Saying No to Unpaid Work Gracefully and Respectfully

As a poet, adjunct professor and independent writing coach, I don't make a lot of "extra" money. Sometimes doing something for free - like a one time writing workshop - helps to support another organization while spreading the word about my services. And sometimes I (probably like you) am simply asked to work for free. 

The thought of losing potential income and, perhaps most importantly, time, angers me. Why would someone ask me to give away my expertise?

I recently stopped paying attention and asked someone for advice without considering that she probably charges for such work. (We all make mistakes; I was very sorry about this.) I was, amazingly, rewarded with a beautiful rejection note that inspired me to better respect others while teaching me how to say, "no." Here is her response, edited for writers: 

I would love to devote more time and energy to this conversation, but the unfortunate reality is that writers are very often approached to provide free labor on things like this. We simply can't say yes to everything the way we want too. I didn't want to leave you with nothing, so I hope the resources below are helpful. If you'd like to talk more extensively, I can happily arrange a coaching session in which I can give you my undivided attention (insert link here.)

Our Bodies: Knowledge and Consent Starting in Toddlerhood

Our attentive son has noticed some physical differences between his mother and father.

OK, the truth is that he would occasionally point and laugh at me. And I, who used to lead an occasional safer sex seminar for first years at an American university in Italy, was stumped about what to say about the genitalia that I was "missing" and and how we weren't going to "go to the store, Mommy, and buy one. Now!"

Ahem.

Avoiding Googling and seeing images I could never un-see, I turned to my many knowledgeable friends. Thank you to Rev. Nancy McDonald Ladd and sex educators Danielle Foote and Bianca Palmisano for their recommendations, which you can find below. These resources have helped him to learn about his body and to start open conversations between the three of us.

The Netherlands offers sexuality education for kids as young as four. Clearly it can be done with the right resources and support. I imagine that we will next turn to books about gender and sexuality. For now, our son has stopped asking questions, which suggests he learned what he wanted to know about his body. (Now he's asking about other things, like planets, moons and dinosaurs.)

Do you have favorite resources about sex, gender and/or sexuality for toddlers? Please share them below in the Comments section. 

Here are the best resources I found:

These two books are very informative and straight-forward about bodies:

Amazing You!: Getting Smart About Your Private Parts by Gail Saltz (Author) and Lynne Avril Cravath (Illustrator). This book is very clear about what boys and girls have as children. There are even pictures to show how their bodies are likely to change as they grow.

Related to naming and understanding their bodies, kids should start to learn consent with adults and other children. Children can start to learn the concept by having physical autonomy. This book, Your Body Belongs to You, by Cornelia Maude Spelman (Author) and Teri Weidner (Illustrator) helps to explain these issues.

This next book doesn't address genitalia, but it does explain how other parts of our body work.With interactive flaps, our son is mesmerized about the world beneath his skin.

Little Explorers: My Amazing Body by Ruth Martin  (Author), Allan Sanders (Illustrator)

What Makes a Baby by Cory Silverberg  (Author), Fiona Smyth (Illustrator) addresses the many ways that an adult can become a parent, while showing non-gender specific people.

For more book recommendations, including for older children, Dr. Nadine Thornhill's  article Let's Read About Sex! 6 Books About Sex for Toddler to Teen has some great suggestions. Planned Parenthood also has great tools and recommendations for talking with your teen.

Birds + Bees + Kids is an online program by Amy Lang, a sexual health educator, about talking to kids about the birds and the bees. (It is pay-for content, but comes highly recommended.) She has an "Ages & Stages Seminar" that addresses kids as young as two.

If you are interested in working directly with a health, sex or sexuality educator in order to help you to educate yourself and your children, you might try: The MamaSutra, Superstar Health Education or Dr. Nadine Thornhill.

The Unitarian Universalists have an educational program about birth, babies, bodies and families. (They also have programs that follow for older children and adults, too.) You might be interested in seeing their recommended books and more about the program. Here is the link to their program, OWL. 

Free Books for D.C. Kids!

From the D.C. Public Library system: 

Even at an early age, reading to young children is the best thing you can do to put them on a path to success. Your kids pick up new words, have fun while they learn, and develop skills they will need later in school.

DC Public Library wants to make reading with your child fun and easy. That's why the Library is launching Books from Birth, a program that mails all enrolled kids in D.C. a free book each month from birth until they turn five.

Parents. You must register for this program in order to receive free books for your child.REGISTER HERE.

For more details about the Books From Birth program, please see our Frequently Asked Questions. If you need further assistance, feel free to contact us.

Love

Love is in the air this season. Spicy love. Chocolatey love. Familial love. Literary love. All the loves.

I was reminded of (potential) writing love when I suggested to a composition writing student that he connect the essay topic to his major or intended profession. By finding a "way into" the essay, he can focus on the ideas and facts: presenting the main one, supporting it with smaller ones and working to craft each word, sentence and paragraph into a strong, well-defined essay. This approach pulls him away from being bored by the subject.

