Tag: Love

The Right to Privacy

While Michael Moore is obnoxious with his in-your face tactics, I usually agree with him on most issues. I’m certainly in favor of gun-control and agree, as Moore pleads, that America should not look away from the gruesome results of our inaction. But this somewhat veiled call he makes for releasing Sandy Hook school crime scene photos is disturbing.

There is no doubt that photographs can and often should be used to effect positive change. Moore includes many memorable ones in his article. These images taken by photographer Ron Haviv during the Bosnian war are  evidence in the Hague War Crimes trials. Just recently, I wrote in this post about being moved by the late Tim Hetherington’s legacy.

But there is something fundamentally different about releasing police photos from a crime scene without the consent of every one of those affected families. Do they want those horrible images out there? Here are some of their voices. (and a petition, if you’re moved to sign)

Imagine those photographs and imagine your children seeing them.

I can, if only a little. When I discovered my husband’s body in the garage, I managed to get my 8 year old daughter out of the house without her seeing the gruesome scene of his suicide. Although she knows how he died, she has no visual. A decade later, her memories are of her living, flawed but loving, handsome father. Only one image of how he died exists and it is imprinted in my mind – not hers. That feels like a blessing.

I hesitate to draw a comparison between my personal tragedy and the horror in Newtown. Except that all parents want to protect their children. And sometimes we can’t. But when it is possible, this right should not be taken away – and certainly not from these families.

* Update: The photos will not be released. Connecticut comes through again. Bravo.

Portraits of a War Photographer

Last week, between watching Sebastian Junger‘s beautiful film homage to his friend, Which Way Is the Front Line From Here? and reading Alan Huffman’s Here I Am: The Story of Tim Hetherington, War Photographer, I feel like I knew this remarkable man. And I mourn his loss. th

I’ve thought about why I was so affected by this man, this story of Tim Hetherington. It doesn’t hurt that besides being extremely smart, charming, kind, and of excellent character, Tim was also handsome. With all of this, how could one not fall a little in love with him? Clearly everyone – women and men – did. But there’s something else about him that got under my skin, something sad and familiar.

In Junger’s film, there is footage of Tim during his first experience of war in Liberia.  Visibly buzzing from shock and adrenaline after a very close-call, he says something about feeling stupid for taking the risk – ‘all for a fucking photograph’. Yet he kept at it, making his way to war-zone after war-zone, with his clunky, old-style camera. He took the risks repeatedly, although his images were primarily faces, portraits of intimacy, capturing something internal, not typical war-action shots.

At a weirdly prescient talk in Moscow given not long before he was killed by mortar shrapnel in Libya, he tells his audience that the odds of staying safe the longer one kept at it, were not good. He knew. He knew early on in his career and yet, compelled, he continued, going closer and closer to the edge. Huffman writes that Tim recognized a pattern of behavior among soldiers and “He also saw the same patterns of behavior in himself. They were all looking for a sense of purpose, which the extremes of war gave them…”

In the film, one of the scenes that moved me the most was Tim with his family. The room brims with love as Tim kisses his mother, embraces, and holds his father. This footage was as affecting for me as the images of violence. He was so loved by family, friends, his stunning, smart girlfriend. Why did he leave them to knowingly move towards death? What did he seek? Yes, he left a powerful body of work behind — but it cannot outweigh the tremendous sense of loss that this fine man is no longer with us — too young. Read Huffman’s book and see Junger’s film and you will feel it too.

Something infects those who go to war – a kind of madness with no apparent cure. An essence of human nature is laid bare only out in those fields, amidst the mortared rubble. The weird and compelling intensity is like no other and impossible to adequately describe to one who has not experienced it. But Junger and Huffman have each done as brilliant a job as their subject did, in their loving, honest portrayals of the remarkable life of Tim Hetherington.

Groundhog Wars Commence

The groundhog is lurking and ravenous as ever.  A mysterious volunteer has appeared (does anyone know what this is?) next to the asparagus bed and it must be something good since the bastard has already been munching on it.

