Plot Twists

On Maggie Smith's new memoir and announcing my divorce

maggiesmithpoet

A post shared by Maggie Smith (@maggiesmithpoet)

“I’ve been thinking about how sometimes we write the truth before we know it.” Maggie Smith, the poet, writes that line in her new memoir, You Could Make This Place Beautiful. A reader asked her after the publication of her book, Good Bones: “What is it like to be a single mother?” 

Smith laughed in surprise. “I’m not a single mother!” she explained. But later that year, she would be. Looking back, she realizes that her husband had not appeared on any of the pages of her book.

In February of 2021, my first piece of published writing appeared in Scary Mommy. It was an essay about how hard marriage could be during the pandemic. I had titled my piece: Marriage in the Time of Covid. When it appeared on their website, they had given it the headline:

“If You Don’t Think Your Marriage Will Survive the Pandemic, You’re Not Alone.”

I cringed at the title. No, really, I was horrified! What would people think? Now I could no longer show it to my husband proudly, but I had to apologize for it. When I posted it on social media, I put a disclaimer, trying to assure people that Ryan and I were fine. It was clickbait! (Which it was.) But it was also, sadly, prescient.

Almost exactly two years after the publication of that piece, I moved out of my family home and we embarked upon the complicated process of divorce. 

This might not come as a shock to you. I’ve been hinting at my frustration with the institution of marriage throughout this newsletter (here, and here, and here). My rage at imbalanced gender expectations and my desire to have the experience granted to husbands and fathers is evident in much of my writing. Something didn’t fit. Something wasn’t right. I was wrestling with the structures of my life. But it still came as a shock to me. 

Divorce is the ultimate plot twist. 

It’s not the only plot twist life can give you. When you face infertility, or a child receives an unexpected diagnosis, or a child transitions, there are many ways that life can circumvent your expectations. But divorce, I have to say, is pretty destabilizing. Everything changes. Your living situation, your time with your children, your support system, your family.

Maggie Smith’s new book is about her divorce. When I saw the description of the book on social media last year, I knew I needed to read it even though I had not yet named that I was where I was headed. Thanks to my position as publisher of Literary Mama, I received an advance copy, was able to read it in September, and interviewed Smith in the May/June issue of Literary Mama. 

She is a true delight, and this book, a treasure. If you have recently gone through or are contemplating divorce, I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

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“The Finder didn’t lose the future, only her knowledge about it. She lost the narrative. The Finder stopped knowing how to tell herself the story of her life. Where there had been a future, or at least the promise of one, there was now an ellipsis: dot dot dot.”

Smith writes about her life like a writer who is desperate to grasp on to a narrative structure that makes sense. I can totally relate.

But it is about so much more than her marriage and subsequent divorce. It is also a beautiful reflection on motherhood. About postpartum depression, about miscarriages, about how to have a career when you already have a full-time job as primary caretaker. 

She writes about trying to mother her second child:

“If I wrote everything down, I would see The Pattern. The Pattern That Would Make Him Happy. The Pattern That Would Make Him Sleep. The Pattern That Would Fix Him. The Pattern That Would Fix Me.”

I did this with my second child. I have discarded notebooks still tucked away in drawers where I tracked sleep patterns, what I ate, how long she slept, what time she slept. Grasping at control, at some semblance of a formula that might let me finally figure her out. My husband shook his head, knowing there was no pattern. But he didn’t know what it felt like to be at the whims of her moods, all day, every day. I had to feel like it was figure-out-able or I would lose my mind.

I was already losing my mind.

“I wonder: How will my children feel if they think that being seen as a mother wasn’t enough for me? What will they think of me, knowing I wanted a full life - a life with them and a life in words, too? 

I’m dog-earing a realization in my mind now: I don’t think fathers are asking themselves these questions. Fathers don’t feel guilty for wanting an identity apart from their children, because the expectation is that they have lives outside of the home.”

These are the kind of quiet yet explosive explorations Smith peppers throughout the book. It is not a traditional narrative, because she is unpacking what happened, and she goes back in time, re-examining different events through her vantage point today, poking holes, trying to see whether this all could have been avoided.

She explores gender roles and how creative work isn’t always valued as “work,” the writings of Eve Rodsky and how “I didn’t feel missed as a person,” when she travels for work, “I felt missed as staff.” 

The Cut published an excerpt of the memoir last week, in which you’ll find the following quote:

“We were both busy, probably spread too thin, needing things from our lives - and from one another - that we weren’t getting. I agreed that something needed to give. I disagreed that the something needed to be my work. In turn, me.

What would I have done to save my marriage? I would have abandoned myself, and I did, for a time. I would have done it for longer if he’d let me.”

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The moment I finished the book, which ends with the poem “Bride,” (which I have shared on this newsletter before and share again, below), would you believe that there was an earthquake? I had to laugh. Subtle, universe. It does feel like my whole world is unsteady, thank you for affirming that. 

Do these few quotes convince you to go out and buy the book? I hope they do. I hope you’ll also check out my interview with her on Literary Mama.

I don’t have a whole lot more to share today. I’m doing okay, actually. I wish there was a word for happy/sad, because that is how this feels. I found a rental a few blocks from our other house. I adopted two cats the day after I moved out, a brother/sister pair named Willow and Birch. Willow is on my lap as I write this. I’m in the final stages of polishing my book proposal to shop to agents, a moment that feels terrifying and also years in the making. I keep thinking: I can’t do this, can I? Put all this out into the world? I honestly would feel better about it if I could just keep everyone who knows me from reading this book. But I know that isn’t how it works. 

I keep this quote (that Smith shared in her book) front of mind: 

wendymac

A post shared by wendy macnaughton (@wendymac)

I’m grateful to writers like Smith and Rebecca Woolf and Amy Shearn and Kelly McMasters and Glennon Doyle and Gina Frangello and Kimberly Harrington and Rachel Cusk who have paved the way in terms of writing about divorce and marriage and motherhood and all the things.

Lately I’ve been thinking about the power that comes from #WomenTalking. Voicing all the unsaid things we’ve been taught to keep under lock and key. This newsletter is an attempt to do that, to keep the conversation going, to give the truth some air.

maggiesmithpoet

A post shared by Maggie Smith (@maggiesmithpoet)

FURTHER READING:

If you don’t have the funds to buy her book, follow Smith on Instagram or subscribe her to her Substack, For Dear Life with Maggie Smith.

I was so comforted by this post by Joanna Goddard, creator of Cup of Jo. I’ve always felt like she was a kind of kindred spirit (she is an identical twin as well) and have followed her for years: Some Personal News.

Reese Witherspoon is getting divorced. I love Reese (she optioned the second book I ever ghostwrote!) and even applied to be a part of her Hello Sunshine team (I think the job was being in charge of their book club discussions?) but the pandemic meant I don’t think they ever hired anyone. Reese always seems so pulled together, so ambitious, so bold. It is again, a kind of comfort to have her going through something like this at the same time. Permission to not succeed at all the things.

“It’s Okay to Want What You Want,” where Cheryl Strayed talks with Glennon, Amanda, and Abby on the We Can Do Hard Things podcast is so good.

There are some real upsides to divorce, including the 50/50 custody-split that Amy Shearn wrote about so compellingly in “A 50/50 Custody Arrangement Could Save Your Marriage.” I got to meet Amy in person at AWP and I’m so glad to have a writer, and woman, like her in my corner.