How $827 became 2 book projects
"I am not one and simple by complex and many," - Virginia Woolf
In 1991, my first statement from the Social Security Administration arrived. It detailed the previous years’ earnings ($827) and what benefits I could expect to receive when I retire. At seventeen, I felt very adult, getting mail from the United States government. Each subsequent year, around my birthday, a new statement arrived. By my mid-20's, a small pile had accumulated. Another adult benchmark: the filing cabinet. My pile went into a hanging file folder inside a gray metal cabinet. Statements arrived, they were filed.
The $827 had come from one summer working in the deli of a gourmet grocery store. I stuck around, on and off for eight years. I loved the diversity of the work: shaving a pound of smoked ham for one customer, then hacking into a wheel of brie for another. But I was also constantly learning...about food, customer service, how to prioritize and manage competing tasks. None of that - save the basic math - came up in my formal education. The deli was my first real job where I needed to multi-task. In the years since, each of my jobs involved managing various projects.
How different will it be to write two books?
you're eleven, twelve, thirteen numbers don't make sense your head swells not with knowledge but disgrace daughter of a teacher and you still don't understand month after month of fractions and decimals high school brings letters and explanations repeated the same way as if you were a non-native English speaker so you stop raising your hand because you don't get it you guess your teacher doesn't get it either and that makes things worse the state university you attend requires a math placement test which you fail and end up enrolled against your will in "Basic Algebra with Application" a class that does not go better than algebra without application then: "Discrete Math”, statistics, attempt #1 in physics w/lab (your only W), economics (counts as a math), attempt #2 of physics (again w/lab) and finally graduation.
One could say my education was in math. Over a decade in that classroom, more than any other, in a subject that has always haunted me. But last year, three course corrections.
At some point I noticed the paper statements stop coming. I create an account at SSA.gov Voila! Right in front of me are the decades I worked and how much money I made each year. This, finally, is good math.
Then, in late spring, I saw
#1000wordsofsummer challenge. 1000 words a day x 14 days= 14,000 words. More good math. #1000wordsofsummer was a chance to spend time on an image that came to me in a dream (I know) the previous November. My sleep tends toward uneasy these days and it’s unusual to remember a dream. And enough of one to write down its splinter on a Post-It?A girl fitting pieces together from assorted puzzles.
But to what end? I mutter as I scrawl. I don't write fiction. The yellow Post-It remains prostrate where I leave it.
In January, though, I give myself a few hours to think about the girl and her puzzles. Fine but I don't write fiction. Afterwards, I return to the silent treatment. But related ideas - her name, agoraphobia, a title - keep flying in my face, clever ravens of insistence. Then, the challenge. One thousand words every morning, stopping each day as soon as I got to that number. My only goal was to get words on the page and begin again the next day. I do another #1000wordchallenge in the fall and one just last month. I decide to keep at it, reading up on strange fears, plumbing various rabbit holes. The good math adds up.
I now have about 19,000 words of a first draft of my novel.
According to Robert Kaplan, author of The Nothing That Is: A Natural History of Zero, zero is an abstraction and a reality. "If you look at zero you see nothing." Kaplan says. This is familiar. I haven't published anything anywhere: zero. "But,” Kaplan continues, “if you look through it, you see the world.” Zero transforms nothing into anything. Including, I decide, the freedom to write a novel, when I've only ever wrote one piece of fiction. My words, erect and proud, multiply in bright houses.
About fifteen years ago the Social Security Administration stopped mailing annual statements to millions of workers. It was expensive sending a multiple page document in the mail to every single person working in the United States. The timing coincided, I realized with interest as I put two and two together, with our current minimalism vibe, as
explores in her recent book.All Things Are Too Small is at once an orgy and an examination of a culture that vilifies such indulgence. As a hearty, although sometimes sheepish, caterer to my own appetites (food, clothes, books), I knew I wanted it. Diving in, I saw myself in Rothfeld’s observations. How often in my fifty one years, for example, had I tried to corral my desire for more? Or hide something that might be deemed unsavory? For every time I allowed myself the apple cider donut, there were three times where I said I wasn't hungry. But what had these reductions accomplished? Not the elimination of my appetite for more. I was still hungry!
Before the statements started, then stopped, I worked illegally. Under the table, nights, not paying taxes. Some of the people who paid me were strangers. Some I got to know well. The money I earned from babysitting allowed me the clothes I coveted. I saved for months to get a dark wash denim jean jacket from The Gap. I still have it. The pieces I buy, I love and keep. My two books, I realize, are another way to embrace the pleasure of more at a time when it's never been trendier to be small. Shrinking our desires is not the answer, Rothfeld insists, “even if paucity is inevitable, we can still fight emptiness with fullness. Better to order the third (!) plate of pasta. Better to graze each word once.”
Ok, then.
According to my Social Security, in 2001 I made almost $5,000 without a graduate degree in corporate America than I did having one in 2010 working for a non-profit. Two years later, I left that job a month before I had my daughter. Then, my worth plummeted even more. Her birth cracked open an internal chasm that I imagined long sealed. But there I was, wanting to pitch ten pounds across the room so repulsed was I by her constant mouth, insatiable. In a calmer moment, a thought surfaced: "wow, this would be really hard for child sexual abuse survivors!" Was exhaustion the reason for my slowness in connecting obvious dots? I want to say "yes". I'm tempted to say "yes".