This is really our goal with everything we do. We have to figure out how to make mundane, time consuming and annoying tasks more interesting by connecting them to something that interests us. Annoyed by folding laundry? Listen to a podcast or focus on the tactile experience as you manipulate the material. Bored by having to cook another dinner? Give yourself a theme or challenge for each meal to entertain yourself as you're doing it. Or stream a movie to keep your mind off of things and allow yourself to take a break. 

Keep love in the air between you and your intended, the little ones at home, your chores, your paid work and, quite importantly, your written words. Be kind to your writing. Give it a treat this weekend - maybe a new, shiny verb tense - or even a break. 

And remember that not everyone is as free to create and make choices as you might be. Do you have financial love available to help another writer in need? PEN American Center is a global community of writers working to promote literature and to defend free expression. They advocate for writers across the globe who risk their lives to write. Donate here. 

To love! All finding a "way into" your day and all of its parts. 

Snow Days

Exploring (former) igloos other kids built

Snow days once meant snuggles, hot soup and catching up on reading, writing and work.

Snow days are considerably less romantic and less literary with a toddler. There are the 4:30 am wake-up screams, struggling to get boots and snow pants on an apparent octopus and inventing indoor activities that will result in a nap.

Sure, we had a lot of fun sledding, making pizza, playing with stickers, watching movies and playing a game he calls, "luggage," which means he takes all of his toys (all. of. his. toys.) and scatters them around the apartment. There have been many highs and lows these last few days, sometimes only ten minutes apart.

That is all to say, toddler life.

Cabin fever hit early. Even our son said, "when do I see my friends again," asking about his return to daycare.

Daycare had a delayed opening on Thursday, early closing on Friday and today, Tuesday, we still don't know when we'll be back to what was once normal. Yes, I'm thankful to Pepco that we have electricity, RCN that we have internet, my husband for digging out our car so we can leave when we have somewhere to go, and my (previously) flexible schedule that we still have lots of food to eat. We are alternating between family time and parenting separately so we can do our best to get some more emergency work done.

I do miss my work. I am lucky to do something I chose to do because I really, really like doing it. I like writing and talking about writing (i.e. teaching.) I like a day off like everyone else, but when online classes don't know about the day off, not working is simply stressful.

The other day I received a link to an article from a former student. She sent me Ada Limon's To What Do We Owen this Pleasure: On the Value of Not Writing from Richard Blanco's blog. It ends, "What I mean is, there are times poems do not come and life is too heavy to be placed on the page, or life is so deliciously light and joyful you must suck it down before anyone notices. That is okay. You are still the writer watching that train, doing laundry, getting lost in this massive mess of minutes. There is value in this silent observing."

Thank you, student, for encouraging me to pay attention to life, sharing this beautiful article, and reminding me why I love teaching: connecting to people like you who continue to teach me about life and writing.

Let Your Writing Live: Show Your Writing

Last week on my writing coach blog, I wrote about if and when to share your writing, particularly memoir-related work. I'm writing to encourage you to share your work in 2016. For real. Just a few kind words from (not particularly close) friends have gotten me moving again.

I've been submitting my poetry manuscript about early motherhood and it has been rejected. More than once, as rejections often go. I've been feeling discouraged and annoyed by the process on so many levels.

But then I started to share the poems, poems I once felt confident about, with some new readers. One, a new mom-friend-visual artist, shared that she had similar feelings about a miscarriage and early parenthood. Another, a poet who is a colleague, noticed the timeline in a way that I hadn't looked at it.

Those discussions really invigorated me. I've been wondering if the poems were self-indulgent or no longer relevant, since that time in my life has passed. But by talking about the poems and listening to reader's reactions, I am reminded by what motivated me to write them and share them in the first place.

Sure, a reader could easily say something superficial or mean, but we'll just ignore that possibility for now and try to keep that writing high.

No, this doesn't mean that I will take the praise and stop examining and editing the poems. It means that I will do that even better this time around, in an effort to honor the poems.

We write to connect with readers. Writing is worthless if it doesn't interact with a reader and participate in that conversation. If you feel your work is ready to be submitted for publication, why not look around you for readers? Let your work live.

My Brand of Optimism in 2016

Spotted at Powell's bookstore in Portland, Oregon

Here's my brand of optimism: F*ck it. One day we'll be dead. So we must do what we want to do before that day comes. 

My adult memoir writing workshop students laugh when I say that, but I mean it. We only have so much time and that should motivate us to meet our goals.

With that in mind: Welcome to 2016! Cheers to writing, reading, spending time with people we love and resting. Yes, resting, too. We must honor our minds and bodies so we are capable of meeting our goals.

For more specifics on creating writing goals and how to meet them, here's a recent post on my writing coach blog.