Blog
Former Professors As 1-On-1 Private Tutors
The number of professors who are leaving higher education seems to be steadily climbing.
There are many reasons for this, but among people I know, the causes seem to be burnout and costs to physical and mental health, plus the fact that it is so incredibly hard to find anything beyond a one-year contract anymore even if one is willing and able to relocate (and let’s not even get into the tons of PhD’s out there who have been adjuncts most if not all of their entire careers). With little to no job security, the pandemic, and the emotional and physical toil of a job where faculty are routinely unappreciated and even mistreated by administrations, it’s no wonder so many leave the profession. Add to that the number of professors who are outright losing their jobs due to college and university closures (I speak from first-hand experience there), and you have quite a lot of displaced workers with a ton of experience going to waste. (When my college closed, I remember adding up the years of professor experience from those of us who lost jobs when at the pinnacle of our careers. It was HUNDREDS of years of combined teaching experience!)
With vast numbers of highly skilled faculty NOT out there helping students to learn, I think we need to consider the benefits of hiring former professors as private online tutors and even normalizing the practice. Understandably there are tons of tutoring companies listed in google searches, but I believe that hiring private teachers, typically those who lack the funds to advertise in the top 10 via google but who are actually out there willing to work, is to parents’ advantage. Here are some benefits I’ve thought of:
THOROUGHLY VETTED: Former professors have already been so thoroughly vetted by the systems of academia that parents can rest assured that they are going to be extremely knowledgeable about their subjects. Faculty are simply not hired and rehired (or granted tenure, or emeritus status) without having proven themselves to be great teachers with an excellent grasp of subject matter. Of course there are exceptions, but the rule is that former college and university faculty have jumped through an incredible amount of professional hoops to have worked in academia at all.
EXPERIENCED IN ONLINE TEACHING: Former professors have likely worked through all or part of the pandemic, so they were thrust into online teaching abruptly and had to sink or swim. Those who are seeking work with students 1-on-1 online now are going to be the faculty who didn’t sink. They will know how to run a session online because they’ve already taught full classes online or in hybrid format. In fact, they are probably thrilled at the prospect of working with just one student at a time online.
BANG FOR THE BUCK: Former professors are going to give parents and students a HUGE bang for their buck. Would you prefer to hire a tutor who is signed to work with a huge corporation who is still in college? Or would you rather hire the person who learned the material, researched, published, prepped, and taught the very classes that those tutors were still taking? Some of the companies that come up first in Google searches only require their tutors to have a few years of college in their subject area under their belts in order to be hired, but many don’t even require a college degree in the subject area IF AT ALL. Compare that to hiring someone with 10, 20, 30, or even more years of teaching experience. The thing is, you’re likely to pay the same amount of money regardless of experience level. In fact, I’ve seen rates HIGHER online for mostly unskilled tutors vs. rates that former colleagues have charged.
EXCEPTIONAL EFFICIENCY IN DIAGNOSING PROBLEMS: An experienced teacher is far more efficient than an inexperienced teacher, which may lead to fewer sessions needed to get to the point. A teacher who has taught thousands of students is going to be able to zero in on the problems in student work, or the difficulties in grasping subject matter, and be able to head straight for the crux of the issue, which saves time.
BETTER INDIVIDUALIZED INSTRUCTION: Former professors have likely taken a very active part in course creation, so they are able to draw on those experiences to tailor an individualized approach to teaching each student they meet for private tutoring online. Further, this experience enables them to make adjustments as a student progresses or brings assignments of different styles to sessions.
Here’s the thing: I’m certainly not dissing tutors with little experience. I was once a tutor with little to no experience, and I needed to work to learn. Some beginning tutors with excellent skills and a strong mentor or mentoring system should be part of this equation. But given the fact that there are so many displaced educators out there from higher ed, it makes sense to hire a former professor to teach your student: they will get to keep using their expertise; they’ll get to work 1-On-1, which they probably didn’t get much chance to do in academia, and your student and the prof get to work remotely, saving on gas and other expenses.
So many faculty begin their careers learning to teach by working 1-On-1 with students—it is only fitting, then, that if and when their careers shift away from academia, that they can return to that kind of work, only carrying with them the wealth of experience they’ve gained during their time as professors.
The Artemis Archetype
Why We Need It More Than Ever
Back in 2016, my book on The Artemis Archetype, co-edited with Dr. Eileen Harney, was published.
A few years prior, I had researched the Greek goddesses and created a panel for the NeMLA conference. The outpouring of proposals led me to create a seminar panel, which we then turned into an anthology of essays on the manifestations of the archetype in popular fiction, film, and television. After the conference, Dr. Harney (a panelist I chose to be co-editor) and I put a book together, soliciting more essays from others in academia. In the end, we each wrote 2 additional essays for the book, and the end result is something I’m incredibly proud of. I created a college course that utilized the text and taught hundreds of students about the power of goddess archetypes in their lives. It was a very rewarding experience.
But flash forward to now; it has been a few years since I taught this material in any more than a workshop, and yet, I’m struck by two things: (1) how much I’m seeing people around me manifesting the traits of the archetype and (2) how much others could find their lives somewhat improved if they began to manifest the traits.
So what are the characteristics of the Artemis archetype? Here are some central ones that I’ve learned from the research of Dr. Jean Shinoda Bolen, Christine Downing, and others, plus my own understanding from years of working with it:
Goal-focused. Able to concentrate and focus on a single goal at a time.
Introverted. Enjoys solitude and actually craves alone time.
Protectress. Strong defender and protector of others, particularly women and children.
Egalitarian. Might be single by choice, but if in a relationship, it’s an equal partnership.
Activist. Believes in causes, especially those that support women and marginalized people.
When the recent Supreme Court destruction of Roe v. Wade occurred, everyone around me was in a panic. Many still are. But in the midst of that chaos, I noticed something. On social media, I saw many posting about how this was the signal—that it was through this terrible travesty of an attack against bodily autonomy that people were going to begin to rise—that the Goddess was going to rise. I’ve seen various goddesses mentioned in this conversation. Kali. Medusa. The Morrigan. I subscribe to that energy, for sure. But one goddess I’ve not seen “rise” yet into conversation is Artemis, and she should be.
