The sea...will remind you that better days are out there
Marisa Bate's Heartbreak Seven
I can’t remember exactly when I first came across Marisa Bate - maybe via The Pool, which, like any self-respecting millennial woman, I inhaled in my twenties whilst I tried to work out what kind of adult I wanted to be.
It seems like another life, now, that post-#MeToo world. Or perhaps it was just a younger life.
More recently, I’ve inhaled Writing About Women, Marisa’s newsletter on women’s lives. I don’t know a place on the internet to find a better melding of rage and hope, of breathtaking joy in new motherhood (believe me, something I’ve had to cling onto very hard over the past couple of years), and breathtaking bewilderment and frustration at the same (ditto). She’s so thoughtful on the oscillations and contradictions and conflicts inherent in trying to find space for writing and creativity and politics around caring and loving and presence.
Here are some quotes from her recent writing that have broken me and bewitched me:
‘It's often/mostly/always women paying the price for men's devastating need to feel important, to be orbited, never doing the orbiting. And this means desperately frantically aggressively draining women of their magic. Because they are scared. Scared of their dazzling power. And scared of the most frightening truth of all: that they are not needed by women anymore, for anything.’
‘All the more reason to ask, again and again, is this the right life? My son is the right-est, most true, most meaningful thing I’ve ever done. But even he can’t eclipse the feeling that has been inside me for a very long time. And that feeling is the belief this world is big, and I want my words to be keys to doors that open to places I could never have imagined. Childcare feels like forever losing the fucking keys.’
‘Motherhood is a daily tightrope on which your balance rests upon the belief you’ll get there still, that it’s not over yet. When I’m on my hands and knees, clearing up food and trying to pull back the tears, I need the iron-strong belief that I will get to the moon.’
So - buy Marisa’s book And Still We March: The Search For Women’s Freedom (previously published as Wild Hope), subscribe to her Substack, and check out her perfectly formed Heartbreak Seven below. I can’t think of a better day to share it than the one in which mine, and so many others’ wild hopes are gazing at the US, hoping it will be a better day for women.
1.    Something to read
Conversations on Love by Natasha Lunn, The Outrun by Amy Liptrot, and Claiming Ground by Laura Bell.Â
2.    Something to listen to
Hold On by Wilson Phillips, Turn Back Time by Cher, and Yes by McAlmont and Butler.
3.    Something to watch
A film - impossible! So instead I'll say The West Wing and the chance to fall in love with Josh Lyman. Pure escapism that reminds you of all that life could be.Â
4.    Something to eat
Coffee and bagels on a cold, sunny morning on the Lower East Side (a breakthrough moment for me).Â
5.    Something to drink
Anything with a kick while sitting at a bar. A bottle of wine on your best friend's sofa.
6.   Somewhere to go
The coast. The sea means a lot to me, and different things. One thing it has always meant is possibility. It will remind you that better days are out there.
7.   A bonus seventh - balm for a broken heart
Friends. Dancing till you sweat. Injecting as much culture as possible. Seeing as many new places as possible. Forcing time alone to remember the shape of you.
Photos by Marten Bjork on Unsplash, Christine Siracusa on Unsplash and frank mckenna on Unsplash.