Half Of This Post Is [REDACTED]

PLUS: Summer Drop-In Bird Painting Sessions Are Finally Live!

A Note For You, If You’re Having A Bad Day

My Dear Friend,

I cringe at a lot of my early writing — though not necessarily because it was bad (which isn’t to say that it was good, or, for that matter, not bad), but because I had no idea how to write about people I knew. I did write about them, pretty much constantly, but I wrote about them the way you write in your locked purple diary, not the way you write things publicly. It rarely struck me that the people in my life (AND I AM CRINGING!) experienced their own realities differently than I perceived them. Bridges were burned.

In my first book, Many Love, which is a memoir, I wrote about many of my exes. At the time, I was on friendly-ish terms with all of them, and felt like they’d be (dare I say) honored to be in my memoir. After reading the advice of other memoirists (and hearing the advice of my publisher’s lawyers), I sent every page that mentioned someone to the person (or persons) named therein, to check if it was okay to publish. I had zero practice with this. It seemed overly-fastidious: the kind of ethical move necessitated by a byline in prestigious publications, but not a blog or even a scrappy feminist aggregate. 

I imagined my exes writing back immediately with a version of, “Oh my god, Sophie, I am so honored you wrote about me. I love you forever, and the time I spent with you was so valuable. I can’t wait to pay full price for this book when it comes out, because besides being a great all-around human being, you’re also a top-notch writer.”

Obviously, I didn’t get that reaction.

I’ll start with the best case scenario: a friend (not an ex) who was hurt by the ways I portrayed him called me to talk to me about it. I was confused: wasn’t he flattered? No. He was not. He didn’t see himself the way I saw him, and it hurt his feelings to read the passage. I’d thought it had been glowing! He’d felt flattened.

Next was an ex with whom I had a friendly-but-fraught relationship. He took a while to get back to me, and eventually texted that it was all fine, but he wanted his name changed. I didn’t read too much into that: he was a private person.

And then my more recent ex, who I still called about once a month to congenially discuss puppies or grad school, weighed in. It took him a while, and I had to follow up. My friend: he was pissed. His email was so disarming that the mere thought of going back to it to report to you what it actually said sends me spiraling. He said that this was not how he’d experienced things. This was not an OK thing for me to be doing. I should never write about him again. The email was the internet equivalent of slamming the phone down on the receiver. We haven’t spoken since.

All of this floored me. I mean, isn’t it everyone’s dream to be a muse? Not mine of course, but I was an artist. And also, hey, if a bespectacled guitarist ever wanted to do a YouTube song about how he saw a cute girl in the coffee shop, and that girl was me, well — I’d be into it.

Since then, I’ve changed my policy. I don’t publish someone’s name without asking them anymore, no matter how scrappy the pub. Regularly, someone will get back to me with a, “Thanks for checking! I’d actually rather you didn’t include that.” 

I haven’t been written about all that much, but there’s an exception: In 2015, when I moved away from New Orleans, someone on the internet absolutely skewered a piece I wrote about leaving New Orleans — a writing cliché apparently warranting a whole Tumblr of hip take-down rebukes. More horrifically, my piece had been sent to the Tumblr’s author by a fan. Which means there was a person out there who hated my blog post enough to write someone else an email about it and ask them to publicly insult it. They did a decent job!

I publish my work, and in so doing, I ask people to have reactions to it. Publishing your work is like saying, “Hi! Look at me! Talk about me! I’m fodder!” When I wrote about people, especially in my twenties, it didn’t strike me as possible that it’s not everyone’s cup of tea to be fodder. Furthermore, my lived experience is flat: I see people, I hear them, if I’m my best self I listen to them, I notice their contexts, and I draw conclusions. Have you ever been totally right about someone else? If you’re saying, “Actually, Sophie, yes!” I would counter with, just wait.

So now it’s a rule: I won’t publish what I write about you without sending you a draft in advance. Not every writer follows this rule, and I think it quite limits the opportunity for virality, because conversation comes from language perceived to be incendiary. Oh well: frankly, true virality is terrifying.

I’m bringing this up because for going-on three years, 90 percent of my waking brain has been consumed with thoughts about parenting. Sometimes they’re open-ended thoughts, or bordering-on-universal thoughts, like, “Wow, being a parent is hard,” or, “Wow, being a parent has quintessentially changed all of my relationships.” 