Looking over those traits of her archetype above, it’s easy to see why she should be a part of the conversation. We should study her. Learn about her. Journal about her and our connection to her. Look for manifestations of her in our popular culture—in our book, we found her in tons of places in fiction, film, and television. When we “see” her in characters we have grown to love, we find it easier to visualize how to bring her power into our own way of approaching ourselves and the world.
We hypothesized that we found far more examples of her archetype in fantasy, sci-fi, and dystopian literature than we did in stories about “real” life, because we felt that even writers and directors couldn’t find examples of her in the modern world. We hypothesized that patriarchal societies only attempt to squelch the power of those who manifest her traits, so she only appeared in invented, imaginative worlds.
Except, that doesn’t HAVE to be true, if we work to change it. There are lots of examples of REAL Artemis archetypes in the world around us. They may not be starring in movies or Netflix series, or the protagonist of a book series that everyone is reading, but they are right next to us, in school, at work, around our dinner tables. They are sometimes our kids or the kids we watch over who are still little but have that fire and fierceness in them. They are sometimes US, and we don’t even know it yet, because we don’t have a name for what we aspire to be.
If you identify with a few of those ideals above, or even all of them, then you are either manifesting the Artemis archetype now, or you are being called to.
And when the goddess calls…
Take Heed.
Unsolicited Advice is NEVER Welcome
Unsolicited: “not asked for.” Similar words: uninvited; unsought; unprompted; unwelcome.
First, let me speak to the ones who are out there delivering these hot takes that no one asked for: STOP. JUST STOP. NO. I MEAN IT. If someone didn’t ask you to give them advice on something they created, built, made, worked on, spoke about, or thought, then your “advice” on how they can do whatever it is they have done or are doing “better” just to “help” them is NOT WANTED. It’s not needed, either. Because if they needed your advice, they’d likely have come to you and said, “hey, could I have your help with this? Could I get your perspective on something?” But in the absence of that, just DON’T.
Similar to looking for where people find the audacity.
Before I go on, I suppose I should give some background. Ever since I started to run my own business, people I don’t even know or barely know just come at me in the DMs or through friends to come at me to tell me how to run my business “better.” In every instance, I not only didn’t ask them specifically for help, I didn’t ask anyone to give me advice at that time. I won’t bore anyone with the details, but suffice it to say that in each instance, the person was spouting off a ton of what they called constructive feedback that essentially tore apart so much of my work, and they did so with NO basis for making the judgments. There were tremendous assumptions made about me, my expertise, what I offer to clients, my client demographics, my web presence (assumptions were made about that without even looking at my ACTUAL business web page), etc. In both cases, the same sort of “script” was used: the person began by telling me they thought I had some really interesting content, some good ideas, they liked what I was trying to “go for” with my business, but that they “just wanted to see me succeed” and so to that end, they hoped I didn’t mind but they were going to give suggestions.
I DID MIND. OH MY GOD did I mind. But I never got a chance to say so because they launched right into the advice portion of their message and all of this came in a single email dump. I was completely blindsided.
As a newbie small business owner, I’m incredibly proud that I’ve done so much on my own. It has saved me money, I’ve learned tons of new marketable skills, and I have loads of control over my content and brand. With that said, I do sometimes seek out professional assistance. Or I barter with someone: my expertise for yours. But the one thing I never, ever do, is sit in my house thinking to myself, “hmmm…..I wonder if some person I didn’t ask for help will fall into my DMs today telling me everything I’m doing wrong, all while reassuring me that they really are doing this to HELP?” Nope. I never do that because that’s self-abusive.
And this is why I am so incredibly angry at the people who do this kind of thing: it’s because it is extremely triggering to people who have ever encountered emotional abuse, degradation, and been the unfortunate recipient of the blame game, particularly from narcissistic people. Even if people have been through a ton of therapy to deal with different types of emotional abuse, having someone just start tearing down something you’ve built all while saying things like “hey I like what you’ve done here BUT” or “hey I hope I’m not being a jerk here when I say this BUT” or “trust me I’m just here to help you BUT you are doing just about everything wrong (according to the narrow metric I’ve applied)” is beyond just upsetting. It’s short-term damaging when it’s one comment, but longer-term if it’s more or comes from many people. Because people still trying to learn to heal from that kind of abuse will beat themselves up and internalize the unasked-for comments and start tearing themselves (or their work) down, and people who are more healed from it will still end up with a fight/flight response because of the reminder of trauma (probably fight) which is distressful in its own right. My heart goes out to anyone who has had to deal with this kind of thing, especially on the regular, and it can’t help much when people toss it off as “oh that’s just them” because that’s like…legitimizing it as ok. Well no, it’s not. And these people need to be called out.
I am a huge fan of a friend of mine who adopted an interesting practice: when she wants to vent or talk about something, on social media, she will say in the post, “BTW I’m not looking for any advice here, so please refrain.” It’s beautiful. I love it. To me, that means “we can discuss this topic I’m bringing up, or commiserate if we have similar difficulties, but don’t you dare come on my page and start with your advice-giving because now is not the time or place.” Of course this won’t stop people from sliding in your DMs and doing it, but nothing can stop that really, I suppose, other than awareness.
Awareness means: we see you, you unsolicited advice-givers, and your comments are not welcome. As Elyse Myers says, “[We] do not receive that.” And maybe more of us have to start to talk back to these people, tough as it may be, stand up for ourselves, de-friend, or start doing like my friend and practice saying out loud any time we mean it that we are not looking for advice. Maybe the more we say it out loud, the more they will think twice and keep their “help” to themselves.
When Job Loss is a Blessing
How Losing my Job Brought me Back to Something I Love
The young man connected to me on Zoom and his screen was black. I heard a tentative “Hello?” and I replied. My video was running. His was not.
For a moment I had an awful flashback to the last classes I taught at the college where I spent my career and the times I taught via zoom to a class of 15 students and only one would deign to put her video on. I hoped this lesson wouldn’t be more of the same.
But a few seconds later, his video came on, and there he was: a10th grade student. I could see the top of his head down to his nose. I could have said to shift his screen but honestly, it was all just an awkward angle, and it was enough. I could see his eyes. That’s what mattered.
And our tutoring lesson began.
