Meet Bridget
Bridget Ryan Snell
Co Founder and Editorial Director
I finally decided to do it. I avoided it for many years and was proud to say I’ve never participated in it, never found interest in it, and that my life was fine without it. Then my friends started doing it. I found out my sister does. What the hell? Sigh. Fine, I’ll try it.
And that is the story of this hesitant “self improvement” book reader.
On a side note, let me please point out that “self improvement” is not my favorite label for this genre and I would have called it something less “you need help-y” and more “take back your own narrative” but they didn’t take my feedback on that and this is why we have book publishers to make such decisions but I bet it had to be a vote in the end because I can’t imagine it was a unanimous decision by women to give a genre written chiefly for women a title that implies the reader isn’t good just as they are.
I like who I am and mostly always have. I never thought that I needed motivation, inspiration or any nudging to be the best me. I thought this was obvious. More than two decades ago, but less than four, my high school social studies teacher predicted I would be the first President of the Anti-ArchiBunkerSkinHead[word-I-won’t-use-here]Feminist movement. I earned that candidacy.
In those days, I had fewer problems speaking my mind. I enjoyed arguing, especially when I could accompany those arguments with a black turtleneck, a cup of black coffee and a clove cigarette. I loved to read and paint and I kept an eye on the news (really, I kept my eye on Dan Rather. If you can believe it, back then he was even cooler than he is now) and expressed my opinions about world events. I suppose maybe I used my voice a lot. The world still had a USSR and my country had created a New Jack City. A Desert Storm was coming. There was a lot to discuss. And it was easy to surround myself with people who matched my flair for protestation. And coffee. And dark clothes. And the anti-styrofoam movement.
But then I turned close-to-50 and discovered that I also like hearing a good story about empowered women. Especially when the stories use “whisper words” in their titles. Now, she’s writing books with words--nay, using capital letters which everyone knows is the text version of shouting-- like GAY! DIVORCE! CHILDLESS! LEADER! BITCH! And she’s smiling on the cover and telling the truth about periods and sex and body shape. She is vulnerable and tells me the gritty truth. She says I can, too. I read that I can be as loud as I want about my truth and my story isn’t unacceptable (unless I believe that trauma isn’t proper conversation and joy is something to be humble about and success means sacrificing something personal like a child or a dying parent and that white privilege “isn’t a thing” and that there’s a right way to parent and a wrong way to partner).
These new “self improvement” books and memoirs from everywoman put a recall on the only narrative I knew about a woman’s story: and that was that historically we’re not remarkable.
The master of storytelling, LeVar Burton (if you don’t know him, please right now open a new tab and wiki that sh*t) says the “uniquely human experience” of hearing a story goes beyond the storytelling, because we are transmitting an inheritance. There is a purpose to every story. It could be to pass on history, to spark activism and social responsibility. My partner in this project, Marci Goldberg Bracken, rightfully compares our storytelling here at PCS to being the Fodor’s of girl-ing. Every woman’s story is another woman's guide through her own journey.
These are all the reasons we created Pink Chair Storytellers. We are storytellers. And stories bring us together.
Best,
Bridget
