K.E. Garland's Blog, page 7

In Search of a Salve: Questions & Answers

On July 20, 2024, I hosted a hybrid Q&A for Salve. Even though the event lasted 1.5 hours, unbeknownst to the virtual host and me, the live link stopped working and dropped everyone 45 minutes in! Ever since I realized this, I’ve been recording answers to individual questions for those who asked (before the live dropped) and for those who were in attendance but didn’t get their question answered.

I thought I’d share them here.

Q1: At one point, you said, no one leaves their parents’ house unscathed (which is for sure a word) and wondering if/how this beautiful book made you consider your own parenting. ANSWER Q2: Can you talk more about the idea of self-therapy or self-education for healing? ANSWER Q3: Can you talk about the difference between being addicted to substances and behavioral addiction, because it doesn’t seem like it’s quite the same? ANSWER Q4: Did you find any parallels between the way you self-medicated with sex and the way you chose self-healing/self-therapy? ANSWER Q5: Were you ever concerned about what your family would think or how they’d feel while you were writing the book? ANSWER Video #6: Sex addiction is an intimacy disorder .

It’s Salve’s one-year anniversary. I’ll be sharing thoughts, impact, and commentary all month!

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Monday Notes: The Greatest Gift of Publishing In Search of a Salve

An unexpected consequence of publishing In Search of a Salve is that I’ve reconnected with friends from my past. These connections have manifested in different ways and for varied reasons. For example, months after publication, my friend, Mika texted me letters, postcards, and photos I’d sent to her from the time I’d moved from Chicago to Covert.

In bubbled cursive I wrote:

So, like I told you to do, I’ll just say fuck them … Joëlle, Daddy (at times), Tom, Najja, Shani …

Y’all. The list of who was getting the proverbial middle finger was long. In this letter, I also had a contingency plan for what I would do, should I begin to be “depressed again.” Today, it is common practice for one to announce their depression, whether self-diagnosed or clinical. But in the early 90s? Depressed was not a household term. Using this word affirmed that my body and mind knew something was wrong. I just had no clear way to communicate it to the adults around me.

In my handwriting, I also illustrated the dawn of my descent into addiction. I stopped saying “eff everyone,” and began talking about “all of the boys.” Then undergrad began, and letter writing ended.

I’m grateful Mika showed me these artifacts. Each word validated the core content of my memoir.

In undergrad, I used to hang out with a guy we’ll call Dan. As I reminisce, I’m sure we were quite the pair walking around campus: Me, a five-foot-tall girl and Dan, a four-hundred-pound boy. We were close for a few semesters and held sporadic convos post-graduation. Ordering the book brought him back into my sphere. He texted this:

You have always been self-aware and unequivocally you! Look at what you’ve achieved. Look at what you’re going to achieve. You get your flowers now!!!

Then he added:

I beat up 2 people that spoke badly about you…everyone knew that if they had a problem with you, they had a problem with my big ass…

There was a time during college, where my reputation preceded me. But by the time Dan and I became friends, I’d slowly abandoned social scenes and secured a relationship with my now husband. However, people were still gossiping, and I was oblivious that I needed defense. Years later, I am grateful that he shared this with me. It felt good to know someone had my back at a time when I felt no one did.

A person I met in seventh grade read Salve, and we reconnected over themes of the memoir. The book touched her life in numerous ways. One day, we had a conversation about how much we related to watching Amanda Seales discuss autism and giftedness in an interview with Shannon Sharpe. Seales also disclosed how reading and using The 48 Laws of Power had helped her interact with people.

“I think I need to read that book,” I said. “Sometimes, I don’t think people get what I’m saying.”

“B*tch,” middle-school friend started. “You just wrote a book called, In Search of a Salve: Memoir of a Sex Addict, where you virtually said, ‘this is my experience, and f*ck you if you don’t understand it!’ You shouldn’t be walking into rooms trying to manipulate people or meet them where they are. You should be raising the vibration of every room you walk into!”

