Two years since

Notes on lost dreams and what has been gained

Human Stuff is a weekly-ish newsletter. Please feel free to share parts of this letter that connect with you, or send to someone you love. Thank you for reading, sharing, commenting, subscribing, for being here. It means something.

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A song I’m loving:

A different path, 35mm film

My book, Already Enough, came out two years ago. It was January 25th 2022, my publication day, and I spent most of it with my two-month-old daughter attached to my body. Feed, burp, play, change, nap. Feed, burp, play, change, nap. It was during the season where she’d only nap on me, her soft hair nestled in the folds of my neck — a season I now miss but, at the time, felt somewhat smothered by — something you’re not supposed to say out loud if you’re a mother. Time spent in the monotonous cycle felt starkly at contrast with the bigness of my book release. I was straddling two worlds at once, but I only truly had room for one.

When I got my book deal in 2019, I imagined a tour and book signings, an energetic swell of interviews and events, the hubbub we’re often told to anticipate or, at the very least, strive for. Instead, I did three Instagram Lives in between breastfeeding and cancelled the rest. I did a small handful of podcast interviews and said no to everything else. I barely shared about my book on social media. I didn’t submit any essays for publications. I did zero public readings or events. I signed copies at one store, my beloved Copperfield’s Books. I conserved my energy to keep producing enough milk, to soothing and burping my newborn, to wiping away tears from the wordless loneliness of postpartum, to making time to shower, to the quiet, private, entirely mundane tasks of keeping a tiny, new human alive. There was simultaneous guilt and relief in letting all of it go for the benefit of what was right in front of me.

Thank you, Copperfield’s Books

I remember feeling like I was doing my book a great disservice by not being able to give it’s release into the world the energy, time, and dedication it deserved. I remember getting a surprise chocolate pie delivery from a dear friend in Seattle and crying into a slice. I remember getting flowers from my editor and putting them in my daughter’s room, the place I spent the most time. I remember seeing peers and colleagues share their fancy book launch parties while I sat alone, nap-trapped for hours in the nursery room chair. I remember taking a photo of my daughter laying next to my book, her new body not much larger than it, staring at me wide-eyed. I remember looking at those wide blue eyes and the guilt washing away for a minute, a sense of solid ground in the unseen tending my life had become filled with, in trusting what I needed to prioritize, in giving up what needed giving up.

My baby and my book, two years ago, somehow.

In the last two years, instead of finishing a second or even third book, I’ve taken time to continue figuring out who I am on the other side of these two transformational creations. I took an extended break from the work I wrote about in my book. I’ve had over 30,000 people unfollow my Instagram account instead of experiencing the continued growth I was taught to yearn for. I haven’t gotten another book deal, or become more famous, or made more money. Externally, life has gotten smaller.

I’ve swayed with my daughter to Dancing On My Own countless times in our living room. I’ve rekindled my longtime love of film photography. I’ve made bowls and cups from the earth with my hands. I’ve started my own deeper process of healing, in ways I haven’t felt called to share publicly or create something from. I started this newsletter as a way of exploring what I wanted to say next. I’ve sat in the questions longer than comfortable. I’ve done nothing extraordinary by most people’s standards. I’ve created enough space to start to get to know this new version of myself, the one that still feels unfamiliar and wide-eyed, the one that grieves and loves and is in less of a rush to get to the next thing. I’ve learned how to make a hell of a bowl of soup. I’ve waited until I’ve actually felt ready to dive into another long project. Internally, life has gotten larger.

Thank you, Point Reyes Books

A few weeks ago, I was at a sweet little shop in Point Reyes buying Christmas gifts to send to family in Oregon. The cashier, a woman in her 60’s I’d guess, looked at my name as I slid my card in the reader. How funny — I just bought a book written by a Lisa Olivera, she said. Oh wow; what book was it? I asked, as if it couldn’t possibly be mine. Already Enough, a book about self-acceptance, she replied. That’s my book, I told her, smiling, pushing against the feeling I often get when my book gets brought up: a feeling of not wanting to appear to be bragging or too proud. The woman teared up and told me about her decades-long meditation practice, how it has taught her some lessons need to be explored and visited over and over again, how my book found her at the right time, how it gave new language to something familiar to her, how moved she was to have met me in this serendipitous way.

I occasionally feel embarrassed by it all — that I wrote a book in the “self-help” category, as if that doesn’t make me a real writer — that I wrote a book differently and perhaps less skillfully written than it would be if I wrote it today— embarrassed by how little I was able to nurture my book for the sake of nurturing my family, by the lack of Big Booming Success, by the quietness of it all. I sometimes feel the weight of expectation, of comparison, of What-If’s. I look at my book and see an entirely different life that existed before and during its creation than the life that exists after it. I see the dreams I had for it lost, in many ways not met.

But then, when I take my daughter to the bookstore and she sees my book on the shelf and says, “Mama’s book!” She looks at the photo on the back and smiles. “That’s Mama!” One day in the far-away future, she might read my book and understand a little more of who I am, of what I’ve moved through, of the kind of message I wanted to put into the world during that long-ago season of life, the one where she was entirely new and, in many ways, so was I. Something about that allows it all to make sense. Something about that feels more important than anything else.

I am working on making peace with when things don’t go the way I assume they’re supposed to. I’m working on releasing my expectations to make space to see the goodness even in what is lost. And I’m working on letting the process of making things matter more than the outcome of the making — on how I’m shaped and molded just by choosing to try. I’m grateful for the trying. I want to keep trying.

Thank you, as always, for being here.

△ On observation journaling

△ Loved this conversation & can’t wait to read Martyr!

△ The work of the witness, in Jewish Currents

△ This gorgeous short film

△ Breakage by Mary Oliver

△ On loss of innocence, from my dear friend

Speak Your Peace

△ This stunning, affirming piece from

Andrea Gibson

△ A moment with the moon —

The simplicity and wildness of this scene.

With care,
Lisa