SKIP TO READING NOTES FOR “A MOLLUSK WITHOUT A SHELL: ESSAYS ON SELF-CARE FOR WRITERS”
In her “Be Where You Are” Substack, poet and teacher Emily Mohn Slate explores the spaces where writing and mindfulness overlap, and many of the interviews she publishes have strong undercurrents of self-care. That undercurrent was certainly present in my responses to Emily’s questions when she interviewed me for a recent installment. I hope you’ll take a look at the interview, especially if you want to nerd out about Morning Pages, vigorous exercise, and writing prompts/challenges.
In the interview, I talk primarily about running and strength-training — activities that I consider to be about mindfulness (for me) and have, over the years, boosted my mental and physical health. In describing their contributions to my well-being and confidence, I realized how proud I am to have made them such a natural part of my week. Every week. Several times each week. I’m grateful to Emily for the chance to reflect, and I hope there’s at least a tiny bit of wisdom in my offering for her readers.
I haven’t always taken such good care. But now that I have, it’s non-negotiable. I struggle to function without it. It’s tempting to consider that a trap of sorts, but it’s not. I wasn’t functioning before I had self-care habits (not well, anyway). I just didn’t know it. At least not fully.
As a writer, however, self-care can be tricky because writing itself can be self-care and NOT writing can be self-care. It can be difficult to know what best serves our craft.
Enter “A Mollusk Without a Shell: Essays on Self-Care for Writers,” edited by Julie Brooks Barbour and Mary Biddinger (University of Akron Press, 2024).
The press was kind enough to send me a copy* in the first half of last year, and I gobbled it up. However, in 2024 I only got around to one set of reading notes because, ironically, I was deeply immersed in self-care. And last year, that involved sustained, internal work that was purposefully selfish.
I wrote about that journey in a blog post about how 2024’s total solar eclipse set off a year of empowerment, and in Emily’s Substack interview I offer details on the habits that served me best. But if you’re curious about what self-care looks like for other writers and seeking new ideas that may work for you, grab the “Mollusk Without a Shell” anthology. (As a bonus, the writers who provide self-care essays for the book also share writing prompts, and who doesn’t love a good two-fer?!)
Reading “A Mollusk Without a Shell: Essays on Self-Care for Writers”
In their introduction to the essays they collected, Barbour and Biddinger write that the collection is
“born from … the desire to expand our understanding of how writers take care of themselves during challenging times … a companion for anyone who needs to protect and fortify their writer selves … a bundle of wisdom and encouragement.”
The book includes essays from 10 writers: Charles Jensen, Jenny Sadre-Orafai, Kelli Russell Agodon, Lee Ann Roripaugh, Abayomi Animashawn, Sarah Freligh, Jeannine Hall Gailey, Suzanne Frischkorn, Mixby Dickon and Emily Corwin. I’ve read it through three times, and different suggestions resonate with me each time.
Here’s what I’ve gravitated to most (so far):
Charles Jensen on writing for an hour each morning five days a week:
“This ritual has become a form of self-care. … My mental health is better. I am often a kinder, gentler version of myself. I experience more gratitude. Paradoxically, I attribute this to putting first the things that are most important to me. I acknowledge that this is a privilege many times over and that my access to resources that allow me this freedom are not universal. …Even if it [comes] second to raising children or engaging in paid employment, [elevating] your writing practice to be among your top life priorities gives you permission to tend it.”
Kelli Russell Agodon on staying present:
“My best self-care is when I’m paying attention to life’s details — the purple flowers growing in the cobblestones, the small shoe left on the park bench, how my neighbor listens to Glenn Miller when he washes the El Camino he’s owned since he was a young man. … It’s choosing to walk under a crescent moon or warming up banana bread in the toaster to have while I skim through magazines on the coffee table instead of jumping on social media or slipping onto the internet like a bodiless head.
“On my best days, I realize the online world takes away from writing and my IRL world — that I do not need to tweet what’s on my mind, take a photo of my spicy tuna rolls to share on Instagram or check Facebook to see who has done what. … Self-care is allowing my everyday life to be enough and doing something (anything!) that doesn’t require a couch and the glow of a laptop in my face.”
Sarah Freligh on swimming:
“Research suggests the ‘joy’ found in cold-water swimming isn’t just emotional but has physical benefits, too. Cold water boosts the immune system, improves circulation, and activates endorphins, providing a natural high. … I wanted to be wild and joyful instead of anxious and cooped up inside myself. I needed to swim again.
“In late April, on a day when the sun came up high and hot, I drove six miles north and waded into Lake Ontario. The water temperature was still in the 50s, so cold it stung, but I swam for about 10 minutes. I did it again the next day and the next, each day a few minutes longer. The knotted fist that I’d carried in my stomach …. loosened when I was in the water.”
Jeannine Hall Gailey on being purposeful about joy:
“Schedule as much of your life as possible around joy. … If you live for art museums, please make sure and visit the ones in your town. If you love music, going to a concert or an intimate performance will enrich other aspects of your life, as well.”
