Letters from the Homestead: June 2022
I no longer have complete bodily autonomy in Missouri, but at least I have this playwriting grant?
Emily Dickinson called her Amherst home “The Homestead.” I lovingly call my apartment in St. Louis the same thing (although I definitely get out more than Dickinson). This monthly newsletter is my attempt to work through what it feels like to put down roots as a writer in my own Homestead. In it, I’m honest about what’s saving my life right now, what’s hard, and what I’m pouring my energy into.
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The morning it happened.
I was working my clinic escort shift in front of Planned Parenthood on the morning it happened. A little after 9 am on June 24th, I watched an anti-abortion protestor break out into happy tears on the other side of the gate, and I knew that Roe had been overturned.
The other shoe dropped deep inside me like a sandbag. The pressure hasn’t yet lifted.
I wanted to remember what I looked like at that moment. I’m thirty-four years old, and the right to an abortion has been a reality for my entire life. It seemed right to see what my face looked like when that right was taken away, so I took a picture.
That there is a tired, freckled face. But I like that in this picture she’s still (half) smiling. She doesn’t have much reason to smile, but she’s trying.
The irony of the news dropping while I was volunteering in front of a Planned Parenthood will probably stick with me for the rest of my life. I was so overwhelmed by the announcement that I stayed at my shift for two hours longer than normal, watching news crews come and go with the regular traffic of incoming patients. The protestors on the other side of the fence broke out in celebration, sharing champagne and shouting out their Hail Marys whenever a car came through the gate. At one point, they ordered a massive bag of Chick-fil-a, which made the whole parking lot smell like waffle fries. And every few minutes, cars would drive by and honk at them in celebration. One car waved a giant Trump flag and the protestors screamed like school cheerleaders.
An older woman protestor yelled at me, “I hope you know that the choice you’re making is the difference between smoking and non-smoking.” It took me until the next day to realize she was talking about hell. The protestors tell me I’m going to hell all the time, but this was probably the strangest way they’ve ever relayed that information to me.
There were plenty of protests and actions to participate in the evening after the ruling was announced, but I was so goddamned tired from four hours in front of the clinic that I just stayed home. Doing my normal volunteer shift was all I could manage. My heart and mind were too tired to do anything else.
Do you know what surprised me the most about that morning, though? Even though the world seemed to be ending, the border clinic I volunteer at (in Illinois, where there are fewer restrictions on abortion care) hummed along with its usual stream of patients. News crews came and went, but patients still went about their business: making confused faces at the protestors, smoking while leaning up against their cars in the parking lot, watching the red-winged blackbirds that love to fly over the clinic…
Things just went on.
No one at the clinic was oblivious to what was happening, but things went on nonetheless.
Seeing this reminded me of a clipping I keep in my office nook at home:
“The fetus is unknown, future, potential, part of the ‘secrets of God’”, writes Rabbi David M. Feldman in 1983. “The mother is known, present, alive and asking for compassion.”
The clinic I volunteer at will continue to respond to that request for compassion, and I’m grateful to be the glorified parking attendant who welcomes them into our care.
A small win in a field of rejection.
Regular readers of this newsletter know that I am usually swimming in rejections for my writing projects (it’s part of the job), but I have good news this month. Very good news.
My new work-in-progress play, MARGARET FULLER MAGIC SHOW, received a $5000 individual artist grant from the St. Louis Regional Arts Commission! Huzzah!
The funniest thing about this to me is that more than a few people decided that my play about a death-defying Margaret Fuller (nineteenth-century American feminist who was a contemporary of Emerson and Thoreau) performing a magic show on a cruise ship is worth considerable financial support. I mean, what are the odds of that?
Okay, Missouri—you take away my bodily autonomy, but, listen, giving me a ginormous playwriting grant is not going to make up for it, buddy.
So, here we are.
I’ve been puttering with this play project for several months now, but I’ve been having trouble picking up speed. To be honest, I was riding the high of finishing Brontë Sister House Party, and it felt like any new project I started couldn’t quite compete with that play.
But this playwriting grant came at just the right time. I’m ready to work on something new now, and the financial space that this grant offers is precisely the kind of catalyst I need. I have a whole year to complete the project (which ends in a public staged reading), but my plan right now is to take the month of October just to write.
A whole month…just dedicated to writing what I want to write. That sounds delicious.
What I’m reading this month…
Sober Curious by Ruby Warrington (audiobook, so not pictured). I’ve recently stopped drinking alcohol (40+ days right now!), and this book was a great introduction to some of the things I dealt with in that first month without alcohol. It’s part of a genre of nonfiction called “quit lit” (as in, “quitting” alcohol). Overall, I was really surprised by how motivating this book was. This is a great place to start if you’re thinking of taking a break from booze (or just stopping altogether).
We Are The Luckiest: The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life by Laura McKowen (audiobook, so not pictured). Another installment in the genre of “quit lit,” but very much worth the read. This author identifies as “in recovery” as opposed to “sober curious,” and I found that her stories about the use of alcohol as a coping mechanism were really powerful to read. I’ve had to stop drinking because of one of my medications, but this book helped me interrogate aspects of my relationship with alcohol that were just plain unhealthy.
The Cloister Walk by Kathleen Norris. I love Kathleen Norris’s writing so much. This is a chronicle of her work as an oblate at a Benedictine monastery. She writes so beautifully about the poetry of liturgy that it almost makes me want to get my religion back. Almost. I’m thinking of declaring this “the Summer of Kathleen Norris” and working through some of her other books, too.
My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending our Hearts and Bodies by Resmaa Menakem. This book was originally on my list for Lent, but I only just now got to really dig into it. It’s such an incredible dive into how trauma lives in our bodies, and how the genetic memory of that trauma can cause us to enact oppression onto others. If you’re looking for a way to think more deeply about how racism lives in the body (and how it can be healed), then you must read this book.
How I made money this month $$$
I believe freelance artists should be more upfront about how they support themselves financially, instead of maintaining the illusion that they are fully sustained by their art (they usually aren’t). Here is me living out that principle.
Romance novel writing. This month, I wrote Romancing the Gemstone Seller, which is an enemies-to-lovers, Sapphic romance about a crystal expert and a jewelry maker. This book had three named cats, which is a new record for me.
Facilitating online graduate courses. I’m facilitating five different literature grad courses for an online education company. The enrollment in these courses has picked up for the summer, so I’m doing a little bit of grading every day.
Teaching with Prison Performing Arts. I’ve been working with the Alumni Theatre Company with Prison Performing Arts to help them develop a showcase of their work. I love working with these artists.
Staged reading at Lanford Wilson Play Festival. This was a fun, random acting gig! I got to be a reader in a never-before-seen Lanford Wilson play as part of this festival. I haven’t acted in a while, so this was such a fun gig.
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A hard pride month.
Midge is exhausted from her duties as a therapy cat for this month. She had to deal with a busted AC unit, a busy month of work, and her owner’s loss of bodily autonomy. What a wild ride for this cat. As you can see from this picture, she’s hoping for a smoother July.
Tonight starts a new month. The world is hard right now. Please take care of yourselves, friends.
Yours ever & etc., etc.,
Courtney, Mistress of the Homestead and Noble Midge the Cat 🐈⬛