Letter to My Younger Self #7: Life Won’t Wait, but Writing Will
Grace Loh Prasad takes stock of the many life events and factors that made publishing her memoir take more than 20 years.
Dear Grace,
It’s 2001, and you are 32 years old. You are learning how to build a fire in the wood-burning stove inside your private cottage at Hedgebrook, a retreat for women writers on Whidbey Island. You’ve never made a fire before, and once you get the hang of it, you are mesmerized and don’t want to stop. You love your little cottage in the woods, the lunches brought to your door in a basket, the camaraderie with other writers, the affirmations from previous residents written in little notebooks, the handsome gardener who has the same birthday as you, and most of all, having a room of your own to write without distractions. Hedgebrook is your first writing residency in what will be a year of many firsts–first writing group, first published personal essay, first semester in your Creative Writing Master of Fine Arts program. Above all, it is the first time you’ve taken yourself seriously as a writer, that you’ve thought there might one day be an audience for writing by a Taiwanese American who struggled her whole life to fit in. Cherish this time when you can put your writing first, because you will never feel this free again.
It is the first time you’ve taken yourself seriously as a writer, that you’ve thought there might one day be an audience for writing by a Taiwanese American who struggled her whole life to fit in.
Dear Grace,
It’s 2005 and now you’re 36. You’ve been married for just over a year. You have a real job earning good money for the first time, and you’ve just moved into a new condo in Oakland, California–your first home as husband and wife. You ghostwrite for the CEO of a Fortune 500 corporation but no one cares or even knows that you have an MFA. While it’s great that you get paid to write and edit, it siphons time and energy from your own creativity. Just as you are settling down into this new rhythm, one crisis after another calls you back to your parents in Taiwan. Your mom is not well. Your mom is reported missing. Your mom, who is the glue that ties you to your heritage and culture, is disappearing bit by bit, and you are powerless to stop her decline. You feel guilty for living so far away and not doing more to help your parents, but one day you’ll understand that writing about pain and illness is how you witness, and witnessing is a form of love. Writing feels inadequate, but it is also how you keep your parents alive–in your own memory at least, which is the best you can do until you can get something published.
Your mom, who is the glue that ties you to your heritage and culture, is disappearing bit by bit, and you are powerless to stop her decline. You feel guilty for living so far away and not doing more to help your parents, but one day you’ll understand that writing about pain and illness is how you witness, and witnessing is a form of love.
Dear Grace,
It’s 2008 and you are 39 and the mother of an infant. You’ve been catapulted into a whole new existence that will expand your heart and mind in so many ways. The learning curve is intense, like ingesting and metabolizing a textbook every six months. As soon as you start to feel comfortable, here comes another growth spurt, another milestone, and you don’t know how to keep up. You trade word counts for growth charts, and fret when your son is underweight, won’t sleep through the night, hasn’t started walking yet, but every day your only goal is to get to the next day, and the next. You stare at him when he’s sleeping and marvel at his tiny face that echoes your own. Writing will have to wait. You don’t know it yet, but this supernova that’s blown up your writing routine will give your life and writing more purpose and meaning than ever.
Dear Grace,
It’s 2016 and you are 47. It’s a year that you and many others would like to forget. It started with David Bowie passing away, then Prince a few months later, and your timeline is an endless scroll of grief and political turmoil. Your father is dying halfway around the world, and you rush to his bedside each time there’s a health crisis until finally, the doctors say his time is almost up and you should come and say goodbye while you still can. You know what’s coming, yet you’re totally unprepared, and you think of that comic someone drew of Obama and Michelle leaving the White House, and how they turn the lights off and the whole country goes dark. Your deep personal grief merges with the ambient, collective mourning for a nation that was supposed to elect its first woman president, that was supposed to be better than this. Writing is your solace, and the only good thing to come out of the polarization of the country is an explosion of online communities, like a superbloom after heavy rain. You join Facebook groups; you make friends on Twitter; you discover a whole new universe of writers and writing support that will sustain you for years to come.
One essay is accepted immediately, but the other one will take the scenic route. You are tempted to give up your hope of publishing it, yet stubborn in your belief that this essay is the truest thing you’ve ever written. Be patient. A full two years and 30 rejections later, someone will finally say yes.
Dear Grace,
It’s 2019 and you are (gulp) the big Five-Oh. You have poured your soul into two urgent personal essays about grief, dislocation, rituals, motherhood, and the irresistible pull back to the place where your spirit feels whole even though you lack the language. You have been knocked down by one loss after another like a giant wave, like nature showing you who’s the boss, but you pick yourself up again and again because you are a mother and you have to. You feel both vulnerable and strangely sure of yourself, because you and your grief are on pretty good terms now, and you would miss its constant shadow, the way it leaves a dent in the pillow, if it were ever to go away. One essay is accepted immediately, but the other one will take the scenic route. You are tempted to give up your hope of publishing it, yet stubborn in your belief that this essay is the truest thing you’ve ever written. Be patient. A full two years and 30 rejections later, someone will finally say yes.
Dear Grace,
It’s 2024 and you are no longer counting birthdays. Your book has come out, and people are astonished when you say that it took more than 20 years to write. While there is a part of you that wishes it had happened faster, that laughs at the idea of being an “emerging” writer in your 50s, you know in your bones that you are not late, that you are actually right on time. For you, writing has never been just about the output; it’s also about the process, the mistakes, the learning, and ultimately growth. Writing is the teacher that waited for you and wouldn’t let you fail; it’s the friend that kept you company through all the seasons of your life. At times you abandoned it, but it never abandoned you.
No other journey will take you as far. Writing dared you to walk into the labyrinth, and it helped you find your way out.
Read the whole “Letter to My Younger Self” series.
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I urge everyone to read the linked essays within "Letter to My Younger Self." Powerful writing. This line struck me: "Even though my mom and I had not lived in the same country for more than two decades and my memories of her were from another time and place, I was unhinged by grief. " The word "unhinged" seems so apt for loss of a parent, even if on some levels they've already left through illness and distance. This essay urges rituals and that itself feels healing. Thank you for this.
I loved all of this too especially referencing when the lights were turned off when the Obama’s left….& we didn’t elect our 1st female president. The darkness in our nation since then stated so simply. Thank you for your dedication & clarity in your writing to see all the light.