****
Back in May, I walked out of the college where I taught for 27 years and I never went back. I couldn’t go back if I had wanted to. I was out of a job, and it wasn’t my fault. I was at the top of my career as an Associate Professor of English, and I was unemployed. My small, private, liberal arts college ran out of money and the board and president sold it to the highest bidder. That bidder made a lot of empty claims about “taking care” of the faculty and staff, as did our president and board, but it was one of those things where weasel words and expressions were used and ultimately, quite a lot of people were left out completely. They broke our tenured contracts. They denied us any severance. They treated us coldly and harshly and quite a lot of us now have PTSD from the highly toxic workplace. So when I left, I had no hope.
It’s hard to find a blessing at all in the worst thing that could ever happen to you actually happening, but I think in time, there are things emerging that I can count as blessings. Take, for instance, the meeting with the young man I spoke of above.
Back when I started teaching, I began my career as an adjunct professor at the local community college. I taught students of all ages the basics of English grammar, sentence structure, essay writing, and technical writing. One requirement of our teaching was that we sit with each student and go over their drafts with them. I remember how absolutely gratifying it was to sit with someone and teach, one-to-one. There was so much I could accomplish by working in that way. I could individualize EVERYTHING. I could improvise my techniques on the spot. I could see the light of recognition and understanding when a student got a difficult concept. It made me feel so useful, like my gifts were doing something good for the world while I was also making ends meet.
I loved the students at the college where I spent my career, but the last few years of its existence were so bad. No one cared much anymore. Students still showed up to class, but their engagement was SO OFF. I remember an alum coming by to see me, and she said that the school felt WRONG. She said the spirit was gone. It felt empty. This was pre-pandemic. But then during the pandemic, it grew even worse. We shifted over to Zoom teaching, and surprisingly, I adapted very quickly to that, and I really liked teaching that way. I made every effort (and still do) to come off EXACTLY the way I do face-to-face. It feels very natural to me, and of course, I get to sit on my couch, with my cats. What a great way to work!
But the students were so disengaged. No one could blame them. Their school was dying. They saw what it was doing to us, too. And that’s when they started to turn off their screens. They started lying in bed during class. They started driving to the gym or even working out. They started working at their jobs while they had their video and mics off. My disembodied voice has apparently floated in many a place in the past couple of years. Once I said everyone PUT YOUR VIDEO ON NOW PLEASE, and that’s when I realized how many were at work or lying in bed during class. I pleaded with them to be present. Aside from a handful of students, they wouldn’t or couldn’t. The anxiety and depression they were feeling was off the charts. They had already checked out.
So by the time my job ended, I thought, I never want to teach again. This is horrible. I care so much about my subject and about communicating it to help others, and no one cares. They won’t even let me look at them. They won’t talk back.
But I needed to make a living, so in addition to editing and writing and other ventures, I thought, let’s try tutoring again. And that was when I realized, there’s been a blessing in losing my career.
I always said I’d NEVER work with anyone younger than college age. I said I wanted only mature, grown-up students. Well, needing to make a living changes your “nevers”, so I advertised that I’d tutor middle and high school students.
So far I just have one family I work with. They have a 10th grader and a 7th grader. The vignette above is about the 10th grader with whom I have worked several times. I’ve only helped the 7th grader once because he doesn’t get as many assignments. The result? I adore what I’m doing.
I know I lucked out. I know that getting two gifted children as my first students was pure serendipity, because I tell them something, and they get it right away. But still, since they are gifted, that means we work on polish and style and creativity. I’m having a blast tutoring. I never thought I could work with “kids”, but I was so wrong. It turns out that the infinite patience and support I had to cultivate to teach mostly disengaged college students through a pandemic has really paid off. So did the years I spent as an adjunct so long ago when I sat with people like the guy from the Chrysler plant who was nearly 60 and just always wanted to get an associate’s degree but felt like a fish out of water in school again. I think what my current experience has shown me is that the face-to-face nature of teaching was something I had not been able to engage in for so long that I didn’t realize how much I missed it.
I mean sure, it’s over Zoom, not in person, but so what? I actually think it works out great! I am still thrilled every time I see the way that both of us can edit the document simultaneously as we talk. What cool tech, right? But mostly, I feel useful again. I feel as if what I know DOES have a way to get out there into the world, even if I’m not attached to an institution. In fact, I’ve got far more freedom this way. I don’t have to teach ONLY college students, but I can teach people of all ages.
Time will tell if this works out as a way to make ends meet. I suspect it will be one of about 7 jobs I give myself as an entrepreneur trying to build my own little empire, also known as Professor of Words. But it has definitely taken the sting off the job loss.
So if you are like me and you’ve either left a job or lost your job, and you’re scrambling to try to figure out what to do, perhaps it would be a good exercise to think really far back to things you used to do, even part-time. Were there any things you did for a job or as part of a job that you REALLY liked doing, that all these years later, you think of fondly? Well if so, maybe it’s time to make your next stage in life be about THAT path. Maybe that’s always been your true calling, and it took a tragedy for you to see it.
Orchards (A Love Story)
The first time I dream of Aidan, I’m standing in my orchard at the back of my property. It’s about 50 degrees and overcast, the wind alternating between a gentle breeze and something a bit more chilly. It’s early spring, and I don’t know why we are under the apple trees, but he’s standing next to me and I’m wearing his shirt. It’s a baby blue oxford button-down, and I’ve got on bra, panties, and that shirt. My dream-self registers that in the real world, I’d never be able to button his shirt over my breasts, because he’s not a very big guy and I’m pretty curvy, but the magic of dreams makes the shirt stretch to fit me, enough so it’s a bit loose. I walk away from him towards my house, but I’m not angry or dismissive. It’s more that he seems to “belong” in the orchard, so he doesn’t follow me across the yard.
Now, I’m starting to wonder if I’ve got a touch of clairvoyance, because we are at a real orchard, sitting at the left end of a bunch of long tables stacked end to end between two rows of apple trees, the fruit just beginning to form. Years ago, before I met him, he was part of a CSA up in Massachusettes. I’d been in one too, once, back when I was married, here in Delaware. Aidan and I talked about it once, after we’d met, but I told him that after my divorce I’d not felt inclined to join up again. The double-sized portion of food was just too much for one. Plus, it reminded me of the before-time. No thanks.
But last year, Aidan encouraged me to join up for the 7-week fall/winter run. I remember when I started to follow the local farm on social media that I’d seen all these pictures of their yearly benefit for their members and I’d thought about how nice it would be to attend, to try out all those recipes cooked up by local restaurants. The whole farm-to-table setup. Locovores, all of us. I also remember thinking that I’d never actually go to the dinner unless I had a date.
