Asha lets her life speak

thank f-ing God!

Welcome to narrative threads: from breath to pen. Today’s post is a brief pause from my regular musings—the first in an occasional “ask me anything” series between myself and other writers on Substack. Without further ado, I’m delighted to introduce you to Asha Sanaker, author of Let Your Life Speak!

Asha and I met a year ago at Kripalu during Cheryl Strayed’s writing workshop, The Story You Have to Tell. Over the course of the weekend, we discovered we had much more in common than our mutual love of language: we both live in Western New York, are divorced mothers of transgender children, are well-versed in the school of addiction and recovery, think about religion a lot, and write newsletters on Substack.

Asha writes about what it means to live with integrity and her newsletter Let Your Life Speak is one I look forward to reading every Friday afternoon. Please consider supporting her words and work by becoming a subscriber yourself. As a bonus, Asha is offering a special discount for my subscribers!

I hope you enjoy the questions (and the answers) we asked of each other as much as I appreciated the process because the unexamined life is not worth living.¹ These interviews are an invitation to introduce our readers to one another, so head on over to Asha’s newsletter and read my responses to the same questions.

Enjoy!

Asha is a writer, a mother, and an indoor plant obsessive. She comes from long lines of storytellers, preachers, and church ladies, and she strives to honor that legacy while subverting the worst pitfalls of that history— merciless moralism and submissiveness of women. When writing about the experience of practicing integrity she emphasizes the importance of compassion, mercy, and a healthy sense of humor. Self-improvement is inevitable, but not the only goal. Integrity, Asha insists, is the only thing that holds communities and societies together in a way that promotes trust, inclusion, justice, and joy.

To find out more, connect via her newsletter and Facebook.

What are your five favorite books or movies?

The books of my childhood will always be my favorites: The Secret Garden, A Wrinkle in Time, The Lion, the Witch, and The Wardrobe, The Once and Future King, and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Also, The Bluest Eye (I know, that's six), which is not a children's book by any stretch, but came into my life when I was 10 or 11 and saved me in many respects.

What role does religion play in, or how does religion inform your current life? Either the religion of your upbringing or one you acquired along the way.

Up until my early twenties, I was the poster girl for Quakerism-- I attended worship every Sunday with my folks, went to and then worked at Quaker summer camps, led the Quaker youth group for my region, went to Quaker school for both high school and college, and then moved to Seattle after graduation to do a year-of-service internship through the Quaker Meeting there. Since my late twenties, my active participation in the Quaker community has waxed and waned, but the tenets of Quakerism still live deeply in the bones of my daily life. My newsletter is a prime example since integrity is a religious imperative for Quakers, what we would call a "testimony". Quaker testimonies concerning simplicity, peace, and stewardship also weave throughout my approach to the world.

Cats or dogs?

Absolutely, cats. I'm not a pack animal by nature. Like a cat, when I want you I really, really will not take no for an answer, but otherwise, I'd rather you left me alone to nap in the sunshine. Though, admittedly, like any great dog, I'm always up for a long walk.

What is something someone wouldn’t expect about you?

I have a very juvenile sense of humor and I swear like a sailor. Farts are always funny and fuck is my favorite word.

If money weren’t an issue, what would your life look like? 

I have accepted the realities of being a late-bloomer in many aspects of my life, but coming to some clarity about my vocation just as my kids are also embarking on their college years is a little complicated financially, as well as logistically.

If money weren't an issue I would apply for an MFA program with a teaching fellowship and move temporarily to wherever it was located to enroll. I think I've worked hard over the years to develop my voice. I don't need school for that. But there are some craft things I'd love to get real instruction on, as well as some understanding of the mechanics of writing as a profession. Mostly, though, I just yearn for the conversational aspects of it-- dialoguing with professors, fellow students, and my own students about our writing and how to make it better. What can I say? I'm a sucker for school.

What have you learned about being a mother that surprised you?

Before I became a mother, I thought I knew who I was and, thus, what kind of mother I would be. Being a mother, in contrast, has been a repetitive exercise in grappling with who I actually am, which is an endlessly less ideal and more complex person than I imagined. For instance, I thought I would love being a stay-at-home mom who baked bread, made homemade baby food, and joyfully breastfed all day. Instead, I found that I had never been simultaneously so busy and so bored as when my children were small. I desperately missed the intellectual stimulation and social contact inherent in having coworkers and a workplace. Going back to work when my children were babies was a juggling act, for sure, but as necessary for my mental health as it was for our bank account.

