CHAPTERS: Chelsea Bieker

Every (life) chapter has at least one memorable moment, sentence, or story.

Every (life) chapter has at least one memorable moment, sentence, or story. What are yours? In Chapters, I ask creative people to reflect on the stories of their lives and respond to any of the below prompts (in whatever way they wish).

In the latest installment, we hear from the revered writer

Chelsea Bieker

—author of Godshot, Heartbroke, and the forthcoming Madwoman—who shares musings on motherhood and friendship, memorable stories and sentences, and notes on craft.

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Photo courtesy of Chelsea Bieker

Chelsea’s Chapters

I. Slow Story

The slow story of my life is most certainly the all-encompassing and often unpredictable nature of motherhood itself. I am beholden to the rhythms and needs of two little people around the clock. When I find myself rushing them, it’s almost always a cue to myself to slow down and to accommodate their pace (when the moment allows it—you know, sometimes you really do need to be at the dentist by 8 am!). Pausing to entertain their questions—how high is the tallest tree, how did the first humans get here, when you die what happens, why did Voldemort want to kill Harry’s parents, and on and on—or pausing to take in the psychedelic blooms of springtime Portland. It is all a reminder to me to slow down and be fully present.

My kids really remind me that the present truly is all we have and that these moments are life. There is no waiting for something to begin, this is it! As I age, this feels ever true to me much more than it did in my twenties when all I wanted was to get there, reach my goals, so I could live the life of my dreams, and now it’s all about realizing this is that life. Kids have a great way of changing plans at the last second, forcing me to hold schedules very lightly and also being okay with that. I have recently been practicing the affirmation to myself: I am worthy of rest. Rest has always been hard for me to offer myself—I can be a real striver with very high standards for myself and my creative output and productivity, but a huge part of my practice now is allowing for, and offering intentional space for rest. Rest can be a long walk, it can be lying on the couch listening to an audiobook, or, imagine—staring into space for a few minutes. I’ve been getting a lot of peace from that slowing down and realizing my worth is not actually measured by outward success, but I know that for so long, since childhood, that was a core belief I’ve held. Progress not perfection.  

Photo courtesy of Chelsea Bieker

II. Funny Story 

I love a funny book, and my favorite book that has had me cackling is We Were The Universe by Kimberly King Parsons. The hilarity of this book—some might call it Fleabag if Fleabag was a young, queer mom in Texas—lies in the razor-sharp observations the narrator makes about her days. Humor, to me, is all about the details and finding surprise in the mundane. This novel is full of the sort of observations you would share with a best friend, and it’s smart. I love a book that can break your heart and make you laugh at the same time. 

III. Scary Story

When I was in second grade, the teacher asked us what our favorite movie was. I remember her shock when I reported that Sleeping With The Enemy, starring Julia Roberts, about a woman escaping her abusive husband, was mine. I think she was expecting Beethoven or something. But Sleeping with the Enemy, while certainly beyond what was appropriate for my age and objectively a pretty terrifying movie, the truth was it was no more terrifying than my childhood. Watching Julia Roberts’ character escape her murderous husband in the end was the most redemptive, life-altering thing I’d ever seen.

I will never forget cheering at the end, my mom with tears down her cheeks, for Julia had done the impossible—she’d gotten away! It was magical to see her defeat her sadistic husband and presumably go on to live a free and happy life (though the movie utterly fails to address the work in therapy she definitely will need to do and instead sticks her into another borderline controlling relationship instead—hey, we still had a long way to go in the ‘90s as far as the conversation around domestic violence—we still do in many ways. The book and movie were actually described as a story of “pursuit” and “passion,” but that’s a tale for another time). The point is that this scary story changed my life because it signaled that another reality outside of the confines of male violence might be possible, and it didn’t shy away from the terror I had experienced with my mother, which was validating on a deep level. I believe it led to me becoming a writer, understanding first-hand how powerful stories can be. 

Photo courtesy of Chelsea Bieker

IV. Old Story

I think a lot about the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. Programming we’re carrying around from our formative years (0-adolescence) that wired our brains and shaped our worldview. Luckily, thanks to neuroplasticity, we can do work to reprogram things, but it was astonishing to me the stories I was carrying about myself—namely my stories around what I was good and bad at, what I was worthy of, what I liked, what I would tolerate, and what I was capable of. A lot of the stories were not serving me and maybe had been true at some point but were no longer applicable. I always ask my coaching clients, what stories are you operating on that aren’t serving you TODAY? It’s easy to just do something because you’ve always done it, but it’s valuable to re-access and ask yourself regularly—is this still true for me? Until we do the intentional work of reprogramming this stuff, these old stories can steer the ship without us even realizing it. Now, it's a regular practice to check in with the stories I’m telling myself about myself.