Aidan took care of his father for the last couple years of his life. He suffered from neurological problems that led to all sorts of complications. It wasn’t easy, on either of them, but they only had each other. After his father passed, Aiden went into a depression and eventually had to leave the state. Too many memories. Too much pain. So he left his job as a technical writer and he took the money from his inheritance and moved here, where real estate taxes are almost non-existent, and he bought a log cabin on 3 acres in a wooded area. He planned to write his father’s memoirs.
Depression had other plans for him, though. Despite the idyllic world of his home and land, despite the quiet, and despite leaving the home he’d grown up in, he hadn’t been able to escape the gnawing feeling of sadness.
That was when I met him. When he was sad. I was walking on a nature trail near my house when I twisted my ankle. I limped over to the nearest bench, and he happened to be sitting on the other side of it. I saw that he had been red-eyed, staring off into the distance, but when I collapsed onto the bench, grabbing my foot, he turned and said, “Oh God, can I help?” And from there, we struck up a friendship. He helped me to my car, and later, I helped him get over his dad’s passing.
One of the ways I found to bring him out of his occasional reveries (which I recognized all too well from my own years in depression) was to cook for him. He had loved to cook before—he had loads of recipes—but he just couldn’t bring himself to. He encouraged me to, though, and after I was impressed with the short CSA program in fall, I re-joined again, single this time, for the spring/summer run. I worried about him. I knew what it was like when you couldn’t make yourself eat. So one day I just showed up at his house with a basket of goodies. I joked with him that I was middle-aged Red Riding Hood, bringing him a picnic. He usually wore contact lenses, but I joked with him that if he borrowed my wire-rimmed glasses and wore one of my scarves that he could play the role of grandma, especially since he sat in bed most of the day vaguely staring at a book, the tv, or the wall. He laughed, wryly, but he didn’t disagree. And so I cooked, and the food nourished him. Eventually, he started to come out of it, to rejoin the world. Just like I had.
That was last year. This year, Aidan is coming back into himself. He’s starting to do a little bit of gardening in an area he cleared near the cabin. I think he’s going to need to grow something before he’s able to write those memoirs. He needs more time.
But he’s reading, voraciously. Poetry, fiction, drama, non-fiction, you name it. He is devouring words. They, too, nourish him. We talk about all of it. Sometimes I read the same books as he; sometimes I make recommendations. Sometimes we just listen to each other. All of it counts.
And we cook together, often. All those recipes he had in his dad’s old cookbooks…he’s making his way through all of them and making copious notes and reflections on what he remembers about his father. Where he first ate that dish, who was visiting that Thanksgiving, which wine varietal pairs best with that sauce.
He takes in freelance work from time to time, more to keep his skills fresh than to make money. I think it’s good for him, though. Too much break from the world always has the potential to make you shut down, lose your confidence. I know.
His sense of humor has returned (he tells me) because I didn’t know him in the before-time, but he’s quite a funny guy. Clever funny. My favorite.
He’s doing so much better. But the fact is that I loved him even when he wasn’t. I’ve always loved him. It’s just a fact.
He doesn’t know it, though.
I said before that I didn’t want to go to the annual CSA dinner without a date. So I was going to skip it. Why go alone and be the only one there by myself? I’d feel so singled out and weird. But then I thought you know, you should just ask him. If you tell yourself ahead of time that he’s probably going to say no, in fact, that he will say no, then if he does, you’re good. But if he says yes, it will be a surprise.
So I asked. I texted him. “Hey Aidan. So the CSA has this annual dinner, it’s probably dumb, but it might be cool, and you know we like to cook, and people say online it’s for foodies, and you know how you and I feel about calling ourselves foodies, I mean it’s pretentious as hell, but you know, maybe we sorta kinda are, and—
His text broke in, “It’s cool, I’ll go with you.”
Huh. Didn’t expect that. I know I was rambling. He probably said he’d go to stop my incessant chatter.
“Ok”, I texted back. “Cool.”
Play it casual, Maggie. Just be casual (as my breathing starts to return to normal).
I took a deep breath and started texting again, “I mean you can just meet me if you want, or I can come get you and drive us together, but it doesn’t have to be that way, not if you don’t want—
“When is it?” he texted, cutting me off again. What, is he mad at me? He never interrupts me.
“Oh it’s at…let me see…the invitation is here somewhere…yes! It’s at 6:30pm Saturday.”
“I’ll pick you up at 6pm,” he texted.
“Ummm oh! Ok.” I thought I was going to have a minor heart attack. I really didn’t expect this.
“See you then!” he texted. I put my phone down and walked back to my closet, and I swear I never put on and took off so many dresses in my life to make one simple decision.
We’re here now, at the dinner, and I don’t even think Aidan has noticed what I’m wearing, for all that fuss. I feel so stupid. To be honest, I don’t think he’s ever noticed. It just hasn’t been our dynamic. Well, actually, I notice what he’s wearing, all the time, but I never say anything. The fact is that I’ve never wanted to push anything with him. I’ve always wanted to remain respectful of the loss he has gone through. And I don’t even know much about his history before his dad’s illness.
He never had kids; that much I know. And I think he had a few girlfriends from time to time, some long-term, but he was never married. But as for details? None. I think in his mind, none of that mattered, ultimately, once his dad became sick. And after his father passed and he moved, he kept to himself so much that I don’t think he has yet met anyone in this area to date. Or at least I hope so. I’d be so jealous if he did. But it’s so out of my control. This is a tough lesson I had to learn when I went through my divorce: you can’t make someone love you. You just can’t. You can only offer up what another will accept and leave it at that. So I’ve been cautious around him, and I’ve never let on how I really feel. He’s too important to me as a friend to risk it all.
When he picks me up he’s wearing this blue button-down Oxford shirt. I’ve never seen it before. He wears a lot of light colors, but I’ve never seen this shade. It’s really nice. I mean, not just because of that dream I had way back when, that dream that made no sense, but because it sort of brings out the blue-green ocean color of his eyes. Of course I’ve trained myself never to really look him in the eyes, just because I’d probably get lost and not find my way out. But even with my furtive glances, I see the colors and my stomach does a lurch.
