(En)Courage

A couple of times in 2024 different people reached out to see about hiring me as a writing coach. Coaching is something I have offered over the years. It’s not something I push because it’s not something I like to commit to. I’ve done it enough to be graciously acknowledged in a number of books. I’ve also done it enough to know it is deeply involved and time consuming work is if it’s done well.

This pleasure I derive when I spot my name in acknowledgment pages does not come from a place of ego. Or, at least, the joy goes beyond being personally thanked. My satisfaction is rooted more in knowing that whoever it is thanking me has achieved their goal of publishing a book. I know firsthand, many times over, how good that feels, to hold the finished product in one’s hand.

While I did not fully commit to any of the writing projects I was asked to help with recently, I did make time to encourage those seeking my assistance. If you know me, you know that I am Very Enthusiastic about many things. I am especially enthusiastic about pointing out to others my excitement for whatever they’re working on. As Michelangelo could see the angel in the block of marble, I’m pretty excellent about seeing other people’s angels when they describe for me, very early in their process, what they hope to accomplish.

My memory is a bizarre thing. I can call up, with alarming accuracy, names, dates, obscure news articles, ancient deep emotions, you name it. Toward that end, roughly one million years ago I recall watching an After School Special in which a girl is grappling with the death of her sister. One quality the dead girl had was that she had a kind word for everyone. And, if I remember correctly (and I do), one compliment she offered a neighbor was to compare her to Elizabeth Taylor.

I have carried the message of that episode with me ever since. Whether you’re a friend or a stranger, if we’re chatting it is roughly 100% likely that I will compliment something about you. I suppose there’s some evolutionary element to this practice, my positivity signaling to the recipient that I am a “good” and safe person to be around. A bit of self-preservation on my part.

But beyond aping a kids’ TV show and signaling to others that I’m not dangerous, there’s another layer to my self-assigned role as The Great Encourager. I write a lot about my childhood trauma, the tumult of growing up in chaos and violence. I do this to work through my own shit and also with the hope that my stories will make others who’ve had similar challenges feel less alone. But it’s also important to me to call out and thank those people who were present during these difficult experiences and who took the time to make a difference, to see and call out the light they recognized in me, and to encourage me to focus on that.

The list of these folks is very long and contains more than a few teachers. In fact, I can name so many of my teachers over the years, even now, fifty-five years since I started school and nearly forty since I graduated from college. The older I get, the more clearly I see what some of these teachers were up against. For while I was academically brilliant, I had plenty of anger and acted out often enough to get reprimanded and even sometimes kicked out of the classroom with some regularity.

Most especially I recall my sixth grade teacher, Ms. B, who arrived mid-year to replace our beloved teacher Mrs. P, who left suddenly and without explanation. How I loathed Ms. B, which I now understand (but then did not) was a loathing that surely hinged on sudden change, an unwanted disruption to my world. What she did to counter my distrust and anger was nothing short of amazing. She asked who in the class would like to learn to play the guitar. I was one of a few students who raised their hands. And after a lesson or two that included others, mostly it was just me and Ms. B, one afternoon each week, our own ongoing After School Special.

She never said the word feminist. She never said anything specific about my home circumstances. She focused on the music and she taught me folk songs—Dylan, Baez, etc. She never mentioned protesting. She didn’t have to. Within the songs I learned, there were many messages that I carried with me that helped shape my vision of how the world could be. Her encouragement was, dare I say it, instrumental in my ability to escape my childhood pain. This escape first came in hourly increments, during those weekly lessons, and later fed my desire to flee at 18, to start a new life, one in which I had some agency.

What a role model she was. When I was in college, I got word that her son had died by his own hand after living his short life in chronic pain that required many surgeries. I sent her a letter then, thanking her for all of her encouragement. Then, a few years later, I learned that my young niece was in her class. This led me to reconnect and through our letters I learned that the letter I’d sent her after her son died encouraged her to keep teaching, which she had strongly contemplated giving up. Kind of a mouse and lion situation then, that I was able to return the favor she had visited upon me week after week after week as she sang those songs and planted the seeds that would help me become who I am today.

It feels important here to acknowledge the flip side of my encouragement coin. I am well aware that when I am triggered and feel threatened or challenged I can muster vitriol with (at least) the same quantity and intensity that I dole out positivity. I don’t love this about myself because despite whatever satisfaction I might feel in the moment I’m telling someone to piss off, later there is always the hell to pay of an emotional hangover. Even if I was “right” in the first place. This feels like a lesson I shouldn’t have to keep relearning and yet I obviously haven’t fully integrated it. Otherwise I wouldn’t get so worked up over assholes in traffic and the off-leash dog people.

At the beginning of 2024 I encouraged myself to really focus on this less pleasant side of myself, to use patience and awareness to tame the beast within. I challenged myself to stop flipping off shitty drivers and, in general, to be as nice as I could be to as many people as possible. The results have been a little uneven, but overall they are trending in the right direction. I don’t feel ecstatic or particularly self-congratulatory about this. I think there have been subtle rewards, an overall drop in my negativity.

I’d like to think that the work I did in 2024 to be more positive is something to build on in 2025. I’d also like to acknowledge that this is going to be really fucking challenging in light of the upcoming inauguration and the hell that is about to be unleashed on all of us. Still—I’ve said this before and I’ll keep saying it— I can’t sustain the terror and anxiety that seized me all through the election cycle. I have to keep contemplating and executing strategies to keep from sinking into a perpetual sense of desperation and doom.

[Ms. B showed up at a party thrown for me in 2015 by my kindergarten crush.]

So I lean into encouragement. I amp up my encouragement of others. I amp up encouragement of myself. This is not the same as turning a blind eye toward the potential devastation that awaits us. It’s more like Ms. B showing me how to refocus, to swap out resentment for a healthier pursuit.

And so I encourage all of you. I encourage you to be kinder to yourself. I encourage you to not hold back when it comes to letting others know why and how they are important to you. I encourage you to find positive things to do to combat your fear. I encourage you to focus locally, because none of us have the power to change things on the federal level. To be clear, I am not peddling false hope, not dishing out Pollyanna naïveté. Just trying to come up with ways to keep from falling apart.

What strategies are y’all using to hold it together?

NOTES:

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