Grieving the Loss of a Dream

And why you shouldn't "just be grateful"

Sightwitch was beset by bad luck behind the scenes, which meant the book “failed to perform” before it even reached stores. But this is no one’s fault, and it is not a reflection of the book I wrote or the author I am.

I got quite a few messages after my email last Friday about what I would do differently with a career do-over. (Thank you for all those messages, friends!) One message stood out to me in particular because the sender took away a lesson that I had not intended…

Basically, my friend said: I shouldn’t blame the industry. I should just be grateful I got published. (Emphasis mine.)

I totally see how my friend came to this conclusion after my email, but it’s also NOT what I want you all to do! “Just be grateful” is one of those things that:

1. will never work

2. is often used as a means for control by oppressive institutions

3. is especially used against marginalized voices

4. and can lead to toxic positivity.

So I want to add an addendum to last week’s email—one that I hope makes very clear why I am not “just grateful I got published”¹ and why I don’t think you should be either.

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Gratitude

Look, it’s true that there’s a lot science out there to back up practicing gratitude as an avenue toward happiness. Registering the things in your life you’re grateful for does make you happier. Especially if you do it consistently. And I am 1000% grateful I get to do the job I do everyday, and someone has paid me for it and still pays me for it. That is incredible, and I know how very fortunate I am.

BUT (and oh boy, this is a big BUT!) being grateful is not a solution to something when it’s a problem.

It was a genuine problem for me when my first series didn’t perform. That was my career collapsing before it could begin. If all I had said back in 2012 was: I should just be grateful I’m published, then that message would have sucked out all my motivation to pivot and search for new ways to share stories.

And that message—I should just be grateful I’m published—would have also removed any blame from the publishing industry at large. Accepting that publishing is a speculative business doesn’t mean I need to be happy about it. I can be simultaneously grateful I sold my first book in 2010 and want corporations to do more to support their employees and support their authors. Those two “feelings” are not mutually exclusive and shouldn’t be.

If we don’t acknowledge flaws, then we can’t grow—as an industry, as authors, as humans at large in the world. We can be grateful for the things we have and still want more, want better.

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You Are Not Your Failures or Successes

This leads me back to what I was trying to share in the newsletter last Friday: the most important lesson I’ve gained over my thirteen years in publishing is that my personal identity cannot be tied to the success or failure of my books. I cannot think I am better or more deserving when my books do well; I cannot think I am worse or less deserving when my books perform poorly.

I work hard. You work hard. This industry is not a meritocracy. I do not have to be okay with this truth. I do not have to think it is fair. I just have to remember that it IS the truth (right now) and therefore my success ≠ who I am.

This is, actually, the same hard, hard lesson I’m still trying to learn with my infertility. I have to separate myself from my inability to get pregnant and give birth without near-death complications. I would be lying if I said this was easy. I am working on accepting and believing this truth every single day of my life right now.

Which leads me to my next point…

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Grieve the Loss

My daughter is almost three. We’re working on her feelings a lot these days—I am especially focused on teaching her how to identify her feelings and share them with me. One of the emotions she has learned to best identify and express is sadness. For example, she’ll be crying, and I’ll say, “Hey, what’s wrong?”

“I sad.”

“Aw, baby. Do you want to cry?”

“Yeah. Just wanna cry little bit.”

And then that’s what she’ll do. She’ll cry for a little bit. Sometimes she’ll also identify why she’s sad—like if her grandparents just left after a visit or she saw me packing my suitcase. Other times, though…Well, she “just wanna cry little bit.”

It’s a lesson I wish we could all learn: sometimes we just need to cry a little bit. We have to let ourselves feel all the feelings—especially when the future we’d hoped for and dreamed of isn’t the one that life gave us.

I had to grieve the failure of my first book series. I’ve had to grieve all the projects since then that haven’t managed to sell to a publisher or have backslid in sales or [insert all the other things that can go wrong].

I had to grieve not having a child easily. I had to grieve how badly my birth went. I had to grieve that the new motherhood I’d dreamed of would never be because I gave birth during lockdown.

I currently have to grieve the fact that I can’t have a second child, even though it’s what I’ve always wanted. And if someone were to say to me “just be grateful you have the one child”…Well, they would find a furious sobbing woman standing before them.²

“Just be grateful” is never a solution. Expressing gratitude can help increase your overall happiness, but that is not what “just be grateful” is. “Just be grateful” is a way to dismiss legitimate feelings and try to erase them with a forced positivity.

Instead, grieve the loss. Feel the pain and bitterness. Accept that your feelings are totally normal—even common. And then work toward separating your personal identity from an outcome you can’t control.

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It Takes Time & Hard Work

This is, of course, easier said than done. You all know I’ve been in therapy multiple times in my life, and that has certainly given me tools. But they’re just tools, and I still have to do the hard work of separating my identity from my outcomes. I still wrap myself up too tightly in my books’ reception and sales; I am still grieving the fact that I can’t have a second child and nothing went right when I tried to have the first.

But I now can recognize that I am doing this and feeling this pain. And so I create space for it instead of letting bitterness fester inside me. It’s so easy to be jealous and compare myself to all the moms who seem to have babies so easily, but it’s not their fault they have working reproductive organs. Just as it’s not my fault I have Fallopian tubes that don’t connect to my uterus—and then too many fibroids and too much uterine scarring to safely carry a child.

I have stewed in bitterness for years at a time. I have let the pain consume me while I blamed everyone else and also blamed myself. But I am not the outcome. I am not the bad luck that brought me here. There is, in fact, almost nothing about this I can control except loving the daughter I do have and making her life as full as it can be.

And it’s the same with publishing: I can only control what I write and how I treat people.

Everything else? I can’t control, so I have have to let go of the outcomes. They aren’t me. They are just the way the universe operates.

And I hope all of you can find the space to grieve and grow too.

💚 - Sooz

1. Or insert any milestone here: grateful I have an agent, grateful I finished a book, grateful I’m a NYT bestseller, etc.

2. This has actually happened. Multiple times. I truly cannot believe how awful humans are sometimes.