He’s in a great mood. That’s nice. I’m glad he’s been having so many days like this lately. He’s joking around and I can tell he’s really excited for this dinner. We get there early enough so that I can choose end seats. I hate sitting in between strangers. He’s very accommodating with this idiosyncrasy of mine. Frankly he’s accommodating with just about everything about me. It’s why I love him.
We listen as the farm owner and host of the event speaks and introduces the chefs who conceived of the dishes, and the dinner begins. The food is utterly fantastic. Several courses, all made with ingredients from the area. Inventive, tasty, even decadent. The wine pairings are also really inspired. Afterwards, people are sort of chilling out, ordering more wine at the cash bar, and just sitting around at the tables, talking.
It’s a gorgeous night, the air sort of fluctuating between a gentle breeze and something a little more chilly, and the sun is setting over one end of the vast orchard. The trees look like they go on for miles, the hills rolling like an endless sea at low tide. There is a glow all around as the sunlight and the candles strategically placed between the rows of trees reflect off one another.
Aidan says, “let’s take a walk.”
“Sure,” I say.
We walk away from the crowd, the tinkling glasses, the laughter and low rumble of voices, and we find ourselves between two rows of apple trees.
I shiver when the breeze kicks up, and I take refuge next to one of the apple trees. The trunk is grounding and firm, surprising for such a small tree. The leaves hang all around me. The small globes of new fruit are sweetly fragrant.
He sees me shiver and says, “If I were wearing a coat, I’d offer it to you, but alas, I am not.”
I laugh and say, “You’ve always been so chivalrous. I appreciate the thought, though.”
I train my eyes to look away again. The nearness of him is so intoxicating. It always has been. I swear my addiction worsens by the day. But how can you be addicted to a drug you’ve never taken?
I shake my head lightly to brush away the distracting thoughts. I need to be here, now, with him, as my friend, because this is how he wants it to be, and besides, I should be grateful. I’ve never had a friend like him in my whole life. That’s a cause for celebration, not discontent.
He sees me shake my head and says, “I’m sorry you’re so cold. How about I…”
And his voice trails off.
“You what?”
He reaches out his left arm and gestures with his head wordlessly as if to say “come here.”
He pulls me to his chest with his left arm. It’s a friend hug, though, I say. He’s only using one arm.
He steadies himself with his right hand on the tree trunk. I see his right hand shake, ever so slightly.
I lean my head against the crook of his left shoulder. Sure, we’ve hugged before—with both arms. But those hugs were in different times for different reasons. “I’m sorry you are going through this” was usually the reason, but also, “Hey! I haven’t seen you in awhile, how have you been?” There’s never been a half-hug in an orchard before, with no discernible reason other than that I shivered. I don’t know how to play this scene. I don’t want to make a mistake.
So I rest my head against his shoulder and I can’t help myself. Like the first time I nearly fell onto that bench in the park, when this very faint scent of, well, him, wafted near me as he bent to take my foot in his hands and examine my sprained ankle, I take a deep breath, and I just about faint with desire. Not really a sexual desire, but a romantic one. Oh it hurts. It truly is almost painful. But it is delicious. And silly me, I actually stumble on the grass.
He catches me with the other hand and then wraps that arm around me too and hugs me fully to him. He’s always been the best hugger I know. His hugs are so strong and protective, especially for a guy who isn’t towering over me. How an average-sized guy can give what feels like a fierce, warm bear hug is beyond me.
I giggle and say, “Ever since that day when I fell at the park, this stupid ankle, it’s so weak.”
I swear I feel his nose near my neck, but it has to be my imagination. No, wait. He’s kind of burying his face in my hair, and the back of my neck tickles, and I get goosebumps all over my shoulders. He says, “is that the only reason you stumbled?”
I don’t know what to say. I’m going to screw this up. I know it. There is so much I want to say, but what if he doesn’t want to hear it?
But I remember, then, that one of my guy friends once said, “You ever want to see how a guy really feels about you? If he hugs you, hold that hug, just hold it a few seconds longer than you normally would. See what happens.”
So I don’t say anything and just hold the hug, sort of intensifying my grip on his shoulders. I wrap my arms around him as if I’ll never let him go.
Eventually I can feel him start to release me, though, and I think Maggie, dammit, you did it again. You gave into false hope. Just be happy you and Aidan are such good friends and stop setting yourself up for these downfalls.
And he starts to lean back, letting go his tight hold of me. I sigh quietly and lean my spine back against the tree where it had been before. I look away to my right, away from his piercing eyes.
But when I do, I feel the slightest touch. It’s his fingertips on my chin. He turns my face back to look at him. I say, “What?”
He says, “look at me.”
“Why?”
“Because you always look away.”
“I know. That’s on purpose.”
“Why?” he repeats.
He’s going to make me say it. I mean, he isn’t going to make me, but this situation is just untenable anymore. It is so hard not to say what I feel. A girl friend of mine once said that my tendency to look before I leap has become so ingrained that I have lost the ability to leap. So just to prove her wrong, I leap. Vaguely.
“You must know why. Don’t make me say it.”
Ok that was, well, not very much of a leap, but it was something.
I’m trying to look anywhere but his eyes, his nose, his mouth, his chin. He’s too beautiful. I can’t even say handsome anymore because that word is somehow not strong enough, that’s how far I’ve fallen. He’s just a thing of beauty: body, mind, and soul. My gaze settles on his hair lightly blowing in the breeze of the gathering dusk. He holds my chin firmly. He insists with his eyes, with his body, “look at me.”
So I give up, I give in, again, and I look at him, and this time I don’t break his gaze. His eyes are searching mine. He lets go of me with his other arm and I ready myself for the way it will feel when I don’t feel him anymore.
But instead, he takes both his hands and he reaches for my face, and he takes all his fingers and pushes my hair back behind my ears, and he lightly takes hold of both sides of my face, pulls me towards him, and he brings his lips onto mine.
There are times in life when our senses can become heightened, one, or even two, at a time, but never in life have I felt the full measure of all my senses engaged at once. There is nothing like our kiss. Nothing in my entire life. Nothing in the entire world. I never expected it to be like this, because I never truly expected it.
I think I could have died right there on the spot and considered myself one of the luckiest women in the world to know that feeling, but of course, I didn’t, and he didn’t, and eventually, we stopped kissing, and we held each other, leaning against the apple tree, and the sun crossed the horizon, and in the growing darkness, with the wind swirling around us, the air grew colder, only I couldn’t feel it.
