Mourning Pages: A Reintroduction
The tangle of beginnings and endings
Last time: A Bookish Year in Review
“I want to make a New year's prayer, not a resolution. I'm praying for courage.” –Susan Sontag
I don’t know if I’ve ever been this excited for a new year. I mean, sure, I’ve been very ready for a year to end. That seems to be the default setting for many of us. But when I’m ready for a year to end, I usually don’t know what I’m walking into for the new year. I feel like I’m tiptoeing into half-hearted resolutions and goals that I forget as soon as I make them.
2024, though, I’m excited for this one.
I’m charging forward into 2024 like Kool-Aid Man, but you know, not so extra.
It feels like the perfect time for a reintroduction to Mourning Pages.
What to know about me:
I’m a writer, an English professor, a mom, a reader, a friend to cats, a snob about nothing. I love sunshine and coffee, Coconut La Croix, chocolate and ghost stories. Libraries are my happy place. I’m from Baltimore, Maryland, but living in South Carolina. Yes, I put Old Bay on everything.
More officially, I have an M.F.A in Creative Writing (Fiction) from West Virginia University and my work has appeared in publications such as the Potomac Review, Pank, Iron Horse Literary Review, Baltimore City Paper, and New Ohio Review. I am represented by Danielle Egan-Miller at Browne & Miller and currently crossing my fingers and wishing on shooting stars for the future of my first novel.
I write a lot about grief. It hovers at the edge of all my photographs, all my pages, and I’ve learned to embrace it or at least live alongside it.
It’s a grief that amps up in December, at the close of the year, and again in January, as the new year begins.
You see, on January 1, 2016, one of my closest friends, Sarah, died unexpectedly at the age of 35. New Year’s Eve had been our holiday (“our” meaning our group of six friends, connected since elementary school in some cases). I met Sarah in 8th grade. We lived together in our early twenties. We were family. And just like family can be fraught with conflict and tension and the ability to hurt one another because there’s so much love and history, such was our friendship at the end.
Sarah and I hadn’t spent a New Year’s Eve together in years. Marriage, babies, moving across state lines. We texted that morning. That’s what you do on New Year’s Day. You send messages to the people you love most, the ones you can’t be with but want to share the new year with anyway.
I used to begin the year with her and now I begin it with her memory.
And then, at the end of 2017, my father died right before Christmas, shortly followed by my grandmother and my aunt.
Hence the grief this time of year. Mourning feels like a second skin, no matter how much time passes.
Welcome to Mourning Pages
Julia Cameron, in The Artist’s Way, recommends writing daily Morning Pages. I married that idea with my grief experience to form Mourning Pages.
Mourning Pages is a newsletter about writing in the midst of grief. Joy and loss, academia, motherhood, publishing—all mixed together to show the cross sections between writing and mourning.
For the longer version, you can start with the “About” Section, but it might also help to read the very first Mourning Pages post:
Since I created Mourning Pages at the beginning of 2022, I have been open to seeing how Substack shifts and grows as a platform, while figuring out my own chaotic writing life. I am open to the shifts and changes in format and my posting schedule because I still love the heart of Mourning Pages. I still get up every morning to write. I’m still dreaming of ghosts.
What you can expect to see from Mourning Pages in 2024
News about the novel I’ve been working on and vaguely tweeting about for the last year (Sylvia Plath! Friendship! Dark Academia! Grief!)
Updates about my new untitled work-in-progress (Bars! Baltimore! Ghosts! Grief!—You know, the usual, but in a focused, researched, obsessive way)
Despite all the emphasis on grief, I find this a joyful place filled with fireworks, champagne, and lots of laughter. Much like a New Year’s Eve party (or maybe more like the hangover brunch the next morning).
If you haven’t subscribed yet, this is the place where I invite you to join in.
All subscribers can access the following:
New posts including resources, short essays, and interviews all about writing, creativity and loss.
Monthly recommendations for books, podcasts, and podcasts related to Mourning Pages.
Full archive of free posts.
Paid subscribers also receive:
A monthly post with tips and resources about writing while _______ (fill in the blank: writing while parenting, writing while grieving, writing while working a full-time job, etc.)
Participation in Comments (On Substack, the Comments Section is actually a joyful place, a growing, thriving community)
Behind-the-scenes updates and offers (delivered to you before anyone else)
Full archive of all posts. Every single one of them.
Paid subscriptions offer a way for those who appreciate my work to support the effort it takes to produce it—for which I am deeply grateful.
I’m glad you are here and hope you stick around. Cheers to 2024 and Happy New Year!