Wednesday, September 4, 2019
Thursday, August 18, 2016
Welcome
Thanks for visiting! This blog is a historical document, much like my memoir Map. It begins in 2009 two months before publishing Map and shares some very personal moments along that journey, including the decision to unpublish the book two and a half years later. Unpublishing may not be a usual part of a book's path, but I believe most artists - most humans - can relate to feelings of exposure and vulnerability and the desire to occasionally go somewhere where no one knows your past. For me, the past four and a half years of inhabiting much more private spaces (which included taking this blog down from the internet) have brought me nearly full circle, eager to share my words again in the hopes of connecting and supporting others on their own artistic and personal journeys.
I hope something in this blog will resonate with you, and if it does, I'd love to hear about it. You can email me at abstein@alumni.upenn.edu.
If you'd like to know more about what I'm up to now, you can visit my website at audreybethstein.com and also join my mailing list.
I have a box of copies of Map, and I am currently offering a limited number of them for sale. You can buy a copy in person (perhaps while attending one of my fall offerings?) or write a check (payable to me) and mail it to me at Audrey Beth Stein / P.O. Box 380426 / Cambridge MA 02238-0426. Or use the "Buy Now" button on the right to pay online with a credit card (your card will be processed through PayPal, and I will personally mail you the book). Each copy is $25 plus mailing costs -- $5 to send to U.S. addresses (total $30) or $25 to send internationally (total $50).
I hope something in this blog will resonate with you, and if it does, I'd love to hear about it. You can email me at abstein@alumni.upenn.edu.
If you'd like to know more about what I'm up to now, you can visit my website at audreybethstein.com and also join my mailing list.
I have a box of copies of Map, and I am currently offering a limited number of them for sale. You can buy a copy in person (perhaps while attending one of my fall offerings?) or write a check (payable to me) and mail it to me at Audrey Beth Stein / P.O. Box 380426 / Cambridge MA 02238-0426. Or use the "Buy Now" button on the right to pay online with a credit card (your card will be processed through PayPal, and I will personally mail you the book). Each copy is $25 plus mailing costs -- $5 to send to U.S. addresses (total $30) or $25 to send internationally (total $50).
Tuesday, July 26, 2016
Emergence
I published Map nearly seven years ago, in October 2009.
I unpublished Map two and a half years later, in April 2012.
Soon thereafter, I took down this blog.
Cocoon.
Transformation.
Months and years passing. Continued transformation. A box of unsold copies of Map sat behind glass doors on my living room bookshelf, while new people entered my life who had never known me as a writer, never known the girl in that memoir, never known the me who had spent a decade of life trying to tell that story.
Mostly, I was grateful for that space and cocooning and quiet and freedom. Whenever I thought about sharing Map with a new friend, my body gently told me no. I reread the book a couple of times in the first year or two and felt tired of it, ready to let go, ready to let go of all the old stories that were holding me back by taking up so much space.
The box of books on the shelf slowly transformed itself in my mind. It became an object, a sculpture, a touchstone. It comforted me, and it didn't beckon to be opened anymore.
In June, I felt the first inklings of desire to share Map again. A friend I'd met after unpublishing was talking about her relationship with the autobiographical play she'd written in college, so long ago. It too was now closed up on a shelf. I was curious, very much wanting to read her play, and it felt like it might be an even trade, your play for my memoir.
I was emerging now. My new growth layers had been making their way in the world for a while, playing and experimenting and building something important. And yet there continued to be a tug inward. Outward and inward, back and forth, sharing and privacy, opening and hibernating and cocooning and exploring.
And in that space, last night, I found myself reaching for Map again. Reading felt different this time. Energizing. Every cell in my body has been replaced since I wrote the book. Nearly every cell has been replaced since I published it. I am no longer the girl in the story or the young woman telling it, and my body knew that, integrated the vastness of my continued growth. The photograph on the cover finally felt like someone else, a much younger self. And yet my essence still flows through the passages as it flows through my life, wise and hopeful and familiar and unwavering.
In the recognition, I prepare to open the box of books again, to republish this blog, to share something beautiful.
I unpublished Map two and a half years later, in April 2012.
Soon thereafter, I took down this blog.
Cocoon.
Transformation.
Months and years passing. Continued transformation. A box of unsold copies of Map sat behind glass doors on my living room bookshelf, while new people entered my life who had never known me as a writer, never known the girl in that memoir, never known the me who had spent a decade of life trying to tell that story.