I think I understand the dream now. I had to leave Aidan in the orchard of my dream until he was ready. He had to face his loss. He had to learn how to allow someone new to love and care for him as unconditionally as he had done for his father. He had to move to a new place, a new life, and put down roots. And I had to give him the gift of that time. His blue shirt had finally stretched to fit around me. Enveloped in its embrace, we walked away from this more-than-real orchard, hand in hand.
Why You Need Fairy-Tale Fashion
In Margaret Atwood’s essay “Of Souls as Birds”, she writes about the period of time in which fairy tales were sanitized and made acceptable “for well-brought-up little girls of the fifties…[for whom] the main point of these stories was the outfits. Ruffles were all.” Atwood explains that she was not one of those little girls, and she had been exposed to the darker versions of tales as a child. I take that to mean that she escaped the clutches of the fancy, frilly, gown-filled, jewel-encrusted loveliness that permeated Disney tales and the world of children’s literature surrounding them, and instead, she was influenced by the darkness and adult-centric themes of fairy tales leading up to the time of Disney’s omnipresence.
It is true that Atwood often uses fairy-tale themes, imagery, and symbols in her own literary works. Entire books of literary criticism have been devoted to her connections with fairy tales, such as Sharon Rose Wilson’s Myths and Fairy Tales in Contemporary Women’s Fiction: From Atwood to Morrison and Margaret Atwood’s Fairy-Tale Sexual Politics. Certainly there is a wealth of information to analyze in regards to the darker side of fairy tales, and I’ve spent a lot of my career thinking, writing, and teaching about these ideas. But given the times that we live in, given the way it seems as if few are happy or even slightly content, I do think we are seeing an outcry for MORE fairy tales, MORE fantasy. People want a place to escape, if even for a short time. People need desperately to see magic in their world, to MAKE magic happen.
I’m here to say that fairy tales can be a door that you open to bring that magic into your life.
***
I want you to think for a moment about what might have drawn you to fairy tales when you were younger. Much younger. I want you to think about whether it really was the fact that we see people meet then marry 2 seconds later. You know what? I doubt it. I don’t think that young children who read or hear fairy tales are drawn to relationships. I think they are drawn to bright shiny things. As a small child, I was entranced by one thing and one thing only: fairy-tale fashion. I was in love with the dresses and the jewelry, not the princes. I was focused on what the princesses were wearing, not the way they courted with the prince at the ball. And of course, we can argue that teaching young people to be focused only on external appearances over internal traits is a bad thing. I don’t disagree with that. But what I’m saying now is, let’s cut ourselves some slack. Life is super hard right now and has been for some time. How can we tap in to an element of fairy-tale culture in our adult lives and re-awaken something that might have made us excited, content, and happy as kids?
Fairy-tale fashion is one answer.
Even though I was exposed to both Disney AND the Brothers’ Grimm (and Perrault, and Andersen, et al.) as a kid, and I wasn’t a child of the 50s but of the 70s, “Ruffles were all,” as far as I was concerned. My first Halloween costume was Cinderella. I think the second and third were as well. I went from those packaged super-flammable costumes with the molded face mask to fancier handmade ones. I pranced around the house in a pale pink satin dress my mom sewed me herself when I “played” Cinderella. I wore a necklace with a little lady on it that I said was my “Cinderella necklace.” You know how we all have a handful of SUPER ICONIC GLUED INTO OUR BRAINS memories that we can recall so completely? One of mine is of my mom and I standing in a shoe store that was going out of business, and this man with a Magnum P.I. mustache walking triumphantly out from behind a tan curtain behind the counter, holding up a gold metallic slipper in his hand in my size, the mate to the shoe I found in the giant box of shoes on sale. These became my “Cinderella shoes”, probably just bedroom slippers, that I wore around the house incessantly. I swear seeing that man walk out from behind the curtain was one of the happiest moments of my life.
Have you got any memories like that? Did you ever play dress-up? Did you ever act out a fairy tale? Did you ever sit and read them next to a window on a rainy day?
***
Flash forward to years of surviving on a lot less money as an unexpected horrid turn in my life made me into a divorced woman in my 40s, and the day I saw that Sex and the City episode where Carrie Bradshaw’s Manolo Blahnik’s are stolen at a friend’s apartment. I remember the anguish in her eyes when her friend won’t replace the shoes, the determination in her stride when she marches in and registers for said pair of shoes on the grounds that she is celebrating being married to herself, the elation through her entire being when her friends relents and buys her the shoes, and she opens the shoes and puts the “glass slippers” on her own feet. I, too, bought myself a pair of “fancy” shoes, to commemorate that I, too, could be Cinderella, even on my own.
(My much lower-priced pair that resemble the Manolo’s)
My point is this: I noticed that at a very tough time in my life, I needed comfort, and to find that comfort, I time-traveled back to my childhood memories of fairy tales. That’s when I realized that I needed to bring that magic back into my world as an adult. Buying a pretty pair of slippers to wear around my house to feel glamorous in is just one thing I’ve done for myself. There are lots of other things I’ve done. Lots of things that YOU can do.
Ask yourself, if you have ever in your life been drawn to “What Cinderella Wore”, which is actually the subtitle of a book I’m reading now (Rebecca-Anne C. DoRozario’s Fashion in the Fairy Tale Tradition: What Cinderella Wore), then what was it about the outer garments and accessories in fairy tales that made you feel something? What was it you wanted for yourself? And how can you try to manifest that feeling now in your life?
Most of us can’t afford to run out and spend a ton of money on outer trappings of finery, but we can find other ways to fill that empty void in our lives. First of all, we can re-acquaint ourselves with stories. We can read fairy tales in short form, in novels, in re-imagined or classic variants. We can take time each day to escape for 30 minutes or so into that magical world.
Secondly, we can start to look at our own wardrobes, if fashion is what draws us. Can we accessorize in a way that makes us feel magical? Can we pull out old jewelry (I did this recently) and find something that was an inexpensive broach that our mothers gave us 30 years ago and fix that to a scarf hiding in the back of the closet? For those of us who make things with our hands, can we knit or crochet a wrap that highlights our favorite colors from a fairy-tale dress, so that when we wear it, we KNOW that we are becoming Aurora in her dress of blue/pink/purple, and those who have always been entranced by that scene in the Disney film will “get it” too?
