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About Me — Michelle A. Cmarik
My name is not Michelle A. Cmarik
My name is not Michelle A. Cmarik.
There are pieces of my identity in this name. My grandmother’s maiden name was Cmarik, and her initials were “MAC.” Everyone called her Mac.
When I started writing here, I chose this name because I wanted to channel my grandmother’s subtle boldness.
I always sensed there were layers of rebellion within my grandmother. She was a Catholic mother of four who taught me to be more precise when measuring baking ingredients. But she also secretly baptized my three cousins in her bathtub when their atheist parents were out to dinner.
I’ve never baptized a baby against its parents’ will.
But I’ve tried to be bold in my writing here. I’ve written honest details about sex, a failed open marriage experiment, the pain of raising difficult children, and my indecisiveness about divorce.
I’ve even dabbled in humor writing. Those pieces sometimes take even more courage to publish.
I’ve never written for fun before. For most of my adult life, writing caused me more anxiety than pleasure. In college and graduate school I sometimes pulled all-nighters to compose two or even three drafts of the same paper because I could never quite shape it in a…