Mixby Dickon on punk wisdom:
“It’s a shame that conversations about self-care so often slip into comfortable platitudes: say your affirmations, drink water, practice good hygiene, get sufficient sleep, etc. While these mantras are usually good natured, they often address self-care only in superficial terms.
“In one sense, writing is a quintessential act of autonomy. As writers, we are in control of not just the words on the page but also the stories they tell. Our work has the potential to be a safe space, to be unapologetically authentic to ourselves.
“As both artists and as humans, writers can engage in a more complex form of self-care by finding ways to be themselves unapologetically. Punk rock teaches both writers and nonwriters a more nuanced way of navigating self-care, a way that includes the important element of psychic self-defense. Self-care is protecting our voices, our identities, and what makes us unique.”
I’m betting the next time I pick it up, in need of a boost for my process, I’ll find some new gem that either affirms what I’m doing or offers something new to try. ❤️
I’d like to end this post with a self-care tactic many of us talk about but (in my experience) rarely achieve — STOP. SCROLLING — and it’s connected to two essays from “Mollusk Without a Shell.”
Kelli Russell Agodon’s essay in the book talks about the lure of social media and the internet and the risks we take when giving them so much of our time. I’m as guilty as anyone of *wanting* to quit or cut back, then failing miserably.
But I’m reminded of a CBS Saturday Morning segment from late 2023 regarding the scarcity loop. (I’d saved it on my phone. Where else?) It features author Michael Easter, and it’s worth a watch:
Reporter Michelle Miller talks with Easter about why we get addicted to consuming social media (and consuming in general) and what we can do about it. Here are some ideas that really stand out and may help you (and me!) find the inspiration we need to put down our phones:
- “Everything in moderation.” It seems so basic, right? What else do we allow to dominate our time in this way?
- Social media and other apps manipulate an ancient drive. It was in our nature to gamble and receive random rewards because that behavior used to help us learn and survive. Now, it’s primarily about zoning out or getting a dopamine hit.
- It may help to try challenging activities, to go out in nature and to engage in physical activity. When we fall below the level of satisfaction we need from these things, we seek it in other ways (e.g. that perpetual scroll).
- We need to learn to be OK with being bored. Work through the discomfort instead of fixing it with our phones. Stay in the moment.
On that last one, Miller says, “Staying in the moment might just be the cure to our need for more.” And she asks Easter what is, in my opinion, THE question: “In the scarcity loop, do we lose our ability to be content and happy?” “Yes,” says Easter, “You can get a short-term, fleeting hit from something that feels like happiness, but it goes away pretty quick and then as humans, we want the next one.”
I think it takes a much larger effort than we imagine to break our social media/internet/streaming habits. Even understanding the manipulation, even recognizing its hollow and fleeting nature, even then its power over us is immense. And the only thing in the CBS interview that I feel has equal power is to reflect on this question: “Why are we seeking escape in the first place?”
Difficult, right?
Lee Ann Roripaugh opens her essay in “Mollusk” with a metaphor that not only gives the book its name but also lays bare this escapist instinct we’ve all developed:
“Sometimes when you’re feeling some kind of way, you describe it as being like a mollusk without a shell. More often than not, it’s about the acid reflux of trauma: an evocation of feeling vulnerable and raw to the point of distress. … It’s a feeling of being all open wound when everything that surrounds you is salt.
“The only thing to do for it, you’ve found, is to hide. To secrete your body into the safe shell of your apartment, let your consciousness retreat somewhere outside your body, and just wait for it to pass.
“It’s not what you would describe as a fugue state, per se, but it’s nonetheless an abandonment, an absenting, … It’s as if the self retreats to a cartoon thought bubble above the body. Meta. Away. Safe.”
The word “absenting” really stings. Ouch.
But Roripaugh’s essay offers an alternative. She writes,
“[This space also] encompasses the multiple shades of retreat. … Retreat as in solace, replenishment, nourishment.”
What if, instead of abandoning ourselves (and our writing and those we love) and coming back deflated and empty, we learn to retreat in ways that are good for our spirits? Can we find escapes that fill us up with the energy, strength and compassion we need to stay in the moment and enjoy and/or face ourselves and sit with discomfort?
I won’t pretend like I know the solution, but I do think this idea gets us part of the way there. If we’re always running from ourselves, we’ll never stop needing to be on the run.
And maybe we don’t have to start with The Big Reasons we want to escape. I’m wondering if we can start by enduring minor irritants — like breaks in conversations or long waits in lines — without our phones.
I’m so tired of saying I can’t when it comes to quitting these devices.
If self-care is a muscle, we don’t start our work with the 150-lb dumbbells.
We build up to them.
Here’s to time and practice. 🥂
*This blog post is part of my ongoing effort to capture personal reading notes for poetry collections and other books. Far from official reviews, these posts represent first impressions and provide some context for what I bring to the reading of the text.
This particular installment of Reading Notes is made possible by a complimentary, copy of A MOLLUSK WITHOUT A SHELL: ESSAYS ON SELF-CARE FOR WRITERS provided by the UNIVERSITY OF AKRON PRESS, which made no requests about the content of this post.
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