Her lecture continued, and I quieted myself. By the end of it, I agreed. In the past, I’d tried to fit in, so I could belong. Whether it was with family, in-laws, or friends, I didn’t want to be different. Today? Not at all. Talking to this woman has helped me to consciously change how I move in the world. I stopped mumbling the subtitle of the book, and instead, began saying it “with my chest” as a few new friends have encouraged me to do.

At the end of our convo, seventh-grade friend added, “Every time I talk to you, I’m going to pour into you.” So far, she’s kept her word, and I’m grateful.

There have been more reconnections, each with their own benefits. Many surface-level conversations have shifted to the soul-level. People are returning to therapy or finding independent ways to release the traumatic experiences they’ve buried. Due to Salve, people are seeking ways to live healthier lives.

Furthermore, I’m thankful for these conversations because friends have reminded me that they’ve always known who I was, even when I was trying to hide from it or figure it out. Thus far, reconnecting with friends has been one of the greatest gifts of releasing In Search of a Salve.

It’s Salve’s one-year anniversary. I’ll be sharing thoughts, impact, and commentary all month!

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In Search of a Salve: Stacy’s Review

Summer Reads: Week Six–Bookworm’s Sign-Off (For Now)

Writer’s Workshop: Indie Publishing Woes for In Search of a Salve

In an age of curated information and toxic positivity, I want to be as honest as possible about my experience as an indie author. After all, everything hasn’t been rainbows and unicorns.

BOOK BLURBS

One of the first things that disappointed me is when I used my six degrees of separation to ask a well-known author to blurb In Search of a Salve. The answer was no. I wasn’t given details, and honestly, I prefer it that way. Not a big deal, I thought. I’ll just move on to the next ask. I was good, until I saw that the author had blurbed a book, which I didn’t think was very good. Months later, I saw the author’s written blessing on another book that I thought was not great. It hurt to see the author cosign others’ books and not mine. And although you shouldn’t, it’s hard not to take these things personally. It’s the kind of thing that causes imposter syndrome to resurface. However, I forced myself to move through this emotion. Ultimately, I received the blurbs that were made just for me. Thank you to Erica Garza, Marnie Ferree, Camille Hayes, and Josh Shea.

INDIE BOOKSTORES

As an indie author, I thought it would be seamless to shelve my book at independent bookstores and to hold events there. I was wrong. All independent bookstores do not support independent authors. Not only can garnering their support be more challenging, but also, some owners are not very kind.

For example, there was the Detroit bookstore owner who said, “If you want to talk about your book, then you should just have a house party with your friends and family. You don’t have to have it at my bookstore.”

A Kalamazoo bookstore owner told me to email him the details of the book reading. Then, he never returned the email. When I followed up, he instructed me to email again. A month later, he replied and said they were booked and that I should’ve contacted him sooner.

A bookstore owner in Charlotte, North Carolina said she doesn’t shelve indie books at all. One requirement for a bookstore owner in Jacksonville, Florida to carry an indie book is that it has to have 100 Amazon reviews, a goal that seems to be nearly impossible.

Thank goodness I didn’t focus on these responses. It opened space for places like 57th Street Books, Tall Tales Bookshop, Chamblin’s Uptown, Medu Bookstore, and Happy Medium Bookstore & Cafe to support my art and me.

PROFESSIONAL REVIEWS

I knew prior to publishing how important it was to attain professional reviews. Therefore, early on, I chose Kirkus. Kirkus has an independent publishing section, which means your book is not rated against traditionally published books. It is a paid review that is respected in the literary community.

When I submitted my $450, I understood the fee was for an honest review, not necessarily a good one. However, I didn’t think the commentary was going to sound a bit judgy and include spoilers. Thankfully, two things helped me not to brood over these results. First, my sister suggested I reach out to the company to see if the review could be revised. I was happy when the answer was yes. I completed their process to request a revision; subsequently, they made a few changes. Next, I submitted to the BookLife prize. Similar to Kirkus, BookLife has an indie section, and in addition to being entered into their contest, you can receive a critic’s review.

Not only was my BookLife review much more pleasant, but I also received an 8.2/10, and Salve was rated #32 in a long list of entries.