For example, I realized I was carrying around a story about good writers write early in the morning. Who knows where I picked this up—maybe all the old accounts of male writers who have wives to tend the children and chores, perhaps? But each day I was subconsciously setting myself up for failure because I wasn’t writing in the morning—it simply wasn’t feasible in my life stage with my kids for this to work for me. And once I released this old story around when writing should happen, I stopped feeling the sense that I was failing every day, and move into a much more generous and productive space of writing when it works for my life. I find guided visualizations, meditation, and self-recorded affirmations and visualizations to be really helpful for reprograming this stuff. I am currently at work with the writer Kimberly King Parsons creating a platform for this sort of work called The Fountain. I’m so excited about it.

Photo courtesy of Chelsea Bieker

V. Short Story

Reading and writing short stories is how I learned to write. For a long time, short stories were how my brain seemed to work, and I was flooded all the time with ideas for them. I even wrote a story collection called Heartbroke I love them so much. But a story that stopped me in my tracks early in my writing life was “People in Hell Just Want a Drink of Water” by Annie Proulx from Close Range: Wyoming Stories. Proulx’s writing and sentences, the way she makes a place feel utterly alive, the way she contains many worlds and lives in a compressed space, and the way she executes a narrative voice that will haunt your dreams… It’s worth studying and it totally expanded my mind on what a short story could contain. The story “Brokeback Mountain” is also in that collection, and I like to re-read and savor it once a year. If you need a good cry, it’s guaranteed to induce sobbing. 

VI. Inside Story

I’ve been thinking a lot about how, in the last year and a half or so, voice-memoing my closest friends has become our primary way of communication, day to day. Long, beautiful, podcast-like voicemails hit my messages regularly now where some of the smartest women I know are sharing their days, their incredible wisdom, their difficulties, and their triumphs. Exchanging these recordings feels a little like being in love and waiting for your crush to write you back, the high of divulging your visions, your insecurities and being really held in that place. There’s a magic to it that I know has accelerated and deepened my friendships.

It’s different than a phone call, it’s definitely different than a text, and a far cry from a “like” on an Instagram post. It’s true connection. We’re telling our stories, and there are no interruptions. We’re working out our shit in real-time. It’s somewhat like therapy, in a way. And I’m lucky that my best friends are the most intelligent, deep, clever, hilarious storytellers and humans working and living today. I’m really interested in how to foster true connection with technology. Instead of belaboring all the ways I think technology is ruining our brains and society, I’m asking how I can use technology to inspire, bridge connection, deepen friendship, and heal together. We’re in a new age. Everyone I am close to is deep in the work of ending and healing generational patterns and reinventing how we show up in the world, and we’re doing that soul work together. We talk about it all via voice-memo. 

VII. Your Story

In my fiction, I am interested in emotional truth. In an interview with Ann Patchett I read awhile back, she cites her mother saying, “None of it happened and all of it’s true.” I was like, yes, that’s it, that’s exactly how I think of my fictional work. Plot-wise, I have never been a young, pregnant girl in a cult, no, I have never robbed a bank or stolen an identity; nevertheless, my stories evoke an emotional journey that is utterly true to me. In every story I write, I am somehow telling my own story. My forthcoming novel, Madwoman, is the closest I’ve ever cut in some ways—many of the details are plucked from my life—but the plot is a wild ride. It’s a story about a character who shares my heart and my desires and who has experienced trauma in the way I have. I used to think I would write a memoir and never say never, but I find fiction to be a much surer way for me to get to the truth of a feeling, and more than that, I find there to be so much freedom in creating a fictional container in order to allow my story to really be articulated in a way that matches those feelings in my heart.  

Photo by Wondra

VIII. Chelsea’s Story

Chelsea Bieker is the author of the debut novel Godshot which was longlisted for The Center For Fiction’s First Novel Prize, and named a Barnes and Noble Pick of the Month. Her story collection, Heartbroke, won the California Book Award and was a New York Times “Best California Book of 2022” and an NPR Best Book of the Year. Her writing has appeared in The Paris Review, Granta, The Cut, Wall Street Journal, McSweeney’s, Los Angeles Review of Books, Lit Hub, No Tokens, Electric Literature, and others. She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Writers’ Award, as well as residencies from MacDowell and Tin House Books. Raised in Hawai’i and California, she now lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and two children. Her newest novel, Madwoman, is forthcoming from Little, Brown on September 3rd, 2024 and from Oneworld in the UK.

Thank you, Chelsea!