Groundhog Deterrent

We’re trying a new trick this year and it seems to be working: pinwheels. Apparently woodchucks are frightened by shiny, moving things. (Old CDs strung up with fishing line might also work ) So far, so good – these plants are recovering nicely and have yet to be munched on since we set up the spinning sentinels. Yesterday, we visited the dollar shop and loaded up on American flag pinwheels for our own  version of homeland security.

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Newly planted pea seedlings are pushing through the dirt and a few random bonus patches of lettuce, chard, cilantro and other herbs are emerging from last year. With a fresh layer of topsoil to cover the crumble of leaves ignored last autumn and we’re ready for planting.

For over a decade now, bastard (I’m sure it’s the same one) has been decimating my lettuce, soybeans (a groundhog favorite) broccoli, cucumber, squash – you name it. And every spring, in spite of my previous heartbreaks, I plant again. I refuse to give in to the bastard. For me, it’s become not as much about my wish to harvest vegetables as it is about not giving up.  The garden as a metaphor of hope. Worth fighting for.

Moving Forward

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Why aren’t we terrified to get out of bed in the morning? How is it that we can send our beloved children to venture out into the world on their own? Where do we find the courage when, like this past week in Boston, our world erupts in violence and a fog of fear descends? How is it that even when it is our own disaster, when we are at the epicenter of the storm, we carry on, eventually, finding at least a modicum of joy again?

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That light can eventually penetrate the darkest night of the spirit, fascinates and inspires me. Religion is the key for many, but I find no comfort nor convincing explanation there.  I’ve seen up close, soldiers wearing the icons of their religions, pumping their AK47s in the air as they sped towards the front line, off to kill and maim under the guise of the superiority of their own belief.  The righteousness that religion inspires feels divisive and dangerous to me and personally, I find no comfort in it.

No, what fascinates and moves me is the grace to be found in uncertainty. The ability we have to move on in our not-knowing. To just keep moving. It seems that this is what survivors do – (and we are all eventually survivors) as dark as our individual night might be, instinctually, as long as we might cling to sleep, wish for our own oblivion, eventually, a crack of light breaks through.

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It is this transcendence of the human spirit that touches me. Passing through the darkest siege, even with awful losses, violent memories, we continue. Time — terrible, wonderful, time keeps us shifting forward through the bleakest winters, through the insanities of war. And one day, we meet the spring – more beautiful than we remember – we go on, stepping forward, into and beyond the fear. A force of nature, of spirit, of love. A beautiful mystery.

Love for A Tale For the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

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The Brazilian guy who cleans the bookstore, speaks only a few words of English. I always say good morning and make small talk, but he’s not friendly and I think he’d rather I didn’t. He wears one of those blue-tooth phones that fit in your ear, vacuuming around customers browsing books or right next to where the morning staff meeting is being held, all the while bellowing in Portuguese to whoever is in his ear. I suspect he doesn’t mean to be annoying but that he is in a kind of oblivious state of other-ness. I remember when I lived in countries where I did not speak the language, how hard it can be. (although I think he might also just be a jerk)

I have lived in 3 different countries where initially, like the Brazilian man, I spoke barely a word of the language. Anyone who has been a tourist can get this stupid feeling, but when it’s your day-to-day life the loneliness, otherworldly feeling, is profound.

Life with UN Peacekeeping in Croatia and Bosnia was insular – my life and relationships existed mostly within the international community. My understanding of Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian (virtually same language but for different words for bread!) never grew much beyond the superficial greeting, shopping, weather chats with neighbors, sometimes against the backdrop of not-so-distant shelling and machine gun fire. My time in Italy was briefer but my isolation even more intense as I spent 3 weeks by my daughter’s hospital cot in Brindisi hospital when she was born prematurely. That was some zone to be in.

So I imagine I know something about how the Brazilian cleaner feels. I remember the apartness, the feeling of kind of living an incomplete experience. So many nuances around you are undecipherable.

