the braid: an introduction

this is a prologue of sorts

First of all, hi. It’s been a minute. Doing this kind of writing, I mean. I’m rusty. It took me several days to set this bad boy up and many months to commit to DOING THIS doing this. Because for years I pushed up against the idea of longform internet writing after 10+ years of it being my full-time job.

But recently, the essays started piling up. In drafts on my computer. And in my brain. And book proposals I never submitted. And I realized that I can write here without putting the same pressure I put on myself in the past because I am a different person now.

Fast forward to 11 half-baked essays currently in drafts that I started last week alone, not excluding a dozen unpublished pieces that have been sitting on my desktop for years. It’s like the floodgates opened or something. Like, wait… OH I REMEMBER THISSSSSSS. Muscle memory, former mommy blogger edition.

My last post on Girl’s Gone Child was a eulogy — a verbatim draft of what I read aloud at my husband’s funeral. Four years ago almost to the day.

I knew I would never post there again because that part of me — the GGC part — died when Hal did. I also had no interest in blogging again. I had spent years posting daily on multiple sites including my own, feeling obligated to churn out content — making time where they wasn’t any — day after day for more than ten years. In short, I burnt the fuck out.

From 2005 to 2018 I wrote about my experience as a wife and young mother, both of which I am not anymore. The opposite, really. Which is an exciting place to write from — I have earned perspective as I’ve aged, which, of course, is the privilege of getting older. Living through some shit, as they say, has made me more interesting and hopefully more self-aware.

I grew up on the Internet. On the pages of RSS feeds. I spent the entirety of my parenting tenure online and now, 17 years later, the “child” of Girl’s Gone is months away from becoming a full-fledged adult college-bound man. And my daughters, whose births I documented in detail are now 14, 11 and 11.

And while I seldom write about my children anymore, my experience as their mother is one I plan to explore here in a way I am unable to in Instagram captions because of length requirements and public access. I will also be publishing guest-written essays about parenting, sex, death, dating, being a woman in middle age, etc, etc, all the things we’re not supposed to talk about, etc. We’re gonna get on some NC17 NSFW shit. Truth or dare slumber party French braid circle time LFG.

Which brings me to the name:

the name the braid was inspired by three things:

1. My book, ALL OF THIS, a book that I separated into three parts with the braid as my formatting reference. “That’s right. This time our stories will be told in braids. Loosely overlapping and free at the ends… down our backs.” - p.199

2. I mostly wore my hair in a braid (sometimes, two) when I was little — hence the photos in this post — and it made me feel taken care of, wearing my hair like that. It reminds me of being a daughter. A sister. A friend. Which is how I want this space to feel for you and me and all of us.

3. The triple goddess archetype: maiden, mother and crone — all of whom I feel deeply connected to at this point in my life. see: Artemis (for whom I have devoted an entire forearm to in recent months) and Hecate.

I have been told on many occasions to separate my stories and selves. That the mother in me shouldn’t speak of sex. That the lover in me should not prioritize herself. That the overlapping of Rebeccas confuses people. That no one needs to read about that.

But I disagree. I think many people do want to read about that. And that many more of us need to write — to talk — about that. That we need to openly share stories we’ve been shamed into thinking we must keep quiet. (See: the post I have in drafts about locked diaries and WHO they protect exactly.) Our truths are not TMI. Neither are our wants, desires and need to openly express them. Our collective fear of exposure keeps us all from being liabilities. But to whom exactly?

You deserve to feel everything, my cousin (pictured with me at my birthday party, below! Hi, Erica!) years ago told me via the handwritten letter she left on my pillow in the months after my husband’s death.

Which is ultimately why I’m here. To write freely and shamelessly about experiences that complement and contradict each other and to invite contributors to do the same. To dig deeper into the subjects I’ve been exploring for years on websites and podcasts and magazines other than mine. To write about love and loss in all its complexity and to do so, finally, on a website in my name. To tell human stories about holding on and letting go. To explore sexuality, age and female pleasure from the perspective of women in changing bodies. To grieve and celebrate our children’s growing up. To talk openly and realistically about death, desire and complicated grief. To continue where I left off in my book. TO FEEL EVERYTHING.

You deserve to feel everything.

My hope is to grow the braid into something beyond this — to create a community that feels safe for those with stories to share and messy, maybe even “fucked up” (by societal standards) truths to tell — and to highlight the universality of our experiences with grit and love.

I plan to post regularly and will be publishing more personal/explicit work behind a paywall. It’s $7 a month to subscribe for full access which I appreciate very much! This is how I make my living, I write about stuff. And depending on my ability to monetize this will depend on how I can prioritize this over other avenues of income (and pay contributors!) so THANK YOU IN ADVANCE for your financial support. You can also subscribe for free, of course, as much of the content here will be PG-ish and accessible to all.

With gratitude to those of you who’ve been here all along. And to those who are new here, hi and thank you, too. <3

Welcome to the braid.