“It’s almost like you didn’t know the book wasn’t finished yet.”
from my book Unsolicited Advice: The Canceled Memoir of a Consent Educator
Intro I, 1st Half
I’ve put off writing this new introduction for months. I told myself it was because I didn’t want to write it while bitter, that I didn’t want to write it until I was certain I had my rights back, but the truth is that I just didn’t want to write it. I’ve debated how much to share of what happened—how much I feel comfortable sharing, how much feels appropriate to share from other people’s stories without violating privacy, how much I need to share in order not to be hiding or obscuring anything, and ultimately, how much I feel strangers deserve to know about the inner workings of my private life. I’ve sat looking at this blank document time and time again asking myself, “Are you ready to do this?” The answer has been no and no again until I finally secured my rights last week, announced this book’s launch on Substack, and gave myself a deadline. I’m pushing through immense fear and anxiety, concerned how this book will be received, what possible consequences and repercussions there might be, and if I’m painting a target on my back by talking about this experience. I’m usually overflowing as a writer but with this it’s been slow and painstaking, like pulling teeth in a room of molasses. I feel compelled to hide under the table like a cockroach, afraid of how brittle my skin might be if anyone gets too close.
•••
The email’s subject line read, “Cancelation: Unsolicited Advice.” I had predicted it from the moment I received the email from my editor in September of 2022 asking if I was interested in writing a book. My prophecy has always been strong, but this one I wrote off again and again as fear, paranoia, neuroses. A way to keep myself small. Avoid my purpose.
This was June, 2024. A few days later, my 36 year old cousin died of an inoperable, rapidly growing brain tumor. I was now contemplating various forms of mortality: the death of a loved one, the death of a project, the death of my career, my own death. I still wake up with crushing fear like an elephant on my chest, afraid of a lurking demon in any physical or virtual shadow, come to take me away.
Photo by Summer Wagner
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