One of my favorite authors is Ursula Le Guin. She wrote ground-breaking, gender-bending novels of fantasy and science fiction with some dark-skinned characters. I’m currently rereading The Lathe of Heaven, my favorite work besides The Left Hand of Darkness and her lesser known The Beginning Place.
Recently, I came across a social media post lauding her works, and it included her bio. Like many author bios, it talks about her fascinating family and how everyone in her life supported her and contributed to everything she became.
I’m finally old enough that these kinds of bios no longer upset me. Because wow, once upon a time they did. They made me seethe with resentment because I often felt as if my family had conspired against me, had tried to keep me from dreaming big and working to make those dreams come true.
Now, I’m proud that I overcame those obstacles, but I didn’t do it alone. I had help, just not from my family.
I’m sharing this in case you are one of those people who has a dream, even a vague dream, and you’re feeling lost and unsupported. Pushing past both the exterior obstacles and the ones we create in our heads is worth the effort. Even if it takes a very long time, as it did for me.
It’s also possible you can help someone along on their journey. If so, you may help redirect the course of their lives.
Here’s how people championed me along the way:
~My parents weren’t readers. We didn’t have any books in the house. They watched TV or spent time with family. No one read to me when I was a child. But, my third-grade teacher noticed how much I loved to read at school. When she learned I didn’t have any books at home, she ordered my parents to take me to the library once a week and let me check out as many books as I wanted. My dad did so. Grudgingly, but he did it, and my world opened up. I discovered stories by E. Nesbitt, Elizabeth Enright, Eleanor Estes and Edward Eager. My mother complained about the books cluttering up the house, but I was forever changed, and a much, much happier child.
~In the fifth grade, I turned in a short story, a murder mystery, as a writing assignment. It wasn’t what Mrs. Slattery had in mind, but she gave me an A nonetheless, and said one of these days, if I worked at it, I could be an author like Agatha Christie. So, I read all of Christie’s books.
It never, ever would have occurred to this working-class Mexican American girl that she could write books. too, if it hadn’t been for Mrs. Slattery.
~The nuns at my Catholic high school weren’t much impressed with my academic record and stuck me in what was basically a secretarial training program. After graduation, I went on to become a secretary at a law firm where a group of lawyers banded together and started a campaign to get me to go to college. They encouraged and advised and helped me to fill out applications. It was a long and hard road because I needed to go to community college to take all the courses I’d missed in high school. I’m pretty sure one of the lawyers used their connections to help me get into UC Berkeley. Nobody in my family had been to college, so they didn’t know how to help, or even why they should. But I am so thankful for those lawyers.
~I didn’t qualify for financial aid, and my parents couldn’t help, so I needed to work. A partner at the law firm got me a full-time job in their word processing center working the night shift. It paid well, covering my bills and tuition. It wasn’t easy, but I did it. Getting through college wouldn’t have been possible without that man making the effort on my behalf. He died young of a heart attack at the age of forty-two, and I still mourn his passing.
~The last big boost I received in my formative years was from a lecturer who taught broadcast news. I had become the lead producer of the student newscasts because no one else wanted to do it, and I loved taking charge behind the camera. When it came time to get a job, the instructor recommended me to his drinking buddy in Salt Lake City, which is how I ended up moving there and becoming one of the few female TV news producers at a time when bros ruled.
~I’ve also been extremely lucky to have married a man who has become not only my partner in Shadow Canyon Press that publishes my books, but my first reader and emotional support husband.
So, even though I didn’t have a supportive, high-achieving family like Ursula Le Guin, I got plenty of help along the way. I will be forever grateful for those people who changed my world by noticing I needed some help and offering it.
Now, I try to follow their example whenever I can. You never know why people are in the situations they are in, and I hope, if you are in such a position, you can do that too.
