Restarting and Rebranding
Welcome to (a) genuine article.
Dear readers,
It has been some time since I landed in your inboxes, and you might well not recognize me. Last year I began this Substack newsletter and titled it “Autopsy of Abuse.” I made not quite a dozen posts and appreciated all of your engagement on them; then my editing business took off, and I had no time to maintain the Substack.
The intervening months allowed me to refine my long-term goals and re-envision what this blog could be. During that time I came to the end of years of intense trauma therapy and landed in a place where I want to consistently bring my whole self to the table. As a writer, professional editor, neurodivergent parent, homeschooling mom, abuse survivor and trained advocate, my whole is greater than the sum of my parts, and certainly greater than one or two parts working in quarantine from the rest.
Therefore, I hope you will welcome the new name and newsletter adjusted accordingly:
The name is a pun, first of all, because I am an autistic English major compelled to capitalize on wordplay. The word “a” is a part of speech (here comes the grammar) known as an article, that is, “any of a small set of words or affixes (such as a, an, and the) used with nouns to limit or give definiteness to the application.” An article may also be <checks notes> “a member of a class of things,” “a nonfictional prose composition usually forming an independent part of a publication,” and “a thing or person of a particular and distinctive kind.”1
Furthermore, “a/an” is the indefinite article in English. The less important, more unassuming companion of the. This blog may contain any number of articles on an array of themes related to literature, writing technique, media analysis, abuse, trauma recovery, neurodivergence, Christian spirituality, and therapy. Possibly others. They will generally be nerdy. What I can guarantee is that these articles will all reflect my personality, interests, and expertise in some way. Much like Internal Family Systems2, they will be distinct parts pulled together to comprise a whole, with hopefully no one of them overwhelming or overshadowing the others.
In the same way, I myself aim to be a genuine article. Not the genuine article, as the saying goes. One of many. I hope to encounter many, many genuine articles in all of you. I’d like to continue featuring some of your stories and thoughts here, particularly people looking to process their experiences of abuse in a safe space. If you’d like to write a post for this blog, please reach out to me at agenuinearticle@substack.com.
To the point of curating a safe space for abuse survivors, including myself, I have decided to enable payments for readers who wish to access sensitive posts and discussion threads. My policy will be to place survivor guest posts behind a paywall as well as more vulnerable entries of my own. These may range from excerpts of the book I’m writing as I seek thoughtful feedback, to short stories, poems, or personal updates. In this way I hope to honor and protect the sacredness of the deeper things we share with one another.
I am thankfully in a position where I do not need to turn a profit, so if you would benefit from access to this paid content or know someone who would, but the cost is prohibitive, please contact me at the email above for a gift subscription. The point is to safeguard from trolls, not wring water from rocks.
In keeping with this new direction and scope, I’ll close with an extended quote from one of my favorite stories: The Velveteen Rabbit. In many ways, this excerpt encompasses everything I aim to do and be, both online and in real life. I’ve held onto it for close to eight years, and it only grows deeper and more true to me with time.
“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”
“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.
“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”
“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
I will be real, even if I am ugly to people who don’t understand. I will be real, because I was loved into it. Yes, it hurts sometimes. Yes, it’s cost me some sharp edges; it’s taught me to come down soft before I break.
This is the foundation I will work from moving forward. I hope you’ll come, too.
Let’s learn what’s real together.
—SGE
Gl(a)d you're back in writing for you and us.
I so look forward to reading what you'll share, Steph. Sending love to you and cheering you on! <3