A bewildered looking me with Watanabe-san and Suzuki-san in the early 1980s.
A bewildered looking me with Watanabe-san and Suzuki-san in the early 1980s.

But it’s mostly my years in Japan I recall.  Although I studied Japanese in my feeble fashion, so many Japanese people wanted to speak English, it was easy to be lazy about learning their language. And even as I became fluently-flawed and gathered Japanese friends and boyfriends, I remained an outsider, oblivious to the reality and details of my Japanese neighbors – and they, to mine.

Still, for all the loneliness and discomfort, something still draws me to that expat existence, to that strange-state of being, the challenge to find a place. My focus, by necessity, turned inward, I filled journals with ramblings. My recollection of those sometimes uncomfortable times, was the richness of my interior life. A consciousness that, now in my familiar, task driven day-to-day existence, I strive for. A state of being alert in time.

Ruth Ozeki’s long awaited beautiful new novel, A Tale for the Time Being has really gotten under my skin and I think it’s not only because I love her writing (My Year of Meats is also a favorite) but because she captures this bubble existence – this weird sense of being, of being somewhere but not of it. We all are in that place at some point but some, by dint of the harshness of society, the struggle to exist in a world you do not feel part of, is often not by choice.  Striving for … place? peace? love? Sometimes, giving up.

In A Tale for the Time Being Ozeki poetically takes us along on her quest to discover more about Nao, the Japanese teenage author of the journal she picks up out of the flotsam of a Pacific Northwest beach.  I fell in love with Nao and Jiko, her ancient grandmother who lives as a Buddhist nun in Sendai right at tsunami ‘ground-zero’.

While reading this, I returned home from work each day to immediately pick up from where I’d left off, retrieving my book from beside the bed, where fighting sleep to read, I’d dropped it the night before. Perhaps because Ruth of the novel is Ruth the author, I felt sure such a diary really exists, and worried right along with Ruth (s), that Nao had been swept away in the tsunami… I’ll let you find out.

What have you read lately that you loved? This question is often asked of me in the bookstore. I’m usually reading at least two books so you’d think I’d always have an answer. But I often can’t even quite remember or at least, I can’t say I LOVE whatever I am reading. But I LOVE Ruth Ozeki’s new novel A Tale for the Time Being. What a beauty. I finished it a few days ago and the magic of it still lingers with me. Read it!

The Next Big Thing ‘Blog Hop’

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Some time ago, the wonderful Nina Sankovitch, author of Tolstoy and the Purple Chair tagged me to participate in an online ‘blog-hop’ or ‘blog-tour’. If this were a relay race, my teammates would be wondering where the hell I was. Well, huffing and puffing, I am finally catching up to answer some questions and pass the torch on to 5 more writers.

The Next Big Thing, as this online ‘blog tour’ is called, is a great way to find out what some of your favorite writers are working on and, discover new ones.

More about the next fab-five writers: Gabi Coatstworth, Lea Sylvestro, Jessica Speart and Linda Urbach,  Jennifer Wilson, later. First,  I must answer the 10 questions…


What is the working title of your book?
 The Things We Cannot Change: Loving an Addict Until Death

Where did the idea come from for the book?
 I don’t think I ever had an idea as much as a compulsion to write down the sometimes thrilling, often crazy story of my marriage.

What genre does your book fall under?
 Memoir with cross-over into addiction and grieving.

Which actors would you choose to play you in a movie rendition?
 I thought about waiting to post until after I scrutinized every actress at tonight’s Oscar awards with this question in mind, but instead, I solicited my daughter’s advice. She suggested Anne Hathaway – who she (sweetly) says I resemble. Maybe once-upon-a-time this was true …but in any case, she would be brilliant, especially in the scenes of misery of which (spoiler alert!) there are a few.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book? A love story between an American and British humanitarian relief worker launches hopefully in wartime Sarajevo, but turns into a tragedy of addiction and suicide in the suburbs of Connecticut.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
 I’m holding out for the traditional route. I work in a bookstore and would like to see it on the shelves. I have an army of friends and colleagues in the business who could help hand-sell it.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
 One year, but I’ve written many drafts since.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
 Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Addiction by David Sheff. Honestly, there’s not much else on the Barnes & Noble shelves from the point of view of the sober, so I believe there is room for mine.

