2019 Reflection
2019 has contained many important events that contributed to the writing of my memoir. Despite it containing many large life adjustments, I am proud of the person I have shaped into during the year and am excited to bring this person into 2020.
1) Reading
When I broke my collar bone in early January, I was almost completely sedentary. Sitting upright was painful, so was taking the few steps to walk to the bathroom and back to my bed. All of my energy went into functioning during my job. I would come home sore and in pain and after barely being able to walk Chad, I would lay in bed and focus on my collar bone not hurting. I began watching Netflix, and after three nights of bingeing I was BORED. There are only so many options to watch, and I already seen everything good. Then I thought of my kindle, sitting in a drawer, not having been used in years. Reading on the kindle was easy because it didn’t require two hands to hold the book open while flipping the pages. I devoured books while laying in bed healing, and continued to read at an intense pace as my arm began to heal. I was addicted, which is strange for someone who spent her whole life hating English class in school and taking months to read a single book at a pace of one book a year. 2019 sparked my addiction to reading, in a way I didn’t know was possible.
I read 15124 pages across 45 books, averaging to about 41 pages a day! The titles of the books I read in order of how I thought of them:
Put these on the top of your reading list, now!
1. In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
2. The Sun Does Shine by Anthony Ray Hinton
3. An American Summer: Love and Death in Chicago by Alex Kotlowitz
4. A Man Called Ove by Fredrick Backman
5. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
Definitely add these to your reading list for 2020
6. No Dancing, No Dancing: Inside the Global Humanitarian Crisis by Denis Dragovic
7. Pursuit of Happyness by Chris Gardner
8. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
9. Disturbed in Their Nests by Alephonsion Deng, Judy A. Bernstein
10. A Killing on Bay Street by Matt Taibbi
11. When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
12. Call the Nurse: True Stories of a Country Nurse on a Scottish Isle by Mary J. MacLeod
13. The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd
14. Dust Tracks on a Road by Zora Neale Hurston
15. Spilled Milk by K.L. Randis
16. Know My Name by Chanel Miller
17. The Feminism Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained by DK Publishing
18. And Still I Rise: Black America Since MLK by Henry L. Gates
19. Somebody I Used to Know by Wendy Mitchell
20. Thank You for Smoking by Christopher Buckley
21. The Outlander by Gil Adamson
22. Once Upon a River by Bonnie Jo Campbell
23. We Should All by Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Worth the read, pick these up when you visit your local library
24. Speaking Truth to Power by Anita Hill
25. Educated by Tara Westover
26. Lucky by Alice Sebold
27. The Invisible Orientation by Julie Sondra Decker
28. Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger
29. My Squirrel Days by Ellie Kemper
30. Inside the Middle East by Avi Melamed
31. Lioness: Golda Meir and the Nation of Israel by Francine Klagsbrun
32. Invictus by W.E. Henley
33. Formation by Ryan Leigh Dotsie
34. Brave by Rose McGowan
35. Bossypants by Tina Fey
36. Becoming by Michelle Obama
37. Life Will Be the Death of Me… And You Too! By Chelsea Handler
38. This is Me by Chrissy Metz
39. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
40. Carrie by Stephen King
Don’t make the same mistakes I did, don’t read these
41. The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron
42. The Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allen Poe
43. Rock Needs River by Vanessa McGrady
44. Girl Wash Your Face by Rachel Hollis
45. We Are Water by Wally Lamb
2) Writing
I’ve been thinking of writing a memoir since 2017. In early 2017 I finally started researching adamantly about sexual assault, sexual harassment, rape culture, gender studies, and their histories: something I would only previously look into if an article popped up on my screen. I deep dived into scholarly articles and psychological studies, and I realized that assault and harassment is a silent epidemic. Later that year, the #metoo movement was rejuvenated on twitter and the victims of the silent epidemic became louder. Despite not being willing to come forward myself, the incredible amount of people that would come forward with what happened to them was empowering. Names and faces started to be associated with the statistics I have been studying, going beyond just my own. However, the backlash that countered the #metoo movement was enormous. The same rhetoric to demoralize and discredit victims repeated from instances of decades past: learning nothing from Anita Hill, the nation demonized Dr. Christine Ford when she came forward with her story and forced her and her family into hiding; Chris Brown continues to rise in popularity despite multiple founded criminal charges for violence against women by making music and being featured by popular artists including Lil Dicky and Remy Ma, attributing his ongoing accusations and legal cases as “[his] controversial past”; and even though we have hindsight into the horror of Aaliyah and R Kelly’s prior relationship, and don’t question Kylie Jenner and Tyga’s relationship that began when Kylie was 14, and there is barely public outcry against Drake’s “friendship” with Millie Bobby Brown which is mirroring the same actions.
In 2019, I finally decided to sit down and write. I know my story will be among many others in the sea of people having similar stories, and yet that’s the point. When is the tipping point for when things are going to start to matter? When is policy going to address the staggering statistics of crime that is committed despite the current laws that are in place? Will the government wake up to these issues if we adopt universal healthcare due to the estimated lifetime cost of rape per victim being $122,461, with the total medical costs nationally being $1.2 trillion? As I write my own story, I am continuing my research that I have begun two years ago, in hopes of being able to reflect the necessity for policy reform. Everyone posting a tweet, or status update with #metoo is brave and strong, but as a collective the movement is screaming into the abyss of the internet, only reaching those who are actively seeking its message.
In 2020, I am hoping to finish my memoir, and hopefully spark more people to demand real policy change from our country’s representatives. I hope that also in 2020, I continue to learn about others within the writing community by reading more books and continuing my research into writing techniques. Thank you for following and supporting my writing journey in 2019, stay tuned for 2020!