I would not be truthful if I said I’m grateful for these experiences. I am not. However, enduring them has reinforced lessons I still needed to learn, like how to move through challenges without taking things personally or agonizing over disappointments when things don’t go my way. And I’ve learned not to dwell on the so-called bad, so I can move through and receive what’s meant for me.

It’s Salve’s one-year anniversary. I’ll be sharing thoughts, impact, and commentary all month!

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Sunday Shorts: I Am My Mother, My Mother Am I

A lot of people ask me what my family thinks about me publishing, sharing, and talking about In Search of a Salve: Memoir of a Sex Addict. I typically guess how everyone feels, but with my youngest daughter, I haven’t had to wonder. I know she is proud of me and the overall message, not only because she’s told me, but also because she’s shown me. For example, her +1 to the book release was a good friend; she bought a plane ticket to the Canada book reading; she gave the book to two friends to read; she invited two friends to the Q&A.

Somewhere in between my writing Salve and her reading it, she shared a poem with me, I AM MY MOTHER, MY MOTHER AM I. Subsequently, I asked her to read it at the book release brunch. It was the first time she’d publicly shared her writing.

With her consent, I’ve shared the poem below, and because I believe poetry should be experienced orally, I’ve also included the video (compliments of my sister).

I AM MY MOTHER, MY MOTHER AM Ino- I mean I am not my mother I am me
she is her mother and that is not me.
I mean-
cut from the same cloth but her’s is rough
and mine is soft
her’s here to patch the holes mine came
with,
but for some reason i still feel this breeze
where it’s not meant to be.

we didn’t even meet until i was sixteen.
there was no me.
until things got real, and
i started burning trees to warm the breeze…
sometimes it works sometimes it doesn’t.
one thing for sure, two things for certain, i
wasn’t
turning into her.

we have stark differences.
her anger conjures curses with enough spirit
to leave generations after you in shambles if
you let it you’ll never hear the end
she’ll do her best to stretch you like a rag
and wring you of all the confidence you
thought you had.
she’s stubborn.

i am not. i know when im wrong, it’s just not
often.
you make me mad, i start plotting
to take all you got until there’s nothing left to
do but feel how i felt.
i’m simply strong-willed.

some say we look alike but i really dont see it.
of course we share this smile, bright enough
to make a blind man squint
and a glare that makes folks regret they
even stared in this direction
a mouth with lips so full you have to beg us
to stop talking
for we have so much to share from this
brain that moves a mile a minute
and won’t slow down no matter the task,
problem or obstacle.
we are brave, we are powerful, we
transcend the tests of time.

(so i guess)
at the end of the day, every day, after i put
my bonnet on, turn off the tv, and close the
blinds
no matter how hard i try, (i guess)
I am my mother my mother am I.

It’s Salve’s one-year anniversary. I’ll be sharing thoughts, impact, and commentary all month!

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Monday Notes: The One Thing Publishing In Search of a Salve Taught Me

Responsibility.

When I first published In Search of a Salve: Memoir of a Sex Addict, I knew I had been gifted some responsibility, but I wasn’t entirely sure what. I knew I was tasked with telling the unadulterated truth about my life experiences, but I wasn’t sure exactly why. Time showed me the answers to both.

Chapter one of my memoir begins with a description of masturbation, but not the sexy porn kind. In this chapter, the reader learns that my venture into self-pleasure was induced, at the age of nine, by child-on-child molestation. My editor and I had several discussions about how to begin this chapter. I’m glad we settled on this intro. Since publication, many readers, women and men, have confided in me that they, too, were sexually molested in a similar way. They’ve also confessed to other types of molestation, some are like the one I describe in chapter two and others much worse. Like me, they’ve lived with a secret and the shame that accompanies such acts.

Rarely is child-on-child molestation discussed. It was my responsibility to not only illustrate a marginalized type of sexual assault, but also to show readers how something that seems insignificant can still wreak havoc in one’s life.

