Bookends: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Literature

by Zibby Owens

One chapter a day. I’d take breaks only to eat. I didn’t stop to email or make calls.

Sue taught me that rejection isn’t personal.

She challenged us to research the publications extensively before pitching. Even now, if I’m pitching a piece to, say, Parents magazine, I make sure to read the previous six months of issues. There’s nothing worse than pitching a piece just like one that’s already running.

writing about that particular loss, the store’s closing, masked the gaping hole of Stacey’s loss.

shedding the protective layer I’d added to shield my fragile soul from sadness.

was seductive, the power of controlling my body, my intake.

But I also see a lonely young woman racked by loss and grief, trying to exert some control over a terrifying world by measuring and weighing every ounce of sustenance. I see a woman desperate for approval and validation.

how to write a nonfiction book proposal. She logged on to Publishers Marketplace and showed me how to look for competitive titles, how to see what similar projects sold for, and how to learn what was coming out soon. Every section of the proposal was important.

Ghostwriting was the perfect career solution. It was what I’d been trying to do with my novel anyway: write about ghosts.

putting extreme pressure on myself, as if I’d get in trouble if I took lunch “off.”

I was busy, but I wasn’t satisfied or happy.

“Oh, honey,” she uttered. “You look like you really need to be here.”

It Sucked and Then I Cried: How I Had a Baby, a Breakdown, and a Much Needed Margarita

But really, was I “just” a stay-at-home? Was anyone?

The kids were smiling, laughing, preening for the camera. I wasn’t paying any attention to them. I could literally see myself missing the moment, locked in my own head, crossing things off the endless to-do list.

Unfortunately, depression doesn’t work that way. It’s a heavy cloak that sits on your shoulders like the protective gear required for an X-ray machine. It doesn’t choose its victims based on logic. It’s an equal opportunity destroyer of souls.

learned to sniff out its impending arrival and to watch it descend. It no longer envelops me. I can be an impartial observer, even as it renders me incapacitated at times. It always does lift, a fluttering bird that sometimes sweeps up close before banking upward and pitching away. Now I’ve gotten so good at managing it with medication and tools honed in therapy and years of practice that I can hide it, flipping a switch. I can “turn on” a happy version of myself, despite what I’m feeling. Most of the time.

the lack of structure filled me with anxiety.

“Come on, honey,” he’d say. “Everyone has a story. Everyone should be asked how their day was, no matter what role they’re playing in life. We’re all just people. Being professional by keeping a distance? Nah.”

“Art Basel”

That need to tell a story, to share, to help others, to use words as memories, as tools to evoke emotions, reflected a lot about the person, even more than the content they wrote. They were my people.

But nothing could rob the soul of that spiritual instinct and desire to share the contents of one’s mind with someone else.

Nene’s Treats herself, still selling the delicious crumb cakes direct to customers on Goldbelly.com.

Moms don’t have time to waste.