The subject of women's desire becomes even more taboo as we age. That's why so-called "Seasoned Romance," in publisher parlance, consists of love stories with women in their forties--or even thirties. My books consistently feature vivid, sexy women in their sixties and up. I see writing these stories as a fun way to subvert the dominant paradigm. And the more of us doing it, the merrier!
Teaching an except from Sara Ahmed’s Living a Feminist Life this week and this quote reminded me of this thread: “But a feminist life is also a going back, retrieving parts of ourselves we did not even realize we had, that we did not even realize we had put on hold. We can hold each other by not putting ourselves on hold.”
Although I am a writer of prose, the muses who give me the best insights into articulating desires are all poets: June Jordan (Directed by Desire); Ellen Bass (Indigo), Carolyn Kizer (Mermaids in the Basement). Eavan Boland. Leanne O'Sullivan. Audre Lord. Ruth Stone. But I've also found doors opening in the works of Joan Didion, Annie Dillard, Anaïs Nin, Rebecca Solnit. Not necessarily expressions of the erotic. but of the unique longings of women.
In March 2020 my friend Carolyn called from her retirement community to complain about their stringent lockdown. Like everyone there, Carolyn had paid well into the six figures to buy in, but now they were told that if they left the grounds and returned without a note from a doctor's appointment, they would not be let back in. What worried her was not the prospect of disease, nor the potential loss of her investment. "What will this do to my dating life?" she asked. I took this as a challenge and spent my lockdown writing "The Erotic Pandemic Ball," a collection of linked stories about women in a senior community and their trysts with time travelers, friendly vampires, and visitors from a parallel universe. Now expanded to "The Erotic Pandemic Collection," it's a book that explores older women's desires. Thanks for asking!
Thanks! Enjoyed reading this, and it's such an interesting question.
I happened to read this at around the same time as a post by @Austin Kleon where he highlights a 1934 book by a writer named Marion Milner focusing on the same question (or a very closely related one). I had never heard of her or her book ("A Life of One's Own), and it was interesting to read about. Apparently Auden and others were fans. The link to the discussion is here: https://substack.com/home/post/p-143265139?r=2u2cxe&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
But the first thing that came to mind when I read your essay was. oddly enough, a lighthearted novel -- I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith. I haven't read it in decades, but I think that there is a scene in which the main character, who is in her late teens or early 20s, knows what she wants and isn't able to get it. Another character, a woman who is considerably older, tells her that she herself has managed her disappointments by sublimating her desires into service to others. The main character briefly considers this approach and then rejects it, heartily cheered on by the reader, as I recall. Just a tiny moment in a book that I don't remember so well, but it seemed on point so I'm mentioning it anyway :)
Anne, this post, and my reading it today is fitting and very helpful as I’ve just begun a newsletter on the topic of longing, which can be another word for desire. I want to talk about the importance of paying attention to your longings and also about how you can drown in longing if you haven’t got a way to say “yes” to your desires. I agree that you can’t say yes, if you don’t have a self to form the words, to say, “this is what I want.” Your words here are another reminder for me to continue to say yes and to continue to ask myself what I want, because I can. The books look great!
This post and the previous, about telling our truths, really struck home with me. I once desperately wanted a child, but after years of struggling with infertility was forced to accept that it wasn't going to happen. I felt like an epic fail. My therapist at the time asked me if I had ever considered whether my desire for a baby might be a desire for a life of my own. That was my light bulb moment. Ultimately, I left my marriage. I wanted a do-over. To start again with a clean slate. To reinvent myself. I agree that sometimes it's hard to know what you want. But you might very well know what you don't want. I retired about a year and a half ago. It was both amusing and annoying how many people asked me what I was going to do. I had no master plan. But I knew it was time for me to go. Retiring was an act of radical self-care. Knowing what you don't want is freeing in its own way. But this discussion of what DO we want feels much more expansive and forward looking. And for that I thank you.
I feel there’s a real momentum gaining around this topic of women’s wanting. A book that I found really interesting is The Vital Spark by Lisa Marchiano. It talks about the instinctual energies that we’ve “outlawed” including desire.
