It feels ironic and just right that I rediscovered your postcard as I prepare to leave Brooklyn for the desert. I feel the magnetic pull of coming back here, but I also know I need to be somewhere else to ground who I am now. Leaving is always a loss and a gain.
I love when things find us at the right time. The idea that leaving is always—ALWAYS—a loss and a gain is so right on. Whether you are doing the leaving, or being left; whether you are excited to leave, or being forced to; even if your leaving feels more like a going toward: there are always losses and gains.
My first book, Welcome to Shirley: A Memoir From an Atomic Town, opens with this quote from the very excellent band Ill Lit:
Don’t cut your losses
You’re gonna need ‘em.
These lyrics speak to me for the same reason this postcard does—the yes/and of it all. There is such love for New York City here, and yet the postcard writer knows it is not the right place for them right now. “I need to be somewhere else to ground who I am now.” There is such wisdom in that statement, as well as grief.
Recently, Nikki Summer, who runs the very awesome We’re A Lot Substack, posted her summer book report. I was so honored to see The Leaving Season placed in her stack of incredible books (what she called “Four beautiful, beautiful, beautiful books.”), alongside All Fours by Miranda July, Liars by Sarah Manguso, and I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself by Glynnis MacNicol. Having read all four myself, I’m even more excited for someone to think about my book in conversation with these others.
Summer noted the “bumper crop of books about women, divorce and middle age” and, like me, she “inhaled them all.” She goes on to say about The Leaving Season: “Among so many divorce memoirs right now, this one is my favorite. It’s real, it’s hard, it’s painful, it’s liberating.” Yes—liberating! And that feeling of freedom would not hit with such force without the first three: real, hard, painful.
“Among so many divorce memoirs right now, this one is my favorite. It’s real, it’s hard, it’s painful, it’s liberating.”
This is what the postcard encapsulates: Leaving takes agency, steeliness, and intention. Leaving would not be such a complicated topic if was easy or one-dimensional. It requires knowing yourself and then knowing what’s best for you. The wisdom of I need to be somewhere else to ground who I am now only comes from this writer knowing clearly who she is now. Only then can she know what she needs.
So, readers: Where do you need to be in order to ground who you are now?
WHAT I’M READING/WATCHING:
On My Nightstand: No Ship Sets Out To Be A Shipwreck by Joan Wickersham. This is one exquisite book. Wickersham wrote The Suicide Index, which I consider to be a perfect book, as well as the gorgeous News From Spain. This mix of essay and poetry heralds her trademark playfulness with structure and beauty of line. Pub date Sept 24.
On Stage: I thought this clip from St. Vincent’s amazing Beacon Theatre show earlier this month was a perfect accompaniment to this postcard (yes, she was amazing, especially when she dove into the crowd at the end of this song, which I missed on video because I was too busy jumping and screaming).
New York isn’t New York without you, love…
The Leaving Season Postcard Project was born out of my love for postcards and a suspicion that we are all leaving things, all the time. If you’d like to send me a postcard, please check out this link for instructions.
Want to be part of The Leaving Season Postcard Project? Or use the postcards in your classroom or bookclub? Send me a note!
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Buy The Leaving Season here, Welcome to Shirley here, Wanting: Women Writing About Desire here, and This is the Place: Women Writing About Home here.