The Story Room Salon - She Was Only Trying to Keep Me Safe
Or... For the women who were taught to call it protection.
Four times a year I ask this community of midlife women to submit to The Story Room Magazine on a specific theme. The best of it goes into the Story Room Magazine, and then we all get on Zoom together in The Story Room Salon and do a deep dive into the writing and the theme.
The first 30 minutes of the Salon take place with the Winning and Runner-Up writers (who are all paid/compensated for their work) and it’s free to all subscribers. That’s what this is.
Our guests are:
Winners:
Di Kersey - Di Kersey
Susan Kacvinsky - Susan Kacvinsky
Runners Up:
Rachel Harris - Rachel • Good Girl Ghosting™️
Leslie Senevey - Leslie Senevey
Carol Oyanagi - Carol Oyanagi
This quarter’s theme was The Threshold Guardian. What, or who is is that is guarding the door that leads to the next part of your adventure. Many of the pieces named themselves, or their mothers as their Threshold Guardian (interesting!). Most of the pieces that came in this quarter had a similar reflection buried somewhere inside it. She was only trying to keep me safe.
I read all of them, so I can tell you it was in nearly every single one. Different mothers, different sisters, different husbands, one identical defense.
So I asked the panel whether it was true. Or whether it is simply the most socially acceptable way for a midlife woman to describe decades of making herself small, because turning your own suppression into care is the only version anyone accepts.
That is the half hour above. A few places to jump in:
5:48 I ask Rachel • Good Girl Ghosting™️ about a line early in her essay where she stops and says, plainly, that this essay is not a grievance. I wanted to know who she was saying it to, because that sentence is a threshold guardian doing its work right there on the page.
9:29 Leslie Senevey on why she gave hers a name, a body, a lap and a plate of dumplings. Bertha exists so that her father doesn’t have to be the villain.
11:33 Carol Oyanagi on writing her own birth from her mother’s point of view, and why fiction was the only form that gave her room to tell the truth inside it.
When that recording stops, the room opens up for everyone. We all unmute, and for the next hour we get real down and dirty, and say the things that don’t go anywhere afterwards.
Members can watch all of it (the recorded version arrives this Saturday)
Watch your inboxes for the Call for Submissions this Thursday to submit to the next issue. Submission is free and open to all subscribers free or paid. New theme, new prizes, and the same $150 for each winner. Come and write for it.
Join The Society
Get your writing seen, published, and paid for.
Submit to The Story Room. Anyone can, free or paid. The best of it goes into the Magazine, and if you win, you’re paid for it: cash if you’re a paid subscriber, paid subscriber membership if you’re not. Everyone who submits gets a seat at the Salon, for the kind of conversation you’re still thinking about three days later.
Paid subscribers get a ticket to every Salon (no need to submit), paid writing opportunities, access to the archives including conversations with winning writers, plus the Quest Library and the book -The Heroine’s Guide to Designing an Extraordinary Life.
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