“GIRL NEXT DOOR” is “The Tender Bar” meets “Harriet the Spy” plus lyrical natural beauty. A mom who dies in her 40s leaves her little girl with inner strength to get through the hardest of times, and to make a safe-enough path to adulthood.
Podcaster and grief counselor Ann Faison interviewed me for her podcast. You might find some of this relatable if you had a significant loss as a child.
Playing music was the most beautiful way I’d watched people express connection and togetherness. I had a persistent fantasy of playing guitar and singing for someone I loved. I couldn’t have articulated that, and I wouldn’t have dared to anyway.
With the death of Sinéad O’Connor, I don’t want to do anything today. It feels like the death of a distant friend. I didn’t follow her closely, even though I loved her singing voice and the songs I heard on the radio. Am I allowed to feel this knocked off my feet? I loved her especially for her image and her actions. She came into my consciousness with the videos of her first hits. I was twenty-four. Her shaved head and boyish clothes zinged into my mind like a secret message of validation to my inner twelve-year-old. She seemed to…
The scenarios I thought I confronted were:
1) Be erased by meeting the standards of a universe in which I can’t exist; or
2) Resist and prevent rites of passage that can neither be resisted nor prevented.
As a child, I couldn’t see past the end of my nose, so my decisions didn’t always serve me as well as possible in the long run.
By the time I wanted to apply to college, which was after I’d already graduated from high school, I believed my mom had been wrong about me. I wasn’t extra smart, in fact I was unable to do what it took to really get somewhere.
I built a fitness community around a popular brand. This time, in my writing, I don’t have a well-known brand. What do I have?
Headlines state that she was “booed offstage,” but that’s untrue. She remained standing, stopped her band from playing, and performed Bob Marley’s “War” acapella.
My mom had shown me over and over again that it was my own responsibility not to be bored when there were so many things I could do alone, such as read or draw or talk with her, write in my journal, or write a letter to my aunt.