writing invitations to meetings and leaving them at people's desks. I hand wrote meeting notes and action plans and distributed xerox copies.
It only lasted a couple of days, but many people still have my handwritten meeting invites tacked to their bulletin boards like little mementos. They were so delighted to receive hand-written paper "mail", both as a novel concept in our modern workplace and as a lifeline of communication. It was a strange time.
Thank you - your "This American Ex wife" saved me! It gave me the courage to keep going forward on my divorce as I lost myself to marriage in 1971. I kept thinking, he's having a rough time at work. He has to study harder. He just got a new job. After 4 affairs, day trading $1.2 million which I had to cash out a 403b to rescue us from bankruptcy. I did not turn back - 9 months divorced after 52 years. Now, I'm writing my stories, the stories I didn't tell anyone and I'm trying to find myself as that 19 year old woman is gone, but I have discovered all the things that brought her joy are bubbling back up like a hot Yosemite spring.
I'm rearranging the furniture in my home to make it mine! I started by getting rid of the piano we got each other for our 25th - I don't play and it is a 7ft grand - I found a musical couple in need. Now, I have a sitting space with my grandmothers love seat (for 25 years in the guest bedroom), my dad's wingback chair and another wingback found at a resale. It is feeling like my home!
"We write to make a personal accounting of who we are in the face of a power that wants to erase us."
After the election, I got off all news, social media, etc. for a while. It was just too painful. I’m slowly coming back, and as I do, these are the words I want to read. These are the stories. They give me hope. They are not a waste. Because without these words and these stories, what choice do I have but to despair?
Thank you for your words. Please thank your colleague for his words. And please, please keep writing. ❤️
This essay is completely relevant now, and I suspect, always.
You speak very clearly of the phenomena of changing women's realities. It happened to me in my marriage to such a degree that was I was contemplating getting out I had to check on reality with outside others. Who we are as told by others can so easily become what we believe. So yes we must tell our own stories again and again.
And also, I am here for adrienne mareé Browne today and every day. Her words me sustenance truly every day. Thank you for including that piece.
I needed this today and for the next few years. It reminded me of the last chapter of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” which is a paper delivered at an academic conference for scholars of the history of Gilead, years after Gilead ceased to exist. Atwood wrote a dystopia but gave us all a little hope at the end, consisting of a discussion of the words of the Handmaid that survived. In the worst place imaginable, the words of a woman who was forbidden from having words survived.
I know that fiction is what the author wants, with no necessary relation to what is or could be in reality. We have no guarantee of success, but we also don’t have any guarantee of failure. The bad people who are in charge now rely on our despair, and the fact that we have our own and others’ stories should keep us from despair. They need our silence; we need our loud voices.
I've been thinking about a lot about writing the story of how I dis covered at age 50 that I was trans. I don't know what I'll do with it, but now I should just write it.
THEY would have us believe that we are fools/crazy/alone. And we are not. Many have said that community will get us through this, and I believe that is true. Community, and the stories that we share.
Again, thank for your words, and your courage. We, your audience here, can't say it enough.
😭❤️ Thank you, Lyz. This morning, especially, after a ridiculous debate with my partner (triggered by Taylor Swift) where I found myself defending feminism and he walked out (he's back, silent, pouty). All night and this morning, my mantra has been (will always be), I will not mute myself. Not for him. Not for anyone. Never again. If that results in a bad back from a leaky air mattress, it will still be worth it.
Oh that’s such a hard place to be but I am glad you are sticking up for your voice
I don’t have your gift with words, but I can read your words again and again, and feel validated. I wish I could have read them 45-50 years ago and learned that I was not the problem. I was not crazy. Your words have helped me. Thank you.
Researching for the memoir I'm writing, last weekend I re-read three months of email correspondence between my ex-husband and I just as everything was falling finally and spectacularly apart. As I was moving out of the house I thought I would die in. As we were negotiating custody. As he was introducing our young children to his mistress as his girlfriend in retaliation for my filing for child support. As I was surviving on child support, food stamps, borrowed money from my parents, cigarettes snuck on the front porch after bedtime, and vodka with grapefruit juice.
Witnessing the dynamic between us all these years later was both disorienting and sobering. How he would do something controlling and horrible, like moving the direct deposit of his paycheck out of our checking account leaving me with only $500 to my name, then calmly inform me that if I needed more I could "ask for it". I would respond like an unsuspecting cat pitched into a bucket of icy cold water, hissing and spitting and scratching desperately to get away, get out of this horrible situation and he would insist, "I'm not doing anything to you. Why are you always so angry? Why do you always have to play the victim?"
My rage and grief were nearly equal to my self-doubt. Was he right? Was I the problem? Was my trauma-spiked rage the issue, just like he had spent more than thirteen years insisting over and over and over again? I didn't honestly know anymore. I had no idea what was true. He angrily shot at me, "Oh, so now a week is seven days?" and I actually wondered, inside myself, "It is...isn't it?" At the same time that my rage reared up and shot back, "Are you fucking kidding me?" It was like months (years) of continual whiplash, and the pain and disorientation of it crawled back over me like a shroud as I read those emails.
How do I convey that feeling properly, I wondered. How do I show how trapped and confused and consumed with grief I was? And how do I honestly account for the ways in which a lifetime of trauma and gaslighting was, in fact, fueling the fire of my rage so much hotter than it might have been otherwise, which didn't make my rage at him unjustified?
How do you explain to people that being a woman here and now, in this godforsaken country, is just more of the same? More rage. More self-doubt. More desperation to get away and more surety that there's nowhere safe to go.
