TheMommyBlog

Friday, June 27, 2008 Other people who write

Felicia Sullivan is an author and marketing diva at Harper Collins with whom I’ve developed a warm, comfortable, email friendship. She sends me funny emails and fab books, and I send her…my address. No, no, I really admire her, both for her decidedly un-annoying marketing skills and for her heart-felt writing.

I just purchased her book, The Sky Isn’t Visible from Here, a book I’ve read about and heard about just about everywhere, but haven’t picked up because, frankly, my life has enough drama and roller coasters and her book sounds like The Matterhorn of memoirs. In a good way, of course, But I didn’t think I had the emotional reserves to actually read it.

Of course, I bought the book because she sent an email that made it tantalizing, impossible to resist, and important. Also, if I did buy it I could be entered into a giveaway. But still! The girl can persuade!

So I visited her blog. And stopped dead in my tracks. This post is one that I could have written, should have written, should have acted on long ago. How did she get inside my head?

I have to let go of the fact that my book didn’t sell as much as I wanted it to. I have to let go of the fact that my father isn’t always as present as I need him to be. I have to let go of the comforts of New York and all the memories buried within it. I have to let go of the fact that I will always have a deep relationship with The Student Loan Corporation. I have let go of “friends” who are determined to use. People who take advantage of your connections, your time and your kindness, and you can see their wheels churning as they imagine ven diagrams and line drawings - all the ways in which you can connect them to what they want. I have to let go of the fact that sometimes the world doesn’t work precisely how you want it to. I have to let go of the fact that I will always have to work harder for what I want - and maybe this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Maybe, I’m realizing, it’s fine to have success on your own terms, know that you earned something completely rather than being the product of hype or “it girl” status. I’m not promising happy endings here, I’m just done wallowing.

This is my assignment, and yours, for the summer.

Let go.

I can’t promise to stop wallowing, but I can stop looking for pears on an apple tree.