For the past week or so I’ve been haunted by the words of my 11th grade English teacher. These words of his keep looping in my head, as words tend to do, and I keep seeing  flashes of myself as an insecure 16-year-old ready to give up writing F-O-R-E-V-E-R. Yes, that’s right, F-O-R-E-V-E-R.

“Jessika,” he said. “Happiness is a cheap emotion.”

I can’t recall the details of the writing assignment I turned in, nor is it really the point. What is the point: These days, I have good reason to wonder if the editors I’ve been working with also had the misfortune of receiving the tutelage of Mr. Vogel because for the first time in my adult life I am receiving feedback that my work is too positive.

Too positive?  Save Mr. Vogel’s incongruous feedback, I have never even heard of such a thing.

I am not, as I pointed out in my very first blog post, glass-half-full by nature. In fact, I have always been thought of as the opposite. The other day I was visiting with my friend Jeff. We hadn’t talked in a good while and he was listening carefully as I ranted about my experience. After a while I paused and he smiled: It’s funny, I don’t remember you being into happy,” he said.

And he was right. I have always been the girl who concentrates on just the shadow instead of the interplay between darkness and light, and no surprise, my writing has always reflected that.

Since college I have been writing essays and articles most often about environmental or social justice issues. When I had my first job as a newspaper reporter my colleagues used to joke that I had the “oppressed peoples beat”  — and yeah, they weren’t too far off the mark. In recent years, I’ve written about the gentrification in my neighborhood, early puberty due to toxic exposure and our completely wack health care system – and pissed off Blue Cross/Blue Shield in the process. But as of late, more specifically within the last year, I’ve noticed my interest has been shifting – both in fiction and nonfiction writing, both in what I read and what I write.

These days, I’m interested in stories that inspire. I’m interested in transformation, and the beauty and growth that comes from working through the circumstances we’re given – a direct result of therapy, I’m sure. And more so, I’m not at all interested in pointing fingers or perpetuating conflict – though, admittedly, there is an important place for writers who are.

I should say also that I pitched these editors with my story ideas and past samples of my writing ahead of time. They were interested.  I’ve worked with one of these editors several times before and he’s never changed a word of my writing. It just turns out my take on these pieces were not tumultuous enough for them. In turn I’ve been told things like: “You’ve got some good stuff here, but … I think you’ve still got to work harder to earn that happy ending.” (For God’s sake, the essay was about coming to terms with my mom’s prolonged and agonizing death.) (And shouldn’t happy endings be a birthright?)

Anyway, it seems my writing is no longer a good fit for these publications, so I’ve politely withdrawn my submissions rather than revise them in a way that doesn’t feel true.

That may or may not have been a huge mistake in terms of my not-yet-developed writing career, but then again, this may just be the trade off to being more healed and whole (and all that) then I ever have been before.

In the meantime, I’m putting out the feelers and will wait to see what else surfaces. Somewhere out there someone must want to hear about the good, about the interplay between light and dark and all the beauty that unfolds. I believe in that. I have to.