No wonder the question "what do you want?" is baffling. There are desires, but also goals, needs, plans or strategies for life: so much under this umbrella definition of wishing for something that is not (yet) part of the status quo. And that's a fair question to ask ourselves, because it invites us to ponder which of these things are tools or instruments instead of true desires, and for what? Social acceptance? Inborn schemata of success and fulfilment? Emotional need? Identity and self-image?
So much of the conversation around "what we want" has become commercial, by making ourselves a commodity and our lives a business strategy. It's easy to say "I'd like a house by the sea" but is that really what you want, or is it an image of success produced and fed by the society? It's also easy to have aspirations and then set goals like a business manager - but are those desires?
Thanks Anne for initiating this conversation which is obviously very timely and meaningful for many of us!!
I feel I have some different perspectives on Desire's place in our lives. Partly, because over the last 25 years, I have been able to fulfil my desire for solitude and writing, amidst the dedication to a marriage, to friendships and community and to work as an educator and writing mentor. One thing that has allowed me this has been a supportive husband who has always understood the necessity and nourishment of my writing life. However, in choosing to prioritize writing (as well as other forms of art and self-nourishment: dance, visual art, yoga, meditation), I have chosen to let go of other desires: a bigger income; owning my own home; children of my own, and annual global travel. Not that I am saying we can't have all that we desire. But I have not figured out how to have it ALL.
On that note, a business coach a number of years ago (as well as meditation teacher more recently) invited me to consider that under any desire, is a deeper desire and then under that one, an even deeper one. This has come even more sharply into focus in the last four years. Since my husband was diagnosed with Parkinson's, and I have become a caregiver, I have been challenged to discern which Desires are meant to be followed and which to be sublimated and/ or pursued in alternative ways. I have learned to look closely at what I desire and then, to consider how I can shift my perception in such a way that it allows me to experience that Desire as instantaneously fulfilled. (I wonder too, how Desire is cultivated through the social and the capitalist systems.)
Curiously, this morning, as I sat eating my breakfast, I watched a hummingbird sipping nectar from the new feeder. A feeling of elation came. Although my life looks so different than how I had planned, with much less books published by now, (I turned 57 in February), still not owning my own home, and being limited in travel due to caring for my husband. Elation and satiation. Because I have gleaned the Desires underneath the other Desires. Often simpler and more available. Such as my own generous attention, which is exactly what I have been giving myself since early this morning, (it's now almost 2pm), alone in my study, writing.
Anne--my goodness, each new post seems to speak to me, matching what I'm feeling and experiencing. This one, in particularly, hits hard. I'm less than a month away from the end of my final semester as a tenured professor. B and I are in the process of selling everything, packing, solidifying our Master Plan: leaving the United States and headed South of the Border.
The hardest question for me to think about, let alone answer--yet the one that gives me the greatest anxiety and overwhelms me with fear--is "What do I want to do? What do I want?" And what is blocking me from answering those questions? That what I'm doing is selfish, foolish, unwise. That I'm leaving without a solid plan, even though the reason I don't have a solid plan is because academia negates this kind of self-exploration, navigating fear and waning confidence. I know I can do many things and do them well, but there's the loud voice screaming in my ear: WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? YOU ARE NOT GOOD ENOUGH TO DO ANY OF THIS! Here I am, 10 days from my 57th birthday, still doubting myself.
Good grief.
And yet . . . . I don't feel fearful to post here. That hopefully I can figure out exactly what path(s) I want to take. I've convinced myself that I cannot write, that I have nothing to say. And to say this in the third decade of the 21st century is heartbreaking, especially when I'm finishing up teaching a course on 19th C American women writers titled Subversive Women in Literature.
So here goes at my first stab articulating what I want, in no particular order:
1. To live a life of wonder and exploration in Mexico and hopefully Europe with B (my spouse
2. To challenge myself and learn another language--in this case, Spanish. (I've internalized both ageist ideas that I'm too old to learn something as difficult as a new language);
3. To be comfortable with and celebrate my physical body and its strengths;
4. To coach new and experience instructors to become more confident teachers, adopting progressive pedagogy and radical self-care (what Cate Denial calls a pedagogy of kindness);
5. To write about my teaching life on Substack and hope that a few people might find it interesting and worthwhile; and I also want to write about the connection between teaching, pursuing new ideas, and cooking (is there such a connection? I've had pushback from many in academia who bristle when I tell them that cooking and creating meals is relaxing....) I also just want to write about what I reading (mostly women, mostly women of color).