Assuming I can finish this thing before it kills me, if only one woman (one!) reads it and thinks she's not crazy or alone. One sees the life I have now (which is real and hard but also fucking great) and thinks, Okay. Maybe I can make it. Maybe I should go. If one woman also decides to tell her story then it will truly all have been worth it.
i'm so sorry that all that happened to you, asha, and i am SO glad that you are here now, sharing your voice and your words with us. keep saying.
I would definitely read your memoir when you publish it
😭 Oh wow. Thank you. A box in my garage holds the pages I wrote in frustration as I lost myself in my marriage. I’ve been divorced for nearly 16 years. I have not been able to read those journals. I think I will read them now. I think the contents will strengthen my stories. My story.
I hope you find in them any lost pieces of yourself again 💕
Thank you, Lyz. I found and read your book (ex-wife) while re-writing some old essays from a writing class back in 2008. It was just the boost I needed to assemble them. Getting closer. But I do need to open that box to remind me (specifically) why I left it all behind. Like you, gaslighting was a big part of it. I’ve pieced myself together again but it sure took a while. Thank you so much for your voice as it is so valuable to others. 💕
Every time I read this story of your things being hidden, it grieves me so. So much of my motherhood story is shutting myself away and becoming an unrecognizable person. I have worked so hard to reclaim parts of myself as my boys have become teens and young adults. I face an empty nest in a couple of years, but I will be whole again.
My 73-year-old mom went through Hurrican Helene in September. She didn't have a river of water wiping everything out, but she did have no power for 11 days and no communication. Last week, she sent me a folder wherein she had written an account of every day of those 11 days. She wrote to remember. She wrote to fight the trauma (because now even a little wind during a storm has her panicked). She wrote because she went through an event. And so, her words have been entered into our family history. It was so important that her story was told, and I am grateful to receive it.
I also live in the path of Helene, and the first day my work re-opened we had power, but no internet, no internet-based phones, and no cell service. It was shockingly difficult to coordinate restarting our factory without digital communication. I started hand-writing invitations to meetings and leaving them at people's desks. I hand wrote meeting notes and action plans and distributed xerox copies.
It only lasted a couple of days, but many people still have my handwritten meeting invites tacked to their bulletin boards like little mementos. They were so delighted to receive hand-written paper "mail", both as a novel concept in our modern workplace and as a lifeline of communication. It was a strange time.
you must be so proud of your mom. she is brave and amazing.
So many stunning lines here.
"It’s hard to fight silence."
"It turns out you can live in a fiction for a long time."
"I realized that whatever story I had been living was erasing me."
"In this swamp of fear, all we have are our words."
And more...thank you so much for reposting this.
Thank you - your "This American Ex wife" saved me! It gave me the courage to keep going forward on my divorce as I lost myself to marriage in 1971. I kept thinking, he's having a rough time at work. He has to study harder. He just got a new job. After 4 affairs, day trading $1.2 million which I had to cash out a 403b to rescue us from bankruptcy. I did not turn back - 9 months divorced after 52 years. Now, I'm writing my stories, the stories I didn't tell anyone and I'm trying to find myself as that 19 year old woman is gone, but I have discovered all the things that brought her joy are bubbling back up like a hot Yosemite spring.
I'm rearranging the furniture in my home to make it mine! I started by getting rid of the piano we got each other for our 25th - I don't play and it is a 7ft grand - I found a musical couple in need. Now, I have a sitting space with my grandmothers love seat (for 25 years in the guest bedroom), my dad's wingback chair and another wingback found at a resale. It is feeling like my home!
"We write to make a personal accounting of who we are in the face of a power that wants to erase us."
MUCH respect to you! 52 years is a long time. You deserve peace and happiness.
I loved this so much!
After the election, I got off all news, social media, etc. for a while. It was just too painful. I’m slowly coming back, and as I do, these are the words I want to read. These are the stories. They give me hope. They are not a waste. Because without these words and these stories, what choice do I have but to despair?
Thank you for your words. Please thank your colleague for his words. And please, please keep writing. ❤️
Yup. You write like a motherfucker. Now I feel like crying and throwing things. Again. Thank you for your words.
I feel exactly the same way.
This essay is completely relevant now, and I suspect, always.
You speak very clearly of the phenomena of changing women's realities. It happened to me in my marriage to such a degree that was I was contemplating getting out I had to check on reality with outside others. Who we are as told by others can so easily become what we believe. So yes we must tell our own stories again and again.
And also, I am here for adrienne mareé Browne today and every day. Her words me sustenance truly every day. Thank you for including that piece.
I needed this today and for the next few years. It reminded me of the last chapter of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” which is a paper delivered at an academic conference for scholars of the history of Gilead, years after Gilead ceased to exist. Atwood wrote a dystopia but gave us all a little hope at the end, consisting of a discussion of the words of the Handmaid that survived. In the worst place imaginable, the words of a woman who was forbidden from having words survived.
I know that fiction is what the author wants, with no necessary relation to what is or could be in reality. We have no guarantee of success, but we also don’t have any guarantee of failure. The bad people who are in charge now rely on our despair, and the fact that we have our own and others’ stories should keep us from despair. They need our silence; we need our loud voices.
Shout!
This one's a keeper for the return-to-re-read pile. Thank you for making it and re-sharing it.
Wow, just wow! This is so powerful.
I've been thinking about a lot about writing the story of how I dis covered at age 50 that I was trans. I don't know what I'll do with it, but now I should just write it.
THEY would have us believe that we are fools/crazy/alone. And we are not. Many have said that community will get us through this, and I believe that is true. Community, and the stories that we share.
Again, thank for your words, and your courage. We, your audience here, can't say it enough.
You, your voice, this cri du coeur manifesto all inspire me again and again.
Happy Thanksgiving, lyz.
Thank you. I needed this so much.