Who or What inspired you to write this book? I’ve been hosting authors for signings at B&N for years and I’ve learned from them that writing isn’t some kind of crazy alchemy (well, maybe a little) but rather demands discipline and time – so I mustered some of both and got cracking. I wanted my daughter to know that our story is nothing to be ashamed of. She’s read and okayed my manuscript otherwise, I would not put it out there.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest? I’ve yet to find anyone who has not been affected by a loved-one’s addiction or suicide. Survivors of tragedies find comfort in knowing we are not so alone and that life can get better again. There are also chapters set in exotic places – including Croatia, Italy and Kyoto – for the armchair traveler.

That’s it! Now let me introduce to you…

Gabi Coatsworth, a British-born writer who has spent half her life living in the United States. Gabi has been published in Perspectives, a Connecticut literary journal, and the Rio Grande Review (University of Texas at El Paso), online at TheSisterProject.com and in Mused, an online and print publication. Gabi is a prolific blogger.  She blogs regularly on local items of interest in the Fairfield Patch and The WriteConnexion – a writer’s life in Fairfield County CT. In 2012, she was featured in an anthology of women writers, Tangerine Tango. She is currently working on her first novel.

Jessica Speart is a freelance journalist specializing in wildlife enforcement issues, Jessica Speart has been published in the New York Times Sunday Magazine, OMNI, Travel & Leisure, Audubon,and many other publications. She is the author of ten books in the Rachel Porter mystery series. In her eleventh book, Jessica chronicles her real-life sleuthing in the narrative non-fiction thriller WINGED OBSESSION: The Pursuit of the World’s Most Notorious Butterfly Smuggler.

Lea Sylvestro’s subjects range from woodchucks to witches, cancer to colonoscopies, travel, beach walks, birds, and beloved cars. Her essays explore the heart and humor in life’s big and little bits.  She writes from her eighteenth century house in the woods of Easton, where she lives with her husband of thirty-seven years. Lea’s day job is at Eagle Hill, a school for children with learning disabilities, and she still  finds time to be a women’s literacy volunteer in Bridgeport.  Her essays have appeared in newsletters for Save the Sound, The Aspetuck Land Trust, and Citizens for Easton as well as the Connecticut Post, Stamford Advocate, Danbury News Times and Minuteman newspapers.  She has two travel memoirs in progress.

Linda Howard Urbach’s most recent novel is Madame Bovary’s Daughter (Random House). Her first book, Expecting Miracles, was published by Putnam in the U.S (under the name Linda U. Howard) as well as England and France where it won the French Family Book Award. The book later sold to Paramount Pictures. Her second novel, The Money Honey, was also published by Putnam. Linda is the originator of “MoMoirs -The Umbilical Cord Stops Here!” performed by members of the Theatre Artists Workshop. It premiered at the Zipper Theater in NYC. She created and runs www.MoMoirs .com. Writing Workshops For & About Moms and was also an award winning advertising copywriter. (CLIO: “My Girdle’s Killing Me”)

Jennifer Wilson has been writing for 15 years for folks like Esquire, National Geographic Traveler, Better Homes & Gardens, Budget Travel, Bon Appetit, Parents, Midwest Living, Iowa Outdoors, the Chicago Tribune, the St. Paul Pioneer-Press, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and (the dearly departed) Gourmet and many others. She’s the travel maven for Traditional Home magazine and Midwest expert at AAA Living. Her first book, Running Away to Home, received the Best Nonfiction of 2011 Award from the American Society of Journalists and Authors, and the Emerging Iowa Author Award in 2012.

I Read the News Today, Oh Boy.

