Well, actually, what a day for reflecting! The life unexamined is hardly worth living, right? So having caught the spirit from myriad friends and loved ones (especially this one), I decided to record:

2008 was the year I got married. It was also the year my two grandmothers passed away.

2008 was the year this blog went “group,” turning into a vibrant public forum for feminist critique. It was the year I gave public lectures about feminism at 12 colleges, taught 13 writing workshops and series, consulted with myriad women’s research organizations, became a writing coach, joined my first Board.

It was the year that I learned having a child would not come so easily, the year Marco and I together adopted a cat.

It was the year we elected Obama.  And so, so much more.

With hope and deep gratitude, optimism and wonder, I’m ready for 2009. May it be a happy, healthy, prosperous, gentle, kind, wonderful, love-filled year for all those in the GWP community…and all those far beyond.

(More in this vein–because I just couldn’t seem to stop–over at 85 Broads!)

I walk into the Plaza Jewish Memorial Chapel this afternoon, steeling myself for the premature funeral of one 23-year old Emma Bernstein—an incredibly creative, vibrant spirit I met only twice but whose work affected me deeply. Brilliant, impish, mischievously iconoclastic, Emma had been collaborating with writer Nona Willis-Aronowitz on a blog and book called GIRLdrive, for which I had been interviewed. Emma had taken my picture. On December 20, Emma took her life.

I look around the silent chapel and something feels wrong. I ask the attendant if I’m in the right place. “They all left a while ago,” he says. I’m three hours late.

My heart sinks. Nausea swells. An organized person, how could I have misread the time like that? How could I be so off? Anger. Then, selfish despair. I realize how much I had been counting on this funeral. When my friend Courtney first emailed me the news, I had turned numb. And numb I remained. I needed to witness the sadness in others in order to feel it myself. Mourning is best done in community, and sometimes I think this is why. Catharsis. Collective unloading. Something to help transform robotic shock into something more human. Even for someone I hardly knew.

I collect myself, turn on my heels, and walk back out onto Amsterdam Avenue, where thick snowflakes have begun to fall. It’s New Year’s Eve. Broadway is bussling with people living their lives. But today is the day a 23-year old I knew is being put in the ground. If I can’t mourn Emma properly, communally, I pledge to go home and write something for her instead. So Emma, this is for you.

Dear Emma:

I can’t pretend to understand why you ended your life, but I do understand the impulse. I think that most feeling, thinking beings who’ve experienced deep suffering, if we’re honest with ourselves, can feel at least a tinge of recognition, even if we don’t understand. I can relate to that feeling of wanting to escape, of thinking you will never feel differently than you do.  In March this year you wrote, “All inner and outer life finds itself eternally irresolvable.” You wrote, “embrace doom while doom embraces you.” But what I think you might have meant by that last one is something almost Buddhist, as you wrote “don’t just live for the moment, or in the moment, be the moment” in that same sentence too. You wrote, “It is in this beautiful misery of our condition that we must find the seeds of happiness.” Wise words. And yet, tragically, not always enough.

I can’t claim to know much about the misery in which you ultimately found yourself. But I do know something about the beauty. You were in the middle of a beautiful, and much-needed project—many, I am sure, but the one I refer to is the book you were creating with Nona. As someone who shares your interest in intergenerational dialogue among feminist thinkers, activists, artists, and on, I remain deeply moved by—or, more accurately, informed by—your work.  For a panel at the Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum in March you wrote:

“[D]ifferent generations of women artists need to choose open communications that commemorate without killing, but that recognize differences and the specificity of historical moments. An attitude adjustment is in order. Mentorship must come without passive aggression. Visible networks of friendly recognition must be initiated. There also needs to be a paradigm shift in our critical framework, so that younger women artists aren’t vilified by the hands that feed them. Objectification and glamour must be re-contextualized. The way we understand influence and imitation must be revised. This time the art world’s marketable revolution and glossy politics must be cracked open from the inside and out. Let feminism be an amorphous conceptual cloud that floats over women’s ideation and visual experience—and that brings us together instead of partitions us off from one another.”

Wise words, and true. You spoke there of mentoring, and I have to say, through your work you mentored, and will continue to mentor, those of us older than you.

And so, my friend who I barely had the chance to know, I mourn not only the loss of you but the loss of your future oeuvre—your photographs, your insights, your mentoring, your wisdom, your words. I refrain from drawing grand or political conclusions from your death. As Courtney rightly notes, there’s nothing romantic in it. It’s tragic. It is a horrible, awful loss. May you find peace where you are. And may your friends and family—Nona, my dear friend Susan Bernstein, your parents, your brother—may they eventually find peace and comfort too.