Salve is a story about how unresolved trauma led me to a behavioral addiction. One of the unresolved traumas I experienced is adoption. Adoption is not usually explained as traumatic. That is because the mainstream narrative is centered on the adoptive parents and their beneficence, not the child who was taken from their mother and father. Babies, children, and teenagers don’t have the language to say, “I’m hurting because I miss my mother.” Instead, they may display one of the 7 Core Issues of Adoption, or like me … all of them.

It is becoming more common to hear from adoptees, but in many ways, we are still silenced. No one seems interested in hearing from us because it ruins the vibes. As an adoptee, it was my responsibility to tell a story that amplifies adoptee voices to demonstrate that no matter what adoptive parents think, many of us are not okay.

This book is about my personal healing journey. I’ve read a lot of memoirs, and I’m always disappointed with the ending. Generally, the author takes us through the ordeal of their life in hundreds of pages. Then, when we get to the end, they’ve miraculously “healed” by doing several rounds of ayahuasca, taking a trip to to some island or Asian country, or sitting in individual and/or group therapy for twelve weeks. As someone who will be on a healing journey for the rest of her life, I knew that type of ending would be inauthentic.

I felt a responsibility to share what “healing” really looked like. Healing is messy. Healing is being triggered and re-triggered. Healing is having tools but not wanting to use them because negative coping mechanisms are the easiest to access. Healing is falling a fucking part and then putting one’s self back together with some type of support system. One reader said he was mad because my marriage wasn’t wrapped up with a bow. Then, he revisited it and changed his mind. “This is how life is,” he said. And that’s when I knew I’d met my responsibility. I am not here to provide Hollywood endings. I am here to help usher in the truth of a matter, no matter how painful.

I cannot express how proud I am to have been gifted with this responsibility to demarginalize issues, and after many decades of lying to myself and others, to tell the truth and foster healing for others. I do not take it lightly.

It’s Salve’s one-year anniversary. I’ll be sharing thoughts, impact, and commentary all month!

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Monday Notes: Blueberries

I moved to Covert, Michigan to live with my grandparents the summer of 1990, June to be exact. I was seventeen. My grandmother had tasked me with finding a job for the summer, and when I wasn’t successful, she decided I would make money working on her friend’s blueberry farm.

I’d like to remind you that I was born and raised on the West Side of Chicago. I had never seen a fruit farm. However, my grandmother has also never been the type of person with whom you argue, especially not at seventeen. So, I put on my designer jeans and the kind of straw-brimmed hat you wear by a pool, and I rode with her to the farm.

Someone had decided it was a great idea for me to actually pick the blueberries. I grew more miserable as I rolled each blue ball between my fingers and dropped it into the pail. How did I get here? What can I do to not be here? That’s all I kept thinking.

Around noon, my grandmother’s friend came to get me. Apparently, I wasn’t picking fast enough for a profit margin. She thought it best to move me inside, where her family worked to check for bad fruit and pack the good ones. Although I was no longer picking, I still lamented my current position. What am I doing sitting in this shed packing blueberries? I should be home. I should be hanging out with my friends at the Water Tower.

I don’t remember why, but I didn’t have to return the next day. I’m assuming it’s because I wasn’t very good at it or maybe someone noticed I did more daydreaming than packing.

Decades went by, and I refused to eat blueberries. No blueberry pie. No blueberry jam. No blueberry muffins. You know how they give you a fruit cup at a restaurant? I’d eat everything, except the blueberries. It wasn’t that blueberry picking was so horrible. It was more that the circumstances surrounding how I ended up living in Covert (i.e., my mother dying and my father kicking me out of the house) and completing senior year there incensed me to my core. Blueberries reminded me of that year and the one before it, and for a long time, that experience was something I didn’t want to even think about, let alone eat.

I want to be super clear here. I didn’t consciously stop eating blueberries.

One day someone asked, “You want some blueberries?”

And I said, “Nope. No, thank you.”

I didn’t offer an explanation or biographical context. No one would ever know that I avoided this small, blue fruit because it triggered me in inexplicable ways. It’s something I unconsciously chose.