Thirdly, can we start to look outside of ourselves when we are out and about, and LOOK for evidence of magic in the way other people dress or carry themselves? And when we see evidence of magic, can we actually compliment such people by saying things like “I love your coat! You remind me of a fairy-tale queen!”
I’m sure there are ways I’ve not thought of that we can bring more fairy-tale fashion and magic into our lives, and I’d love to hear suggestions if you wouldn’t mind taking the time in the comments below. I am actually preparing to teach a whole course right now on this very subject which begins Friday Nov. 12th.
But at this very moment, if there is one wish I have for you who have read this essay, it is this: think about how you feel every day. Think about the days that are the hardest. Then think about the world of fairy tales, whether you are drawn to the dark of them or the light of them or somewhere in between. Then think of how fairy tales have always existed and how they always will exist. Certainly they have existed for entertainment’s sake alone, as stories told to friends and family to pass the time during difficult chores. Sometimes they exist for the stories they tell about quests and victories (and defeats), their characterizations of growth and rites of passage. But sometimes they also exist as a way to enable us to find magic, to cast a spell over our lives, to help us escape, but most of all, to find hope. I hope that in this moment, you find a way to adorn yourself with some fairy-tale magic, and I hope that it brings you great comfort.
Why is Autumn So Damn Good?
A Travel Through the Senses
Over the years, I have developed a feeling for autumn that is no different from that of many other people. I adore it. I pine for it. I bask in it. I find that by August in Delaware, when it has been hot and humid for what feels like an eternity, when the mosquitoes have been so bad that I can’t leave my house to walk to the mailbox or my car without being swarmed, the siren song of fall calls to me incessantly.
To combat the summer blues, a term I’m hearing more and more from those who prefer the darker, cooler times of the year, I have started to put up my Halloween decorations in mid-August. As a former professor who always had to return to work at the height of the hot season, it has given me comfort to at least pretend that the season has changed for the better. I switch from floral candles to ones that smell like apples or pumpkin pie or forests; I hang the Halloween needlework; I decorate with garlands of orange and golden leaves, and I brighten up the dark spots of my living room with colorful spooky lights. I know many are obsessed with pumpkin spice, and I sometimes indulge, but there is something about the scent of mulled cider wafting through the house as I burn my first fire in the wood stove that feels more grounded and comforting.
Once the season actually begins to transform, and the world outside has caught up with the world inside my home, I am able to spend some time on my sun porch, and this year, I realized that autumn is just so damn good because of the way it provides such a feast for all of the senses. Read along with these observations, and as you do, try to think about the ways that autumn delivers a banquet for your senses too!
Sight: I love the angle of the light changing. The way I notice this is mainly through the way the sun hits the ground or the trees. I am sure there is a scientific way to describe this, and a reason for it, but in my own terms, it feels as if the sun shines on objects nearly but not quite exactly sideways. What this does is to highlight parts of growing things that we don’t normally see. Right now, I’m looking at some large trees in my backyard, and I can see the bark on the sides of trees from a great distance as if in HD. The detail is spectacular. There is a golden glow that comes from this angle, as well, particularly at sunset. It is brief, but worth watching for.
Smell: the scent of dying leaves reminds me of old books. There is a crispness, a dampness at times, the scent of vanilla, of musk, of decay, of smoke, maybe even something almost bitter, but balanced out by this rounded sweetness. Sometimes the scent of apples creeps in if you crunch leaves underfoot, even if you are nowhere near an apple tree. So walking through woods filled with leaves can feel like standing in an old bookshop.
Sound: of course the sound of those leaves crunching is sharp and satisfying, but I like to think of another sound in autumn, which is the sound of nothing at all. If I am on my porch, in the middle of the night, and there is no traffic, the sound can feel as if I am dropped into some kind of inky, black, comforting void. Maybe I will hear crickets, but eventually, even they grow quiet. This absence of sound that becomes a sound is not the same as the muffled version you hear in a great snowstorm, but more crystalline. A sharp contrast to that is the way that you can hear a single sound in the midst of that quietude, and it can be from a very great distance, but it travels so far, almost like an echo. I think that may come from the leaves being gone from the trees, so sound can feel as if it travels without obstacles.
Touch: Summer air surrounds you and can feel oppressive on your skin. It can seep right in even when you don’t want it to, or it can be very hot and feel as if it is actively tanning (or burning) your skin. Autumn air is different: it hovers just outside your skin. It asks if it may enter your pores. You don’t have to let it. It will accept your decision. If you don’t let it, it will simply surround you, almost as if you have an impenetrable layer around you, and it hovers just beyond. Autumn air is polite that way.
Taste: Ahhhhh, comfort foods. So much can be said for the way that autumn inspires you to take out the crock pot or the cast iron and make pies, both savory and sweet, or soups and stews. Autumn is the best time to get back to that bread-making we all started at the beginning of the pandemic, but this time, we might consider heartier loaves, multigrain concoctions that pair well with a lovely bowl of French onion soup. But if you aren’t a fan of cooking, you can still taste fall on the air. Simply walk outside on a crisp day, open your mouth, and inhale. Now you’re tasting the decaying leaves, and it is a complex and delicious flavor that can sustain you quite nicely.
And to these, I will add the sixth sense, for isn’t autumn the best time for us to reforge our connections with our ancestors? The veil is thinning, as the saying goes, and the glimpses of the spirit world are all around. You might pay attention to sightings of animal messengers, for they are plentiful this time of year. Why, just last week, I saw three: crows high in a tree, then a hawk at my bird feeder, followed by a large garter snake by my steps. Perhaps these were always there, but it was only in autumn when they chose to reveal themselves to me, assuring me of protection and support on my path through the woods of life.
So why is Autumn so damn good? Because it’s got everything we need to lift and sustain us. It comes with magic for every one of our senses. These are my observations; are yours similar, or do you experience autumn through your senses in different ways? Please leave me a comment to let me know!
Finding Your Way out of the Labyrinth
A Guide for the Struggling Artist
I love labyrinths. I’ve worked with labyrinth imagery for years in a series of novels I’m revising, and in them the labyrinth is a place of confusion, misdirection, and fear, but eventually, it becomes a place of intention, manifestation, and mastery. I’m not sure what it was that drew me to them other than that at one point in my life about 10 years ago, I realized that the myth I related to most was Theseus and the Minotaur--except I felt connected to Ariadne. I’m entranced by her. I’ve read a lot about her. I’ve tried to get inside her. Doing so helped me find my own way out of a personal labyrinth more than once.
