Constitutionally Midwestern
Constitutionally Midwestern
Constitutionally Midwestern: An Introduction
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Constitutionally Midwestern: An Introduction

Who I am and what this is, live from the floor of my closet
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Transcript

Hi. My name is Lauren Shields, and this is my Substack. It’s called, “Constitutionally Midwestern.”

In February of 2022, I moved to Bloomington, Indiana. I chose Indiana because I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, four hours north of Bloomington. And for reasons that both elude me and give me a sense of persistent shame, I've never stopped wanting to return. 

I say I’m “ashamed” because I sort of feel like I should be over this by now. At 16, I left my father's house up north for my mother's in Tampa because my father remarried, and as happens more often than not with blended families, things fell apart. But everyone goes through hard stuff. It’s not like I’m the first to feel rejected or betrayed, especially during adolescence and especially when a single parent is single no longer. Happens all the time, shoot, at least no one got turned into a swan or pricked their finger on a spinning wheel or was poisoned and then cared for by a whole staff of working-class dudes and giant herd of wildlife.

But for some reason I’ve never quite gotten over the loss, and when the chance came to move back to the same area, I packed up a moving van and my ancient cranky cat, and hit the road.

As soon I got here I remembered I used to have nightmares about this. All through my twenties and most of my thirties, I’d wake up in a panic thinking I’d gone nuts and chosen to move back up North. Now, here I am, and I have some idea why… but truth be told, I’m still kinda confused.

When I'm faced with an issue I can't quite resolve–and it’s been 25 years, I think it’s fair to say that I’m stuck–I write about it, often publicly. I have lots of theories as to why that is, but for now, I’m just going to tell you why I’m starting this Substack.

I’m starting Constitutionally Midwestern because I want you to feel less alone.

See, I thought everyone felt displaced, everyone lived with a yearning for some nebulous concept of home. And it’s true that not everyone feels sort of kicked out of their life, refugees from a hostile takeover.

But maybe you do.

Maybe you miss a place you left before you were ready, or maybe you feel like you used to fit in and now you’re always an outsider. Maybe you want to go home, whether that’s to a house or a town or state or to a version of yourself that you recognize, but for whatever reason, you just can’t.

One of my very favorite writers, Jia Tolentino, says (and I’m paraphrasing here) that good writing makes the reader feel seen. In contrast to most of the online world, where we endlessly compare our insides to everyone else’s hyper-curated outsides, when you read good writing you think, "Oh my God. I had no idea anyone else felt this way."

So maybe reading about my return to where I think I belong, and the things I'm likely to learn here, will help you ease your homesickness, or at least, help you feel less like there’s something wrong with you for feeling it. Maybe we’ll learn stuff together about peace and community and actually enjoying our lives, as we ponder the mysteries of salads with marshmallows and how to get ice off your car.

In each post, I’ll combine personal observations with research about regional culture, everything from the unique sense of humor the people have here to why the pizza is so freakin good (I will not back down on that. Fight me, New York). I’m also going to narrate my posts, because I know some folks would rather listen than read. For now, though, I’m not going to go full-on podcast. It’s a lot of work to write articles AND make podcasts, and honestly, as someone who listens to podcasts for many hours a day, I think there are enough of them already. 

If you have a topic you’d like me to explore, please find me at www.laurenjshields.com. Thanks for listening to Constitutionally Midwestern. I hope I get to hear from you, too.

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Constitutionally Midwestern
Constitutionally Midwestern
I moved from California to Indiana. I want to know why.
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