I will say Kaddish for you.

Love,
Deborah

An official “welcome back” to everyone!  And merci beaucoup to Virginia for starting us up with that meaty must-read roundup yesterday.

So before I went under for the break, I had asked each of our bloggers to chose her favorite post from 2008.  Ordered chronologically, I’m pleased to present….(drumroll)….The First-Ever Best of GWP 2008!

I’ll be sending these out in a new year’s e-blast, but hey, you saw it here first.  Happy reading!!

1. Is Faludi’s Terror Dream Coming True? (by Melinda, 12/20/08)

2.  Thankful for Blue Sex, Sasha, Malia, and Little House (by Allison, 11/19/08)

3.  Larry Summers – More than Just a Line (by Veronica, 11/12/08)

4.  Faux Feminist? The Political and the Personal, Again (by Kristen, 11/03/08)

5.  Global Exchange: Election Day Special (by Gwen and Tonni, 10/29/08)

6.  Listen Up, Sarah Palin (by Jacqueline, 10/06/08)

7.  Generation Next: Youth Organizing Beyond the Election (by Courtney, 9/22/08)

8.  Opting Out Just Ain’t What It Used to Be (by Virginia, 7/22/08)

9.  Getting Active Online – Your Feminist Guide to Wikis (by Elizabeth, 7/01/08)

10.  Four Things Editors – Like Me! – Look for in Book Proposals (by Laura, 4/14/08)

Yes, I know, we’ve hit 10 and this, now, is cheating.  But really just 2 more:

11. Gottlieb and the Single Girl (by Elline, 3/04/08)

12. Are the Mens Ready for Madame President? (by Deborah, 1/25/08)

Image cred

A list of our top 10 favorite posts here at GWP from 2008!  Stay tuned…

And will be posting again regularly starting tomorrow. I hope everyone has had a wonderful holiday, whatever holiday that might be!

My friend Rebekah Spicuglia, of WMC news round up fame, makes her debut at Huffington Post today with a defense of her sister — and sisters everywhere who still get the not-so-rhetorical pinch on the ass at work.  Happy Holidays, Chili’s.  NOT!

Like much of the world, I’ll be laying low for the rest of the week.  So I thought I’d do one of those reflective-type posts before I sign off for a few days.  Here goes…!

Looking back at 2008, I think about how much I’ve learned about sustaining a life as a feministy writer. For me, it’s been about weathering ups and downs, and continuing to cultivate that ongoing sense of flexibility around the other things I do (talks, workshops, private coaching, consulting for orgs). And it’s also become, increasingly, about community.

It’s been just a few months since Girl w/ Pen went group, and already I’m thinking, how did this blog ever live without these ladies?!  Our bloggers have each selected their favorite post so far to highlight in the next e-blast, which will go out at the beginning of the new year.  (If you aren’t “subscribed,” you can do so at top right!)

As I recently told The Happiness Project, I don’t believe in resolutions that aren’t fun to keep. So on that note, I offer the writers among you a few to try on for 2009:

1. Write what moves you
2. Try a new genre
3. Let go of the “shoulds.”

And in this time of economic downturn, for those of us writing for pay it’s also probably helpful to manage expectations, keep it real, and continue to diversify revenue streams. But despair not. As GWP blogger and fulltime book editor Laura Mazer reminds us, crisis in the publishing industry can also mean opportunity. I’m with Laura in sending all the writers among us encouragement and hope. Your perspectives NEED to be heard.  Now, perhaps, more than ever…!

So “write on,” as they say.  Grab hold of that public voice and get it out there in 2009.  And in the meantime, Happy Holidays to the GWP community, of which I feel so honored to be a part.

Ha ha funny!

(Thanks to my Christmas-celebrating friend Jacki for the heads up!)

Addendum: I had previously written “shiksa friend,” and my mother called me to tell me to take the word “shiksa” down; she hates that word.  I told her it was intended ironically.  And that “non-Hannukah-celebrating” was too clunky!  Is shiksa a bad word??

Love,
Tula the Hannukah Kitty

On the 90th anniversary of women’s suffrage in Britain, Observer reporter Rachel Cooke asks how far have we come in a thoughtful article titled “Post-feminist backlash – or new dawn for equal rights?” Read up on the latest around Amy Winehouse, Georgina Baillie, politics, wages, the sex industry, much more…

I’m quoted!