{Elizabeth, if you are going to do this, there will be no fudging or half truths.}
Alright.
It was not fatigue as much as shovel striking casket. I hadn't moved on from my past rapes; I'd tried to bury them.
i was not a child survivor but this was hard for me
I went into overdrive, reading every study I could find on how past sexual abuse affected new moms. I spoke with the late Penny Simkin, co-author of When Survivors Give Birth. She invited me to become a trainer of the program based on her book. I took a post-partum doula training course. Then, I did Penny's training. I started working with survivors again. A few years later, I pulled back on my trainer hat. I spoke with labor & delivery nurses, lactation consultants, childbirth educators and ob-gyns. For three years in a row, I was at different midwifery conferences. Then, in 2020, I stopped.
For almost five years, the "this still matters!" feeling about my work gripped me periodically, a polite cough. I started thinking about a book. It felt like a natural move; I had pages of content, survivor stories, years of research. As I worked the idea over, though, I realized that window had closed. I'd been out of the world of expert for too long. Still, the polite cough lingered. Then, one day, instead of the cough, there was a tiny voice.
you could write about you
I am one of the lucky ones. I choose when and to whom I disclose. I've never been required to share my abuse story to receive support. No therapist has ever told me that “the abuse made me stronger.” If I write a memoir, however, "rape survivor" will become a public part of my identity. This feels both more dangerous and more essential than ever. Being a rape survivor with a rapist as president is to recognize him as a dog whistle. To be reminded every second of every day that your body is not your own. But I'm tired of going high when they go low. I think I’ll slip on something more appropriate: brazen and unapologetic. Try on this wild, urgent idea of a memoir.
In the summer of 2021, a bipartisan bill was introduced in both the House and Senate to force the Social Security Administration to resume their annual mailings. The concern was that younger workers who never knew paper statements were unaware of future benefits. Sound the alarms! They lacked what some of us have held fast to for decades: a heavy folder full of paper statements in a heavy gray cabinet. I thought about it but didn't guess the bill advanced very far. I decided to find out. As I waited on hold, I thought about what I was holding onto.
I clutch close the slice of me that values kindness. The one that prioritizes my daughter's trust. I can release, though, the trunk of scarcity I drag on every ride. Folders full of data I can find online. The need to stay on a call with a 124 minute wait time. With my arms full of what doesn’t serve me, it's difficult to carry much else. Like. . .
a memoir about the fantasy of healing from sexual abuse and the reality of learning something better.
and
a novel about a woman who wakes up one day and realizes she is too frightened to leave the house. Did life change overnight or is she not the person she thought she was?
After three minutes, I opt to have a Social Security Administration agent call me back. The wait time was closer to three hours than two but right before bed, "Carolyn" called me back. Yes, she, too, remembered receiving the paper statements. Today, the only people who get a paper statement are those nearing their 67th birthday. Those people receive in the mail a one-time paper statement. Everyone else, Carolyn advised, can go to their local office to learn about benefits or create a my Social Security account online.
What I’m Reading:
I have put down SO MANY books recently. And the few that I did read / skim to the end (book club) were disappointing. Here are some keepers:
I’m excitedly reading an e-galley of Misbehaving At The Crossroads, an essay collection, (forthcoming 6/24, pre-order here) from Dr Honorée Fanonne Jeffers. (An e-galley is a PDF proof of a non-yet published book.) Dr Jeffers is the author of one of my favorite books, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois (read it!) and writes the Substack
. Dr Jeffers’ is also active on Instagram @honoree_jeffers. Follow, pre-order and read Love Songs.Crooked House (1949) by Agatha Christie. Poirot and Marple are absent in this book about a wealthy Greek patriarch of a large wealthy family found dead. Instead, we have the fiancé of the eldest grandchild (and son of a Scotland Yard captain) feeling his way through this whodunit. I recently finished Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman by Lucy Grimes which reminded of this lesser- known work. Christie thought Crooked House was one of her best and I agree.
Neighbors and Other Stories by Diane Oliver. Here’s
author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies (soooo good!) via Bookshop: "In Neighbors and Other Stories, the late Diane Oliver writes of Civil Rights-era domestic life, racial justice, and personal intimacies with such beautiful self-possession. Full of keen observations, crisp prose, and astute social commentary, this is a collection overflowing with complexities and vigor, from a brilliant talent we lost much too soon."
Recommended Links:
"We went as deep as we could to write vulnerable, funny ideas that haven’t been explored on TV before," disabled bodies normalized in We Might Regret This.
Anderson Cooper’s podcast, All There Is, is about how we grieve. He started it in 2022 shortly after the death of his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt. My favorite episode is Cooper’s conversation with Stephen Colbert but this recent conversation with Sedaris siblings, Amy and David, about how they grieved the deaths of different members of their family was fascinating and relatable.
Movie alert! I saw Sorda (Deaf) at the Berlinale this past weekend. If you appreciated Sara Nović ‘s (excellent) novel True Biz or are unfamiliar/curious about deaf culture, Sorda is a must-watch.
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A book that I cannot wait to read!!!
Elizabeth, I was already drawn into this beautiful essay by the urgent, searching, authentic writing voice -- but then got even more excited by the idea of you writing a memoir. Your words are SO needed in the world, and I hope this exciting announcement makes way for a great support system, lots of encouragement and whatever you need to make this dream a reality.