The Sunday New York Times this week has three front page stories that disturbed me:

President Claims Shooting as a Hobby, and the White House Offers Evidence

By  and 

Pete Souza/The White House

In a photo released by the White House on Saturday, President Obama is shown skeet shooting at Camp David in August 2012.

This somehow feels like pandering to the creeps. “See, I shoot guns too!” Ugh. But then, I suppose this is what is necessary to reach the level of ridiculous but scary, gun people who cling to this archaic 2nd Amendment of the Constitution. Whatever.

In Hard Economy for All Ages, Older Isn’t Better … It’s Brutal

By 

David Maxwell for The New York Times

Susan Zimmerman, 62, has three part-time jobs.

Then this article – of course struck close to home because, um, that’s me they are talking about, at least, could be. Of course, as that annoying mantra goes: I’m “lucky to have a job”. In fact I am lucky to have a job that I love – but when I thinking of my fellow ‘boomers’ under or unemployed and struggling, it sucks. And, as bookstores struggle to survive against the Amazon tide, who knows how soon it might be me.

Drowned in a Stream of Prescriptions

By 

Before his addiction, Richard Fee was a popular college class president and aspiring medical student. “You keep giving Adderall to my son, you’re going to kill him,” said Rick Fee, Richard’s father, to one of his son’s doctors.

But this article affected me the most. Beautifully, it was given front-page-center.

Unlike Richard Fee’s, my husband’s addiction was kickstarted not by doctors but by the choices he made during his life-in-the-fast-lane 1980s. But the story I share, along with so many families across the country, is how we were so badly failed by the professionals who were supposed to help us, and how tragically undermined we were by the pharmaceutical industry.

Before I knew why my husband couldn’t keep a job, slept for 12 hours at shot, spent too much money and behaved so erratically, we went, upon my insistence, to a string of psychiatrists who prescribed a rainbow of drugs, including anti-depressants. He happily took them, adding them to his other cocktail of cocaine, Nyquil and whatever else. When I found out about the cocaine, we went to another shrink who prescribed more pills including anti-psychotic drugs that he popped at an alarming rate — I admit, I counted them. When I called the shrink, he brushed it off despite the dire warnings on the bottle. Once I brought went to a walk-in clinic and ranted at a doctor who’d prescribed oxycotin. “He’s an addict!” I yelled. “You just hand this shit out like this?” Yes, they do.

A few months after my husband’s suicide, the posh rehab place where my husband had spent a (useless) week, sent me a bill of a few hundred dollars not paid by insurance. I insisted they send me his records first, then I’d pay the bill. (If I recall correctly, I had to send them a copy of his death certificate.) Reading through the fat file was heartbreaking for it’s lack of information. Multiple choice boxes as diagnoses, rarely a comment and rarer, any insight. He had the doctors, (who I remember he said, he rarely saw) as he had me for so long, completely snowed. They’re good like that, addicts are.

I understand that an addict must want his recovery. My husband saw those doctors only because I insisted he do so. He wanted to appease me, to keep things going – the illusion of a normal life. I think he thought one day he would be able to quit, that he’d get his life back – but twenty years was just too many – the man he had been, might have become – was gone.

I don’t mean to bash the entire psychiatric or pharmaceutical industry as I have benefited from both — but I have many questions and suggest that everyone should.

A Year in My (Fantasy) Life of Retirement

In another 8 months, my daughter will be off to her new life as a college student. This imminent change for both of us has cooked up a veritable soup of emotions but also, a sense of possibility about what adventures might also be awaiting me. My dreaming was inspired by this list of “best places to retire” article on this morning’s Yahoo page. I can never resist reading through their choices, imagining myself in any of those places. Forbes’ list launched me into a full-fledged fantasy about what I might do, of course, (since this is fantasy) if I could indeed retire. Once an expat, the itch never quite goes away. Here’s my plan:

Call me a scrooge, but still reeling from 15 years of holiday retail, I’d give all the Merry Christmas business a miss and disappear to Japan where December 25th is basically a day to eat クリスマスケーキ pronounced “krisumas-cayki”.  After ringing in the New Year in lovely Kyoto, traditionally a time of cleaning and contemplation and ringing a big old bell at a neighborhood temple (details here) it’s off to find the warmth of the sun.