Mostly, I was grateful for that space and cocooning and quiet and freedom. Whenever I thought about sharing Map with a new friend, my body gently told me no. I reread the book a couple of times in the first year or two and felt tired of it, ready to let go, ready to let go of all the old stories that were holding me back by taking up so much space.
The box of books on the shelf slowly transformed itself in my mind. It became an object, a sculpture, a touchstone. It comforted me, and it didn't beckon to be opened anymore.
In June, I felt the first inklings of desire to share Map again. A friend I'd met after unpublishing was talking about her relationship with the autobiographical play she'd written in college, so long ago. It too was now closed up on a shelf. I was curious, very much wanting to read her play, and it felt like it might be an even trade, your play for my memoir.
I was emerging now. My new growth layers had been making their way in the world for a while, playing and experimenting and building something important. And yet there continued to be a tug inward. Outward and inward, back and forth, sharing and privacy, opening and hibernating and cocooning and exploring.
And in that space, last night, I found myself reaching for Map again. Reading felt different this time. Energizing. Every cell in my body has been replaced since I wrote the book. Nearly every cell has been replaced since I published it. I am no longer the girl in the story or the young woman telling it, and my body knew that, integrated the vastness of my continued growth. The photograph on the cover finally felt like someone else, a much younger self. And yet my essence still flows through the passages as it flows through my life, wise and hopeful and familiar and unwavering.
In the recognition, I prepare to open the box of books again, to republish this blog, to share something beautiful.
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Awake
In the middle of the night I find myself awake and grounding. I know how to create these times for me, sort of, and they also catch me by surprise. How to be in deep connection with someone and also deeply grounded in myself? How to inhabit my embodied voice and also embrace a quality of privacy I've never been allowed? How to interact with the world with both authenticity and safety? How to embrace the searching unknown and also find something deeply solid to rest in?
Over the past month, since unpublishing Map, I've found myself slowly sifting through pieces of my web presence, culling it. Who am I showing, and how does that relate to who I am and what I want to share? From the beginning of my time online, I've been mindful of who might read, and I've made choices with deliberate care. Yet I'm starting to understand that the choices I've been making are still rooted in a gentler and in some ways more innocent time. I couldn't possibly have imagined then all the implications of who might be reading now.
And so, as I give attention to Now, I find myself slowly, with authenticity, dismantling the self-representation that is online. It is not a take-it-down brick-by-brick process; it is a process that includes adding as well as taking away. It is deliberate choice, rumination, meandering, curious. I don't know where I'll end up, what you'll see, what I'll see. It is hard to do this. I'm not quite sure what I'm letting go. I'm not sure what I'll miss, what I'll be grateful for. I notice that I still feel good about unpublishing Map, that that choice has so far been a gift to myself, that it has brought me some lightness and freedom. I imagine repeating with this blog, slurping it into one bound book for myself and then taking it down. I relish this idea, and I also continue, for now, to type.
Over the past month, since unpublishing Map, I've found myself slowly sifting through pieces of my web presence, culling it. Who am I showing, and how does that relate to who I am and what I want to share? From the beginning of my time online, I've been mindful of who might read, and I've made choices with deliberate care. Yet I'm starting to understand that the choices I've been making are still rooted in a gentler and in some ways more innocent time. I couldn't possibly have imagined then all the implications of who might be reading now.
And so, as I give attention to Now, I find myself slowly, with authenticity, dismantling the self-representation that is online. It is not a take-it-down brick-by-brick process; it is a process that includes adding as well as taking away. It is deliberate choice, rumination, meandering, curious. I don't know where I'll end up, what you'll see, what I'll see. It is hard to do this. I'm not quite sure what I'm letting go. I'm not sure what I'll miss, what I'll be grateful for. I notice that I still feel good about unpublishing Map, that that choice has so far been a gift to myself, that it has brought me some lightness and freedom. I imagine repeating with this blog, slurping it into one bound book for myself and then taking it down. I relish this idea, and I also continue, for now, to type.
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Unpublishing?
I have written earlier about the vulnerability of having a book in the world. Thought it would get easier; it did, for a while. But then there was a question at a reading, over a year ago now, where I felt slightly unmasked yet again. And digging into my past, new layers surfacing, I feel a familiar uneasiness: did I reveal more than I knew? It's uncomfortable, unsettling.
