I have gotten some challenging feedback recently from readers about my novel Starfall, that some experiences that befall Xenia (the narrator in the future thread of Starfall), are too disturbing. That’s always hard to hear, that you’ve upset a reader so much that they want to write a pissed off review about it, but that’s also, sadly, the point. (Though no blame to readers who don’t want to go there; you don’t have to like a story.) 

The point: What has befallen women is creepy. And we need to get through it, symbolically and literally, to heal.

The storyline that disturbs folks involves confinement, confusing power dynamics, and issues of consent, the general emotional garbage dump of the “toxic relationship.” Xenia has been transformed against her will, in a process that at first felt transcendent, into something she has no desire to be, and she is now subject to her new state’s unbidden rules. Why would I, as a woman, want to write about a woman being deprived of her agency and subjected to this suffering?

Because it’s the truth, or part of it. And it is specifically feminine. (I open this term to anyone who needs to enter it.)

The feelings we face in disempowerment cannot be wished away. And we are disempowered in many aspects of our lives. We can hang up all the posters featuring women who did amazing things, psyche ourselves up with mantras, demand an end to toxic relationships. Yet we are still locked into changes we do not wish and systems we did not design that work against us. Our bodies change beyond our conscious control, and our communities say and do harsh things about this. Our bodies do not obey our rational minds or our social desires. They shrink, swell, refuse to be what we think they should be, mess with our heads inexorably. We we are trapped by nature’s indifference and human power games, just like Xenia.

This is heartbreaking, but our hearts need to break to get through the world, as terrible as that statement is. The act of repair is our unfinished work, the means of escape. It comes from our own internal work and in relationship with others, friends, lovers, adversaries, authorities, and those in our care, be they human or non-human. I take none of this lightly. 

The creepy is the gateway, the breaking point. What lies beyond is not easy. There will be nothing there for the ‘gram or for an inspirational quote. You will be alone in part of this, and that fact is just cruel. But then the work resumes, and there is more to discover. Nothing means only one thing; there are layers of ambivalence, multi-valence. And you will find companions who will love you, truly and deeply.

We must finish the work. We women need new myths, not just retellings, to do this. My hope is to stir the pot in the darkness, just enough to get the cauldron to glow with tiny sparks of light. Stories are not stories, not answers. They are questions. I’m asking why and how we heal, and what freedom and agency mean in the face of these things.