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Definitely time I went back to Bali. (thanks Yukiko for the great photo) Creativity is everywhere in the hill villages of that tiny Hindu island in Indonesia. (please note: I was a pre-Elizabeth Gilbert visitor) I imagine a month of writing, eating, walking, while reveling in the sound of gamelans, the rice paddies, waterfalls and the brilliant smiles of the warmest people I’ve ever met. And the food is good.

Next, all the way to the bottom tip of Australia.

courtesy of trip advisor
courtesy of trip advisor

Tasmania is where Jenny, one of my most missed and dearest friends in the world lives. We are friends from Kyoto days – and I have never laughed so hard and so often with anyone in my life and that alone makes this a trip to take. Bonus that it will be summer there and Tasmania looks incredible with wild beaches and incredible bush.

After exploring around the South Pacific, (Fiji? Papua New Guinea maybe?) it will be time to make my way back towards spring in the Northern Hemisphere. First stopping for some good eats and the crazy energy of Hong Kong and a little exploration of South East Asia. (Laos?)

Spring comes early to the incredible coast of Croatia and Montenegro. I long to marvel once again at the Adriatic light, the most remarkable spectrum of sea colors. Ideally, there will be a sweet house (or this incredible place looks fine!) looking out at that rugged landscape where I will write and maybe even paint for a month or so.  I imagine the scent of eucalyptus, the light, the soft breeze through the cypress and the crystalline water lapping over the rocks. I’ll sit here and read, stare, swim, doze…

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Next, a visit to Greece. I haven’t been since becoming entranced at 18 when I landed on the island of Paros and could explore no further. There is an art school there so even in November, although the tourists were gone, I discovered a dynamic arts community. It was as if I had been drugged by the sweet lavender air – the days drifted into one another – exploring the rocky hills, the restaurants, the retsina? What was it about that place? I’d like to see if I’d feel it again. And – to eat the food! To, as I did a lifetime ago,  wake to the fisherman slapping octopus against the rocks.

Italy always calls to me. Perhaps I can make that visit with Molly – a pilgrimage to her birthplace in Puglia, to the hospital in Brindisi and if we can find them, meet up with the doctors who saved her life. Then, up north to a villa – in Tuscany or here less saturated Abruzzo.  I’d invite my Studio 70 sisters for one of our creative retreats. This would do nicely, don’t you think, gals?

19I imagine our days overlooking the hills, dinners of incredible food and endless red wine. Still, we’ll wake early and find our solitary corners to drink too many cups of coffee and feel inspired. Bliss.

By then it’s time to return to Connecticut to plant my garden at my sweet house and catch up with loved friends. Of course the groundhogs will still eat most of what I plant but I won’t mind as much. As I’m retired, there will be no excuses not to host all the dinner parties I always imagine – set at our lovely table out back. The sunflowers (these past years, eaten as seeds, every one) will be bountiful.

GardenLots of kayaking out to the islands and long overdue trips into the city to museums and restaurants and visits with missed friends and family.

As summer wanes, it’s time to hit the road again — into the groovy AirStream of my dreams DSC_0152_800x531_for a leisurely trip across the States. I know it’s terribly muggy in Kentucky at this time of year but that just makes everyone move slower – savoring the sweaty nights of catching up with more missed friends from Studio 70 days. We’ll sit along the muddy banks of the meandering Ohio River as if no time has passed but rather just been an endless current of connection unbroken by time or space. And of course, like the old days, we’ll discuss time, space, art.

Then, meandering across the US – (the northern route this time) – popping in to National Parks (check out the webcam of Old Faithful!) oldfaithvcA few weeks of luxuriously visiting friends, making new ones, browsing bookstores and thrift shops, farmer’s markets.

