On “Success”
Pondering 53 Years On This Earth
You have the right to work, but never to the fruit of the work.
The Bhagavad Gita
“What does success mean to you?”
That’s what my sister asked while I was in process of preparing my fourth book, In Search of a Salve: Memoir of a Sex Addict, for hybrid publishing.
She wondered how I would know when Salve was successful.
A few years prior, I didn’t have an answer. All I knew is that I had undergone a nine-year process of healing and brought this memoir to the public. I’d left everything within those 352 pages.
Post-publication, my husband bombarded me with the same questions after every event or podcast: How many people attended? How many books did you sell? How much money have you received? How does doing a podcast translate to book sales?
It was clear that his idea of “success” was connected to patriarchal conditioning: numbers = success; book sales = success.
I didn’t care. And at the time, I couldn’t explain why.
SUCCESS, however, is the next topic I’ve gotten a better understanding of in my 53rd year on this earth. Here’s what I’ve decided:
When I released Salve and promoted in three different cities, I called it a “Healing Tour,” not a book tour. In my spirit, I knew I was doing more than just standing in front of people saying, “I wrote a book; come buy it!” Salve was unresolved trauma + healing journey personified. When I read my work, my heart connected to the audience’s.
I didn’t have a formal definition of success, but I did know that I wanted readers to reflect on themselves, their lives, and their families. The best books I’ve read made me think about myself and my place in the world. I wanted readers to feel the same after reading my memoir. I wanted people to think about their own relationships. I wanted people to reflect on how they’ve judged little girls, young women, and their sexuality. I wanted men to think about how they’ve treated women and why they’ve deemed them “hoes,” as opposed to hurt little girls who would do anything to feel connected and loved. If Salve sparked a thought or made the reader consider something different, then that meant I put words together in a way that shifted something on a cellular level.
As the book traveled through my family, then my friend sets, then the States, then Canada, then across the pond, then throughout Europe and other countries, the most recent, Nigeria, I began to receive uplifting messages.
One of the first was from a South African writer friend, who upon finishing, decided she needed to think about the relationships in her life. She returned to therapy after reading Salve.
Another was from a twenty-something Iranian man I’d met in Windsor-Ontario. He’d DMd to say how much this book resonated with him. He felt seen and understood. That’s when I stopped saying I wrote Salve just for Black women.
Then, there were the men who reached out to me to share that when they were boys, they were molested…by grown women, and it had negatively affected how they perceived sex, sexuality, and relationships. That’s when I stopped saying I wrote Salve just for women.
Then, there was the adoptee community.
Never in a million years did I think I would be immersed with such a large group of people who felt deeply seen by my words. Though I didn’t write an “adoption” memoir, I did write a story to which many adoptees have connected. These are composite summaries, but it seems with Salve, I’ve illustrated some of the pain adopted people endure. Without knowing it, I created clear imagery that showed the seven core issues in adoption.1 Without saying it outright, I unconsciously showed the effects of adoption trauma, something our caretakers ignore and society at-large dismisses. When read through this lens, Salve shows the reader how adoption could impact an adopted person.
Here’s what happens when you follow your intuition, create art for art’s sake, and allow life to unfold: You give yourself permission to view events from the perspective of the Indigenous culture from which you derived. You learn how to view life in retrospect, instead of as an illusion called “future” that includes goals and numbers intended to represent your success. An understanding like this takes time and practice. For me it took three years, but I now have an answer to my sister’s question and to my husband’s angst.
My success is always centered on impact. I know I’m successful when someone reads In Search of a Salve and connects with the story, as a whole or in part. I know I am successful when readers feel compelled to make life changes because of something I’ve written. This is what it means for me to be productive; to be effective.
Finally, I’d also suggest that we stop thinking about numbers and book sales as the sole metric for a successful career in the arts. There must be more to artistry than a book deal and the illusive markers of fame and glory, especially if you begin to tie money and fame to your self-worth and identity.
What I’m suggesting is that perhaps, there are more important reasons for creating art than what we have been conditioned to believe. Perhaps, those other reasons are where artists should begin when considering where their success lies.
Roszia, Sharon, and Allison Davis Maxon. Seven Core Issues in Adoption and Permanency: A Comprehensive Guide to Promoting Understanding and Healing in Adoption, Foster Care, Kinship Families and Third Party Reproduction. Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2019.
Exactly! The success of any writing is whether or not someone finds it meaningful and it touches them. Your book, "Salve" touched many people, but even if it was just one (me, for example), then it was successful.
Oh how I struggle with the monetary side of the word success. It seems to me that the people who need to read these words are the ones who define success with buckets of money. 😊
It's surprising really how many people I know personally who feel that success = $ but will vehemently deny it when called on it.
Here's a question for you:
For writers, how does validation come into the equation? I have found it often relates closely to financial returns. When I think of blog posts that are not monetized, and hundreds or even thousands of people have subscribed to receive these posts, how validating in terms of success is it?
Possibly the answer is subjective, but I still wonder what people think about this.