Today, I am fully aware that I made blueberries the issue, instead of recognizing the issue as the issue. People do this all the time, though. I don’t want to get all psychology here, but it is related to our amygdala and triggers, which can range from seeing blueberries to seeing someone raise their fist in anger.

There is always hope, though. As I began to heal from each phase of abandonment, I no longer avoided blueberries. First, I used frozen ones for smoothies. I mean, baby steps, right? Recently, I’ve begun buying them fresh from the store and popping them in my mouth for a snack. They’re not so bad. I see why they’re popular.

I suppose we all have our own “blueberries.” The key is when you realize what they are, to seek help as soon as possible. Otherwise, the next thing you know, you’re out here avoiding blueberries and missing out on delicious fruits

Buy In Search of a SalveMonday Notes: BlueberriesMonday Notes: How to Release People and ExperiencesInspiring Image #155: reduce reuse reCYCLEMonday Notes: “Family Ties” Essay on Midnight & IndigoMonday Notes: Therapy Every Day

Inspiring Image #155: reduce reuse reCYCLE

Monday Notes: Therapy Every Day

“You want your friends to do therapy,” she said. “And that’s too hard.”

            I had just shared the details of a failed friendship, and this person’s words made sense. You see, I’ve spent the last nine years in self-therapy. I allow my intuition to lead me to a new concept, then I research who the “leading authority” is on that idea, and then I read his or her work. For example, attempting to understand my oldest daughter and her choice of boyfriend(s), led me to the concept of codependence, which led me to Melody Beattie’s work, which led me to read The New Codependency. Consequently, I began to understand myself and how I’d embodied similar traits.

            This is normal for me. I not only read about concepts that reveal a deeper understanding of myself, but I also apply them. When I realized I’d lived much of my young adult and adult life sans boundaries, I read about and learned how to create and enforce them, so I could show up as a healthier version of myself. This is a part of how I live, so I can function in new ways.

            The problem is, as this person pointed out, everyone is not like me, and sometimes, it impacts how I relate. A lot of times, I’m having a conversation that is normal for me, but difficult for others. In essence, I’m asking others to dig deeper than they care to, than they usually do. I’ve asked friends to think about how they interact with me in relationship, and especially for those my age, it’s quite a challenge. I’ve had friends who’d rather end the relationship than to stop and figure out how to engage in a better way or to consider how I may have felt in situations. This is too hard, a friend recently told me. The this to which she referred was understanding that she never initiates a phone call with me.

            For a while, friends’ responses felt personal. Each situation seemed as if the person didn’t want to see my point of view, or as if they believed that what I was saying was ridiculous—as if I’d asked them to climb Mount Vesuvius. They’d cross their eyes and fumble their words, until we were no longer communicating effectively. Now, I realize their reaction wasn’t personal. People are made up of their childhood and adolescent backgrounds and how they’ve learned to handle situations from those foundational times. Many people project, instead of reflect.

            And, as this person told me, “Most people don’t want to do what the therapist says, much less read something on their own and follow through with that.”

            “Hmmmph,” I said. “That’s interesting. I do therapy every day.” Therapy is not just for the therapist’s office. Just like yoga isn’t just for the mat, and practicing religions isn’t just for the church, synagogue, or mosque. It’s a daily practice and part of my life. Meaning, I will look at myself several times over in a situation, before I accuse someone else of being the problem. I’m always willing to take ownership, and subsequently, do better, if my doing better is a requirement for maintaining a bond.

            But again, everyone isn’t like me. Everyone isn’t interested in examining their life or taking steps to improve. The person I spoke to reinforced something else the day we talked. “It’s okay if they don’t,” she said. “Everyone’s different.”

            You can only change you is an idea I consistently reiterate on this blog, and I stand by it. I will continue to do therapy every day, with a primary goal to improve myself. However, I also know from experience that changing me for the better also changes those around me, whether they consciously know it or not.  

Order In Search of a SalveMonday Notes: Therapy Every DayMonday Notes: Election 2024In Search of a Salve: Akilah’s ReviewInspiring Image #154: PedanticSunday Shorts: I Have Learned