On a related note, I became a much better mother after my marriage ended. As painful as it was to adjust to shared custody, over time I discovered that getting reliable breaks from being the primary parent allowed me to rediscover a robust and healthy dedication to my own joy and creativity. When I was with my kids I had no resentment about being all in, giving them everything I had, because I knew in a matter of days I would get a break to climb back inside my own skin and give myself to the other things that brought me purpose and satisfaction. I'm incredibly proud of the depth of my relationship with each of my kids, and I feel confident they've benefited from watching me prioritize my creativity and take joyful ownership of my life.

What creative pursuits do you have other than writing? 

For most of my life, my creativity focused on being a crafter. I learned to weave on a floor loom in high school and was a potter in my twenties. More recently, I've rediscovered a passion from my childhood— interior design. I love using color to enliven spaces and filling them with furniture and objects that evoke comfort and prompt storytelling. I would choose something odd— a weird piece of art, an old, beat-up chair, or a wonky plant— over something you could find in a catalog any day. People's homes should be as unique and particular as they are. When folks come into my home I get tremendous joy in knowing they are experiencing my truest self through my aesthetic choices.

What is your relationship with solitude and silence?

As a Quaker, I've been practicing sitting in silence since I was a baby. I prefer to sit in silence with other people; I'm not particularly good at private, sitting meditation. There's a quality to group silence that's different, like sinking under water. Quakers refer to silent worship as "gathering in expectant waiting", and there's something very moving for me about sharing that sort of worshipful listening. That said, I prefer to sit in silence outside and that is often more easily accomplished by myself.

Solitude is essential to my writing life and necessary to manage my energy. I'm an introvert, for sure. Between my full-time job and being a parent, I don't get nearly as much solitude as I would like these days. Still, there will come a time when my kids won't be around so much and I know I'll miss them horribly.

Togetherness and solitude feel somewhat paradoxical for me. Like there's no reality in which they exist in balance; they always feel mutually exclusive and somehow at odds with each other. The only way to manage it all for me is to see both as lifelong projects that have phases, and right now I'm in a "not very solitary" phase, which has its upsides and downsides.

Biggest distraction/guilty pleasure?

I love reality television which involves watching people learn and grow as the series progresses. As a kid, I loved Circus of the Stars. How could you not love watching your favorite actor learn to fly on the trapeze or ride a unicycle? Now, I watch Dancing With the Stars, The Voice, and the Great British Bake-Off with the same enthusiasm, and it is a total time suck.

Why writing?

Both nature and nurture, I think. I come from storytellers on both sides. The Southern women on my mom's side of the family never met a colorful tale they didn't love to tell, and my paternal grandmother was a memoirist who published a series of books about her life through a Christian publishing house in the Midwest. My dad was a poet and self-published half a dozen books of poetry before he died. My mom's been carrying around a few children's books inside her for decades, though mostly she writes curricula and biographical essays about Quakers through history for the Quaker school that she's been part of running for thirty years now.

My own writing functions as a way to wrestle with and express my deepest truth. I have a certain facility with language, and finding the most effective way to say something is satisfying from a craft perspective. But few things make me as high as finding the right words to describe a profound and particular personal truth, only to find that it resonates intensely with other people. I feel a sense of belonging to humanity as a whole when that happens which makes me want to be in this life. That feeling of wanting to be here is hard-won.

What newsletters do you read and love?

Yours, obviously. My two absolute favorites are Oldster Magazine by Sari Botton and Men Yell At Me by Lyz Lenz. I also love Everything is Amazing by Mike Sowden, Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed, and Subtle Maneuvers by Mason Currey. Very different projects in comparison to each other, but they each stimulate thought and make me grateful to have found the Substack community of writers.

Thank you Asha ~ what a treat! To the readers of Let Your Life Speak, thanks for being here. I hope you stay. Here is a special discount just for you. Welcome!

Did you enjoy getting to know Asha better as much as I did? Check out more of her writing at Let Your Life Speak, and read my interview too. Let us know in the comments what you think—or tell us your favorite guilty pleasure!

Want to collaborate with me on Substack or elsewhere? Let’s connect!

1. Socrates