I am brought back to a time as an adolescent when the privacy of my words was violated; I have never truly recovered from that wound. Recently another journal lost; similar rawness, unease. Does it matter that one was rooted in cruelty and the other a fumbling by someone who cares deeply about me? Does that change how I experience the loss, the unknowing, the uneasy steps, the need for a reclamation that can never be had?
Power comes in choice. The choice to shape words on a page, to keep them or not, to share them or not, to make them public or not. Power comes in understanding: what you are choosing to reveal, what is being revealed despite your choice. What if I change my mind?
I recall the story of the rabbi and the gossiper and the feather pillow... once the feathers are let out of the pillow and taken by the wind, it is impossible to gather them all back up. To keep a secret secret: do not tell anyone, do not write it anywhere, do not talk in your sleep. But what would it feel like to make my already-public words harder to find? To unpublish my memoir Map? Would it feel freeing? Would it feel silencing? Would it help me heal these wounds?
What might this experiment of mine uncover, or recover? I choose to find out.
I am brought back to a time as an adolescent when the privacy of my words was violated; I have never truly recovered from that wound. Recently another journal lost; similar rawness, unease. Does it matter that one was rooted in cruelty and the other a fumbling by someone who cares deeply about me? Does that change how I experience the loss, the unknowing, the uneasy steps, the need for a reclamation that can never be had?
Power comes in choice. The choice to shape words on a page, to keep them or not, to share them or not, to make them public or not. Power comes in understanding: what you are choosing to reveal, what is being revealed despite your choice. What if I change my mind?
I recall the story of the rabbi and the gossiper and the feather pillow... once the feathers are let out of the pillow and taken by the wind, it is impossible to gather them all back up. To keep a secret secret: do not tell anyone, do not write it anywhere, do not talk in your sleep. But what would it feel like to make my already-public words harder to find? To unpublish my memoir Map? Would it feel freeing? Would it feel silencing? Would it help me heal these wounds?
What might this experiment of mine uncover, or recover? I choose to find out.
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Passover Hagaddah Addition 2012
In the hustle and bustle of Passover preparations, this didn't quite make it to my family seder, but I wrote it thinking about that lovely gathering and all the people there I treasure, and I share it with all of you with wishes for a hag sameach, a happy Passover:
Each generation finds new forms of slavery, new kinds of freedom. So too each person, each year. The freedom of sitting on a grassy patch of sidewalk under the sun. The freedom of drawing on walls. The freedom of saying yes and no and maybe. The freedom of silence. For each of us it is different, and yet we all share in some ways the fears, the shame, the vulnerability, the exhilaration.
This year, for me, the struggle is to find my full embodied voice. To find it within myself, to hold it steady even around those I care about most, to speak and act my truth. This year, for me, the struggle is to honor both connection and separation, tradition and new ritual. This year on the second night of Passover--the night always held for the family seder--I shall be sitting at a new seder table, excitedly creating rituals and yet missing so many loved ones, so that next year, I may find my way back even freer to the table of our tradition.
And so I invite you, this year, this seder, to try on a new ritual along with me. As the soup is being served, think about some of the slavery and freedom you have experienced this year. As you set your eyes upon the matzah ball, notice what parts of that you'd rather keep inside. As you pick up your spoon, become aware of what parts you might like to have witnessed. And then, as you begin eating your soup, turn to someone next to you and share a little bit of your own slavery and freedom, and listen to their sharings.
Each generation finds new forms of slavery, new kinds of freedom. So too each person, each year. The freedom of sitting on a grassy patch of sidewalk under the sun. The freedom of drawing on walls. The freedom of saying yes and no and maybe. The freedom of silence. For each of us it is different, and yet we all share in some ways the fears, the shame, the vulnerability, the exhilaration.
This year, for me, the struggle is to find my full embodied voice. To find it within myself, to hold it steady even around those I care about most, to speak and act my truth. This year, for me, the struggle is to honor both connection and separation, tradition and new ritual. This year on the second night of Passover--the night always held for the family seder--I shall be sitting at a new seder table, excitedly creating rituals and yet missing so many loved ones, so that next year, I may find my way back even freer to the table of our tradition.
And so I invite you, this year, this seder, to try on a new ritual along with me. As the soup is being served, think about some of the slavery and freedom you have experienced this year. As you set your eyes upon the matzah ball, notice what parts of that you'd rather keep inside. As you pick up your spoon, become aware of what parts you might like to have witnessed. And then, as you begin eating your soup, turn to someone next to you and share a little bit of your own slavery and freedom, and listen to their sharings.
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