6. To get out of my head and live actively, gratefully, and just feel alive again.
I hope I'll be able to figure all of this out over the next year.
Ah, I love your Scottish cottage dream! My kids are teens, so I can only see as far as the next few years through school for them, but then -- who knows? (See there: I'm doing the female thing again. How to avoid it while raising kids continues to elude me.) I think the point you make about claiming our desires first so that we can write or make art is really essential. It's also why I'm grateful for the structure of Substack as a free platform where writers can explore and experiment as long as it takes for those desires to find their way through all the training and obligations and and and.
So timely, and so needed, for women to ask these questions. I think of Emily Dickinson as a sacred text and go back to her poetry often and am still astounded at her conviction, her knowing, how she protected and insisted on what she needed to write. She obviously had some privilege in terms of finances, if you can call being ruled by a controlling father into adulthood privilege, but she knew what she wanted and needed to create. And Anne--I'm there with you about Scotland. I dream of having a place for a writer's colony there, a new type of monkish cells of comfort and quiet and unfussiness where women could write and support one another. So here's to solidarity in your wish for Scotland to have you. 💜
We are such kindred spirits. Everything you said you want, I want - only with slightly different geographic locations: I want a little cottage in England. But do you know what terrifies me the most? That I will get there, not be able to hack it, or will be too lonely for family, or whatever, and move back, and then what dream will I have? I've dreamt of moving to England since I was a child.
But oh, the solitude to write...the day job gets in the way so much. I know it's nearly impossible to be a single woman and make a living off of writing novels - but I also refuse to compromise and marry a man so I can have financial "security." Not worth it.
My desire to do this, to move to the UK, to be a full-time writer, is a physical ache deep inside me. I want it so very badly.
What an echo of what I'm learning about the writing craft of narrative - driven by desire. And what I'm learning from nonfiction writers like Eve Tuck about moving away from damage-centered stories and trauma porn. I realize a narrator needs to write from their own desires and passion makes for a more compelling voice.
The subject of women's desire becomes even more taboo as we age. That's why so-called "Seasoned Romance," in publisher parlance, consists of love stories with women in their forties--or even thirties. My books consistently feature vivid, sexy women in their sixties and up. I see writing these stories as a fun way to subvert the dominant paradigm. And the more of us doing it, the merrier!
Teaching an except from Sara Ahmed’s Living a Feminist Life this week and this quote reminded me of this thread: “But a feminist life is also a going back, retrieving parts of ourselves we did not even realize we had, that we did not even realize we had put on hold. We can hold each other by not putting ourselves on hold.”
Although I am a writer of prose, the muses who give me the best insights into articulating desires are all poets: June Jordan (Directed by Desire); Ellen Bass (Indigo), Carolyn Kizer (Mermaids in the Basement). Eavan Boland. Leanne O'Sullivan. Audre Lord. Ruth Stone. But I've also found doors opening in the works of Joan Didion, Annie Dillard, Anaïs Nin, Rebecca Solnit. Not necessarily expressions of the erotic. but of the unique longings of women.
In March 2020 my friend Carolyn called from her retirement community to complain about their stringent lockdown. Like everyone there, Carolyn had paid well into the six figures to buy in, but now they were told that if they left the grounds and returned without a note from a doctor's appointment, they would not be let back in. What worried her was not the prospect of disease, nor the potential loss of her investment. "What will this do to my dating life?" she asked. I took this as a challenge and spent my lockdown writing "The Erotic Pandemic Ball," a collection of linked stories about women in a senior community and their trysts with time travelers, friendly vampires, and visitors from a parallel universe. Now expanded to "The Erotic Pandemic Collection," it's a book that explores older women's desires. Thanks for asking!
Thanks! Enjoyed reading this, and it's such an interesting question.