Flash forward to a few months back: I lost my job as an associate professor of English at a small, private liberal arts college. This college had been around for 148 years. I thought it was untouchable from the decline in enrollment and other factors that had been affecting higher ed for years. I was wrong. So after 27 years in the profession, long-tenured, with loads of publications and a stellar teaching record, at the very peak of my career, it was stolen from me. The entire English department was laid off permanently when our college was sold to the local HBCU. Great news for the HBCU--I’m happy for their achievement in buying up a small private college--but it wasn’t great news for the rest of us.
Or was it? Because let’s face it, some of us found that we were entirely burnt out on higher education. So we are trying to move on. What I think we have in common with a lot of people leaving other professions is that something about the timing of the pandemic and the economy and a host of other factors woke us up to the fact that WE WERE NOT HAPPY. We were not even a little bit content. We were not fulfilled. The careers that we thought were amazing, creative, and autonomous had become pure drudgery in many ways. We were clinging to an old model, trying to make the best of bad situations working for employers who refused to see our worth and compensate fairly. We were making pro/con lists of “reasons to stay or go” in our minds or on paper for a long time.
Sometimes being kicked out of a place--hard--by the universe--is a wake-up call. That’s what happened to me.
You could say I’m making the best of a bad situation by trying something new, but I think my purpose feels a whole lot larger. So over the summer, when I could have been applying for jobs teaching elsewhere, I cooked up an idea. How about I apply for jobs as a writer. As a tutor. As an editor. How about I change EVERYTHING up and take my skills and turn them in the direction of a new career, the one where I’m my own boss?
It’s like there is this voice that’s inside me screaming DO IT SUSAN IT IS NOW OR NEVER. So I’m doing it, but guess what? Did starting up something new get me out of that labyrinth of pain and grief from my career being “stolen” out from under my feet? Nope. It did not. And this is where I’ve had another sort of epiphany that I think can help others in the same position. In other words, I bet you thought that when you left a career, or it left you, that you would need a little time to regroup, but that little time is stretching into this endless fog of 8 million questions floating through your mind about “are you doing the right thing?” and “how do I figure out how to run a business?” and “am I even good enough to do the thing?” And that, my friend, is being stuck in another personal labyrinth. It’s awful.
In the past few days, I have found the way OUT. I’m going to tell you how it happened and still is happening for me in hopes this will help you. These are the mantras you need to repeat to yourself when you are stuck:
I am an artist (or writer/creative/however you wish to define yourself). Not “I will be an artist,” but “I am.” It doesn’t matter if you haven’t sold X amount of your work. If you wait to sell X amount, I bet then you reach it and tell yourself “well that was nice, but I’m not really an artist until I reach Y goal.” It is an endless road and you will never meet the end. If you create, you are an artist. Period.
I deserve to be here. This goes along a little bit with number one as it’s another way of attacking imposter syndrome, but it’s worth its own mantra because for a lot of us, this is a tough one. There are probably naysayers in your life. They make you question your worth, especially in terms of making your way down a new nontraditional path. Keep repeating that you deserve this. Your brain wouldn’t have told you to go for it if your higher self didn’t already believe you had the right to play in the sandbox.
My art is needed and wanted by others. You have to find them, and that’s going to be HARD. But they exist. Everyone who is successful (which I think for most means a self-sustaining business in which your art is center stage) tells the same story about how hard it was in the beginning. It won’t always be that way. But someone someday is going to be healed by your painting or your story or your sculpture. More than one person will be. The bonus is you will be as well. So keep going.
I can learn new things. This is especially important to remember for people with no prior business, marketing, or technology experience. There are a lot of new skills to learn. Don’t try to do them all at once. Take a couple of weeks and learn how to make your website. (I can’t recommend Squarespace enough but everyone has their favorites). Get that skill down before you start tackling Instagram marketing, and so on. Network with people who are doing these things well. Ask questions. Read all the free material you can online. Prioritize, then learn. You can do this.
I can network with other small business owners. I can’t take credit for this gem, because I read it in The Freelance Academic by Katie Rose Guest Pryal, but she strongly suggests networking with other entrepreneurs so you can bounce ideas off one another or vent or be cheerleaders for one another. You will not feel as alone in your endeavor if you start talking to others in the same boat, and you can promote one another and perhaps even form friendships.
I am a leader, not a follower. Ok so it takes a lot of guts to break away from the traditional “work like crazy for someone else till you die” mode in life, because the majority of people are doing that. Some of them are happy in their jobs, and that’s great. Some of them are languishing or in toxic work environments and they are dying inside. You are a leader because you have recognized that the way you used to live is no longer serving you or your higher purpose. You are taking the leap RIGHT NOW, my friend, and EVERY DAY OF YOUR LIFE is now hard because you are not going with the old flow. The old way for you might have been tough in its own ways, but at least you had it memorized. Every day now is completely up in the air, isn’t it? That is undeniably a rough place because you can’t feel the ground. So just choosing to be here? This makes you a leader. Embrace your drive. Embrace your sheer nerve.
I am excited by possibilities. Ok, I’ll admit, this is the toughest one, isn’t it? Because it is SO EASY to think about the future and imagine the worst case scenario: your business never succeeds. You think about that all the time, don’t you? Why don’t we EVER think of how it might be the MOST AMAZING THING EVER? That would be so much easier. So instead of trying for that brass ring because you tell yourself it’ll never come, how about focus on something more achievable, which is just sheer possibility? Ex.: you wake up and tell yourself, it’s another new day. What if I come across something online that will light my fire and I’ll make something new that wasn’t even in the cards for me until I was inspired? Or maybe because I work from home or a studio now, I take a walk during my work day and I see something and it just drives me to create. The fact is that you have so much FREEDOM now by running your own show that the possibilities for creation are all around you all the time. Only if you’re adopting the model of “it’s never going to happen for me”, you’re not seeing them. It’s like your spiritual guides are all hanging out and trying to get your attention, but your head is looking down and your eyes are shut. Lift your head, open your eyes, and DREAM. Every. Single. Day.