But more often, my thoughts are specific. I’ve never met another parent who feels exactly the same about parenting as any other parent, and my particular emotional color wheel around it has seemed more mis-matchy than most. Like, I’ll say a sentence that I assume Cardigan Mom (who, granted, I just met) will agree with — “Wow, being a parent is hard” — and Cardigan Mom will say, “Really? Honestly I thought it would be harder based on what everyone said, right?” Most of the moms — Cardigan Mom, Pantsuit Mom, Jean Jacket Mom, etc.— end sentences about parenting with the word “right” and a question mark, but they aren’t asking a real question. 

My qualm is that I’d like to write you a letter about what I’m really thinking about, which is parenting, and specifically, parenting my particular child in our particular neighborhood with my particular partners. But my child is two and a half. She really can’t tell me that she’s OK with me writing about her yet. 

I had the thought, “What would happen if I just wrote it? And went back through and blacked out anything that was exactly about T; blacked out anything that is about how she perceives her own experience; blacked out anything that she might see someday and wish I hadn’t written.” How much of it is her story? How much of it is mine? Our bodies were literally tangled for nine months, longer. Untangling them is like going through the knots of thin chain at the bottom of old jewelry boxes.

Good luck out there, bravely facing all that breaks your heart.

Love,

Sophie

Housekeeping

I’m teaching weekly summer drop-in bird-painting classes over Zoom! I think it will be really fun, and a little different than how I’ve done this in the past (cheaper, more flexible, and with a big perk for paid subscribers). (They’re $15 per class, and include hands-on support and an opportunity to email me completed painting for critiques and compliments!)

These classes will be drop-in sessions every Wednesday at 12 p.m. CT. Sign up for one or two, or buy a class pack to all of them! Each week we’ll do a warm-up, and then we’ll paint two birds from the listed category. (Psst: If you want to come to these classes, but it’s out of the question financially, just email me! I’d love to have you sit in.)

All supply lists and suggestions will be sent to you as soon as you sign up for a class. The Zoom link will arrive the morning of the class.

These classes are appropriate for all levels of artists, from absolute novice to bird-painting-pro. You can use whatever supplies you have, but we’ll probably be working with watercolor paints (any type is fine!), watercolor paper, a pencil, an eraser, and maybe a black Micron pen and a white gel pen.

I’ll make videos of each class and send them with my weekly Monday emails to the paid subscriber tier — so you can take them at your own pace, or pick and choose the ones you want to take. SIGN UP FOR A PAID SUBSCRIPTION HERE.

Birds By The Week:

• July 3 - Hummingbirds

• July 10 - Owls

• July 17 - Jays

• July 24 - Cardinals

• July 31 - City birds

• August 7 - Woodpeckers

• August 14 - Wild Parrots

• August 21 - Waterfowl

Loose Thoughts:

• I’m finishing writing this at my public library. Public libraries are my favorite places, for many reasons, but I don’t think we talk enough about THE BIG TABLES. They just have like a lot of room to spread out in the afternoon if you want to put all your books down and your papers over there and your laptop here. And they’re so much quieter than coffee shops!

• There’s also a kids’ blues concert in the community room nearby. Most people are having fun at the concert, but one child was VERY UPSET and her mom took her out. The Child said, “Mom, you promised me there would be treats!” The Mom: “I never promised that.” The Child: “YES YOU DID! YOU DID!” The Mom: “I never would have said that because the library doesn’t have treats, it has books!” The Child: “You SAID I WAS GETTING A TREAT!” The Mom: “I said there was a surprise at the library, and that was it. It was the concert.” (Child wails.) First of all: normalize “books are treats.” Second: never tell a child they’re getting a surprise and have the surprise be a blues concert in a community room at the library. Notes for life. ALSO, no judgement, no shade at all, parenting is extremely hard, and it is the worst to be in a place with your wonderful, loud child that isn’t jiving with the wonderful, loud child.

• I also overheard a mom downstairs say, “I’m not going to let you throw books on the floor” in a calm-but-firm voice, and put her crying kid in a stroller, and I thought, “Now that woman has read some Dr. Becky Kennedy.” IYKNYK

• Non-parenting related: My sun-week was good! The best parts of it were spent at the beach, natch, but there were also nice fruit-and-herb salads in the backyard, listening to the buzz of the bees. How was yours?

• What was your favorite picture book?

• If you are a person I wrote about between the years 2003 (LiveJournal Era) and 2015 (Blogspot Era), and I didn’t have your permission, and you silently seethed and felt mad about it: I’m really sorry. I was a stupid child and I was still learning how to be human. I am still learning how to be human. I can’t believe how much I continue to realize that I am wrong. I hope you didn’t take it personally and made fun of something about me behind my back if that made you feel better.