I happened to read this at around the same time as a post by @Austin Kleon where he highlights a 1934 book by a writer named Marion Milner focusing on the same question (or a very closely related one). I had never heard of her or her book ("A Life of One's Own), and it was interesting to read about. Apparently Auden and others were fans. The link to the discussion is here: https://substack.com/home/post/p-143265139?r=2u2cxe&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
But the first thing that came to mind when I read your essay was. oddly enough, a lighthearted novel -- I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith. I haven't read it in decades, but I think that there is a scene in which the main character, who is in her late teens or early 20s, knows what she wants and isn't able to get it. Another character, a woman who is considerably older, tells her that she herself has managed her disappointments by sublimating her desires into service to others. The main character briefly considers this approach and then rejects it, heartily cheered on by the reader, as I recall. Just a tiny moment in a book that I don't remember so well, but it seemed on point so I'm mentioning it anyway :)
Anne, this post, and my reading it today is fitting and very helpful as I’ve just begun a newsletter on the topic of longing, which can be another word for desire. I want to talk about the importance of paying attention to your longings and also about how you can drown in longing if you haven’t got a way to say “yes” to your desires. I agree that you can’t say yes, if you don’t have a self to form the words, to say, “this is what I want.” Your words here are another reminder for me to continue to say yes and to continue to ask myself what I want, because I can. The books look great!
This post and the previous, about telling our truths, really struck home with me. I once desperately wanted a child, but after years of struggling with infertility was forced to accept that it wasn't going to happen. I felt like an epic fail. My therapist at the time asked me if I had ever considered whether my desire for a baby might be a desire for a life of my own. That was my light bulb moment. Ultimately, I left my marriage. I wanted a do-over. To start again with a clean slate. To reinvent myself. I agree that sometimes it's hard to know what you want. But you might very well know what you don't want. I retired about a year and a half ago. It was both amusing and annoying how many people asked me what I was going to do. I had no master plan. But I knew it was time for me to go. Retiring was an act of radical self-care. Knowing what you don't want is freeing in its own way. But this discussion of what DO we want feels much more expansive and forward looking. And for that I thank you.
I feel there’s a real momentum gaining around this topic of women’s wanting. A book that I found really interesting is The Vital Spark by Lisa Marchiano. It talks about the instinctual energies that we’ve “outlawed” including desire.
No wonder the question "what do you want?" is baffling. There are desires, but also goals, needs, plans or strategies for life: so much under this umbrella definition of wishing for something that is not (yet) part of the status quo. And that's a fair question to ask ourselves, because it invites us to ponder which of these things are tools or instruments instead of true desires, and for what? Social acceptance? Inborn schemata of success and fulfilment? Emotional need? Identity and self-image?
So much of the conversation around "what we want" has become commercial, by making ourselves a commodity and our lives a business strategy. It's easy to say "I'd like a house by the sea" but is that really what you want, or is it an image of success produced and fed by the society? It's also easy to have aspirations and then set goals like a business manager - but are those desires?
Thanks Anne for initiating this conversation which is obviously very timely and meaningful for many of us!!
I feel I have some different perspectives on Desire's place in our lives. Partly, because over the last 25 years, I have been able to fulfil my desire for solitude and writing, amidst the dedication to a marriage, to friendships and community and to work as an educator and writing mentor. One thing that has allowed me this has been a supportive husband who has always understood the necessity and nourishment of my writing life. However, in choosing to prioritize writing (as well as other forms of art and self-nourishment: dance, visual art, yoga, meditation), I have chosen to let go of other desires: a bigger income; owning my own home; children of my own, and annual global travel. Not that I am saying we can't have all that we desire. But I have not figured out how to have it ALL.
On that note, a business coach a number of years ago (as well as meditation teacher more recently) invited me to consider that under any desire, is a deeper desire and then under that one, an even deeper one. This has come even more sharply into focus in the last four years. Since my husband was diagnosed with Parkinson's, and I have become a caregiver, I have been challenged to discern which Desires are meant to be followed and which to be sublimated and/ or pursued in alternative ways. I have learned to look closely at what I desire and then, to consider how I can shift my perception in such a way that it allows me to experience that Desire as instantaneously fulfilled. (I wonder too, how Desire is cultivated through the social and the capitalist systems.)
Curiously, this morning, as I sat eating my breakfast, I watched a hummingbird sipping nectar from the new feeder. A feeling of elation came. Although my life looks so different than how I had planned, with much less books published by now, (I turned 57 in February), still not owning my own home, and being limited in travel due to caring for my husband. Elation and satiation. Because I have gleaned the Desires underneath the other Desires. Often simpler and more available. Such as my own generous attention, which is exactly what I have been giving myself since early this morning, (it's now almost 2pm), alone in my study, writing.
