Balancing Act

(The following post is an excerpt from my weekly newsletter, The Pub Crawl. It's free! Sign up here and get a free copy of my e-book, The Guest Book!)

My actual feet in my pole heels.

My husband and I really don’t fight.

But we did today.

I hate to even write about it, because it’s such a rare occurrence, and let me preface by saying that it wasn’t even really a fight; it was more of a pent-up frustration on both our sides that turned into a heated conversation.

At 8 in the morning. On a Sunday.

As you know, I’m releasing a book this June. It’s a sort-of-late addition to the lineup; I wanted it to come out Summer 2025 and it is, but it’s indie, and as a result the workload is completely different. Part of my hesitation (a big part) was the marketing plan I came up with for this book.

It’s a book about a normal girl who ends up becoming a pole dancer. She’s not a stripper - but the club where she works does host male strippers. It’s sexy, and really funny, and it’s a super fast read that I think my audience is going to gobble up.

But the marketing plan I devised for the book involved videos… lots of them… of me pole dancing. Tasteful videos. Pole dancing at a dance studio, not in a strip club. With plenty of clothing on. But still.

I listen to all these podcasts about strong women doing strong things. You guys, I learned how to pole dance when I turned 40 years old. It was 100% the start of a midlife crisis for me, as I definitely worried about being old and losing my sex appeal. Let’s get very, very real for a second. I honestly think that most women look in the mirror and see everything that’s wrong with themselves. We are rarely kind to our reflections - and society’s standards don’t revere age as wisdom; instead, old is bad. Old is weak. Old is frail. Old is invisible.

I turned 40, and I didn’t want to be invisible.

So I joined a pole studio. I also enrolled in a Master’s program for Creative Writing.

Fast forward a bit. I was actually pretty good at pole dancing, but covid shut the studio down in March 2020 and that was the end of that for me. I never went back. But I got all these gorgeous videos, along with an idea for an awesome story.

And I figured, to promote the book, I’ll post the videos.

Well.

I asked my husband, Chris, about this before I did it - but we’re always in such a rush, passing like ships in the night. Maybe I asked at a bad time, or maybe he wasn’t really listening, who knows. But I asked him and he said it was fine. So I started posting them. And then this morning, about a week after I posted the first one, he made it clear he didn’t want them up on the internet.

“You’re a wife,” he said. “A mom. I’m a teacher. What are my colleagues going to say?” (I actually believe his colleagues would think it’s pretty badass, but I can’t say for sure.) “What if kids in my school find out that my wife is pole dancing on the internet? What if children in our kids’ school find out? What if people at your job find out?”

Yes. What if.

But… what if I’m not trying to always be a mom, a wife, a worker, a quiet boxed-in shell of a human whose existence on the internet is going to become a burden to those around them?

What if I just want to be an author? A woman?

Someone who isn’t invisible?

Well… apparently it’s not a choice. Because of course he’s right. I don’t want to do anything to jeopardize his job. Our girls. My day job. No matter what, I’ll always put my family’s needs ahead of my own. And I can’t really bitch about it, because I signed up for that when I chose to get married and have children. I chose a life in the backseat, at least for now.

Chris and I talked about it. And we came up with a good compromise. I’ll post the videos in my Instagram stories, and I’ll use graphics for my grid. That way, I can still share the videos but they’ll expire pretty quickly.

It’s not perfect. But it’ll be okay.

One day, I might be able to reclaim those parts of myself.

But if not, I’ll write about strong female characters who get to have the traits I wish I had. And in that way, I’ll be able to live in that space - even if it’s only in my mind.