Now it’s autumn — a good time to tootle along the Pacific Coast — hikes through the (to me) exotic landscape and perhaps landing in an idyllic spot overlooking the ocean — to contemplate, walk, write — somewhere temperate – Monterey area maybe? I remember a summer spent in San Francisco – and again, the light and sweet air smells.

And as we roll into December it will be time to head back to Kyoto again – to get ready to ring in another year of itchy-foot plans. India? Definitely Morrocco…

What would you do?

“What Saves Us All Is Love”

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Shadowed by the deaths of little children and their teachers, the holiday season in Connecticut passed heavy with sadness. Thoughts of grieving neighbors tempered every day. As I moved through my days at the bookstore, acknowledgement was shared in the minutes spent with strangers while finding or bagging their books. These usually frantic exchanges before Christmas, slowed slightly by a connection of shared sorrow. The season, while bleak, had a poignancy. Customers were kinder. As if feeling the rawness and wonder: how do we go on after these unbearable losses?

Healing seems impossible. How will those parents ever again smile, feel any joy? Yet look: here is the face of the mother that last Christmas of 2011, who woke to a house in flames that killed her three beautiful girls and her parents. In these photos she looks beautiful, smiling, surrounded by her friends who all draw close to her, loving her. Yes, there she is, a year later, living life. In pain, of course — but surely glimpsing a light. For these past 365 days she has carried on with that unbearable weight of her horrible loss — as others have before her. How has she done this? How will the others?

Love, Madonna Badger, the grieving Stamford mother says, saves us all. When we are in the dark night of grief, it seems that light might be smothered, but somehow – lit it stays. This remarkable essence, this life, makes us extraordinary. Inevitably, we all will experience deaths of our loved ones. While quietly we are grateful that this time, this terrible story is not ours, that it is not our beloved, we glimpse the truth that it might have been. And so, a very little bit at least — it is. Helpless to make anything better, we still want to take action, to comfort. Even knowing there are no words, we reach out to our friends and strangers alike, sending messages – because in this world of grieving, no one is really a complete stranger, not for long.

Out of this longing to do something we shower the Newtown community, with toys for their children. Chances are, those families did not need more under their trees but the rest of us needed to do something. To show our love. We drive through blizzards to gather around parents mourning the death of their child. No words can comfort, but we can fill a room, our faces glowing with tears, we can acknowledge and share the one thing that we hope may keep our friends, our fellow humans going forward: love. It is what saves us all.

Exquisite Pain

A full moon still glowed in early morning sky as I stepped into the cold to take Tetley out for his walk. Something about the quality of the light or the air or the moment, brought me back to a scene from more than twenty years ago.

The man I loved had married another. Heartbroken, I retreated from my life in NYC for a weekend at a yoga ashram in upstate New York. After a few days of solitude and meditation, surrounded by winter fields and more sky than NYC allows, my every pore seemed to vibrate. On a frigid early morning with a moon still on the horizon, I walked out into the surrounding fields of the ashram.  I felt as if I had been cracked open, I imagined my sadness might flood the frozen pastures.

Yet, I felt a healing. With every breath, I consciously sent the wrenching pain squeezing my heart off with the disappearing clouds of my exhalations.  The moon seemed to speak to me as did the frozen grass crunching underfoot, each step, now a comfort. Even as I felt like I might die of a silent hemorrhage of the heart, I felt completely and beautifully alive. My pain brought me there – a pain that now, I perceive as exquisite. Certainly, it is the twenty years time that allows me to remember it so, rather than be swept away again into the desperate sadness that at the time I feared might drown me.

The thought of anguish as a road to spiritual understanding – as something exquisite – sticks with me, inspired by this random memory of a wintry morning. Pain of the heart and spirit is certainly on any map we choose to follow in life. There is no alternative route, no way around it. I still dread those turns in the road. But today I am reminded of the incredible clarity and beauty, almost a kind of spiritual trance that can lead us, if not away from our pain, to a place of peace. Like that morning so many years ago: the crystalline threads of my breath disappearing into the cold morning air, held the promise that all things must pass.

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