Anne--my goodness, each new post seems to speak to me, matching what I'm feeling and experiencing. This one, in particularly, hits hard. I'm less than a month away from the end of my final semester as a tenured professor. B and I are in the process of selling everything, packing, solidifying our Master Plan: leaving the United States and headed South of the Border.
The hardest question for me to think about, let alone answer--yet the one that gives me the greatest anxiety and overwhelms me with fear--is "What do I want to do? What do I want?" And what is blocking me from answering those questions? That what I'm doing is selfish, foolish, unwise. That I'm leaving without a solid plan, even though the reason I don't have a solid plan is because academia negates this kind of self-exploration, navigating fear and waning confidence. I know I can do many things and do them well, but there's the loud voice screaming in my ear: WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? YOU ARE NOT GOOD ENOUGH TO DO ANY OF THIS! Here I am, 10 days from my 57th birthday, still doubting myself.
Good grief.
And yet . . . . I don't feel fearful to post here. That hopefully I can figure out exactly what path(s) I want to take. I've convinced myself that I cannot write, that I have nothing to say. And to say this in the third decade of the 21st century is heartbreaking, especially when I'm finishing up teaching a course on 19th C American women writers titled Subversive Women in Literature.
So here goes at my first stab articulating what I want, in no particular order:
1. To live a life of wonder and exploration in Mexico and hopefully Europe with B (my spouse
2. To challenge myself and learn another language--in this case, Spanish. (I've internalized both ageist ideas that I'm too old to learn something as difficult as a new language);
3. To be comfortable with and celebrate my physical body and its strengths;
4. To coach new and experience instructors to become more confident teachers, adopting progressive pedagogy and radical self-care (what Cate Denial calls a pedagogy of kindness);
5. To write about my teaching life on Substack and hope that a few people might find it interesting and worthwhile; and I also want to write about the connection between teaching, pursuing new ideas, and cooking (is there such a connection? I've had pushback from many in academia who bristle when I tell them that cooking and creating meals is relaxing....) I also just want to write about what I reading (mostly women, mostly women of color).
6. To get out of my head and live actively, gratefully, and just feel alive again.
I hope I'll be able to figure all of this out over the next year.
Thank you for this space, Anne!
Ah, I love your Scottish cottage dream! My kids are teens, so I can only see as far as the next few years through school for them, but then -- who knows? (See there: I'm doing the female thing again. How to avoid it while raising kids continues to elude me.) I think the point you make about claiming our desires first so that we can write or make art is really essential. It's also why I'm grateful for the structure of Substack as a free platform where writers can explore and experiment as long as it takes for those desires to find their way through all the training and obligations and and and.
Be the star of your own life, not a bit player.
So timely, and so needed, for women to ask these questions. I think of Emily Dickinson as a sacred text and go back to her poetry often and am still astounded at her conviction, her knowing, how she protected and insisted on what she needed to write. She obviously had some privilege in terms of finances, if you can call being ruled by a controlling father into adulthood privilege, but she knew what she wanted and needed to create. And Anne--I'm there with you about Scotland. I dream of having a place for a writer's colony there, a new type of monkish cells of comfort and quiet and unfussiness where women could write and support one another. So here's to solidarity in your wish for Scotland to have you. 💜
We are such kindred spirits. Everything you said you want, I want - only with slightly different geographic locations: I want a little cottage in England. But do you know what terrifies me the most? That I will get there, not be able to hack it, or will be too lonely for family, or whatever, and move back, and then what dream will I have? I've dreamt of moving to England since I was a child.
But oh, the solitude to write...the day job gets in the way so much. I know it's nearly impossible to be a single woman and make a living off of writing novels - but I also refuse to compromise and marry a man so I can have financial "security." Not worth it.
My desire to do this, to move to the UK, to be a full-time writer, is a physical ache deep inside me. I want it so very badly.
What an echo of what I'm learning about the writing craft of narrative - driven by desire. And what I'm learning from nonfiction writers like Eve Tuck about moving away from damage-centered stories and trauma porn. I realize a narrator needs to write from their own desires and passion makes for a more compelling voice.