an existential crisis

Moskenesoya, Norway

Something shifted this week. After a month or so of stubbornly cold, gloomy weather we awoke to clear blue skies and temperatures that soared into the eighties. Suddenly everything turned green. The air was thick with the fragrance of honeysuckle and lilacs. I had just received a message from my daughter with a video of my granddaughter receiving an award at school (she's in kindergarten) citing her for being mindful, hard-working, kind, helpful, and inclusive. I was sitting on my deck watching a couple of deer in the woods out back, enjoying the sound of birdsong and the acrobatic antics of the squirrels, thinking to myself, "This is a perfect day." Then I received a second message from my daughter. 

She is a Child Life Specialist which means she supports children and their families when they come into the hospital where she works. Using age-appropriate language, she educates them about what they can expect to happen, and she uses calming and distraction techniques to help them through it.

This message described a child she was seeing who had been admitted with RSV a few weeks earlier but didn't seem to recover completely, so her parents brought her back to the ED. She was displaying some behavioral changes which led them to perform an MRI of her brain, and there it was: a massive midline tumor with hydrocephalus and metastatic spread all the way down to her lumbar spine. BAM!

She is six years old. My award-winning granddaughter is six years old.

How does anyone process this? One child happy and healthy, the other doomed to pain, fear, and suffering that herald an early death. In a few months. On an otherwise normal day.

How can we hold space in our hearts for both of these children? For their parents and siblings? 

How would you? 

"Hope is the last thing ever lost."

~Italian Proverb~

I ended up on a path through the woods. This is my "go to" refuge when I need to think things through, when I need peace, or strength, or insight. A walk in the woods serves as the perfect metaphor for the duality that sometimes throws us for a loop. One minute it's warm and sunny, the next it's cloudy and cold. One minute the path is straight and smooth, the next it's stoney and steep. One minute the air is quiet and calm, the next it's windy and wild. One minute you know the way; the next minute, you're lost.

Like life.

"Of all the paths you take in life,

make sure some of them are dirt."

~John Muir~

The child my daughter supported during her MRI will be transferred to a medical center that is better equipped to treat her. My daughter will never see her again. Nor will she ever forget her. 

Nor will I.

"At the end of the day

people won't remember what you said or did.

They will remember how you made them feel."

~Maya Angelou~

jan

no mud, no lotus

 

Gimsoya, Norway

If you are a healthcare provider in any field, or the caretaker for someone you love, you are well aware of the duality that permeates every aspect of reality...the coexistence and contradiction between joy and sorrow, between kindness and cruelty, between life and death. We feel this deeply every day in our work, but never more acutely than with the care of our patients. 

If you are writing about your experience, you may feel the push and pull of duality in your narrative.

First there's the story you have pictured in your mind...and then, there's the process of translating it into words on a page. It can take you from soaring with enthusiasm to slogging through the muck. You may find yourself stuck.

"No mud, no lotus."

~Thich Nhat Hanh~



Inspiration wanes, fatigue sets in, and the story line languishes. Self-doubt creeps in. And even though the end is in sight, like a desert mirage, it fades away the closer you get to it.

"What makes the desert beautiful

is that somewhere it hides a well."

~Antoine De Saint-Exupery~



This is a lonely place for writers. Your memoir or manuscript isn't polished yet so no one else has seen it or commented on it. Therefore, you don't get to enjoy the inspiration that comes with an exchange of ideas, weighing in on suggestions from writing partners. You need a fresh infusion of incentive, like the energy that emerges when composing a query letter or submitting to an editor or agent. But you're not there yet. This is just hard, lonely work, day after day.



How do you cope with it? 

Sometimes I'll take a little time out to dash off a piece of flash fiction, a short essay, or, like today, a blog post. It's like indulging in a little snack when you can't wait for supper.

 

Sometimes I have to tear myself away from the keyboard and polish off a few necessary chores before I can concentrate again. For example, when there's no food in the house, or I run out of clean underwear. I mean, priorities do change. Writing sometimes has to wait, especially at this time of the year. There is spring cleaning to think about and yardwork to do. Storytelling may have to take a back seat for a while.

What can you do in the meantime?



When I'm stuck for an idea or unsure how to put one into words, I'll pick a random passage to edit and revise, backtracking a bit until I'm sure I'm on the right path again.

"Real writing begins with rewriting."

~James A. Michener~



It also helps to read something by another author on a similar topic. A couple of my go-to favorites are:

"Memoir as Medicine" by Nancy Slonim Aronie

and

"Still Writing" by Dani Shapiro

Right now, I'm reading "Good Writing--36 Ways to Improve Your Sentences," by Neal Allen and Anne Lamott. Next will be "Dharma Dog," by Stephen Cope when it comes out later this year.

Just the process of reading beautiful writing invites the mind to get in on the action. 

Do you ever get bogged down in the middle of a project? What do you do to recharge? To move ahead? How do you get it all done?

"Many of life's failures

 are people who did not realize

how close they were to success

when they gave up."

~Thomas A Edison~

jan

the aftermath of childhood illness

 

Reine, Norway

I post a lot about the importance of telling your story...the one that needs to be told, the one that won't go away, the story others need to hear. But have I mentioned how hard this can be to do? Have I told you how hard it is to get started? How long it can take? How confusing it can be?

 

"If I'm gonna tell a real story,

I'm gonna start with my name."

~Kendrick Lamar~

 

The story I need to write has been nagging at me for over 70 years...since I was three years old. That's when my brother and I both went into the same hospital with the same illness at the same time. The story explores the divergent paths we took through life in the aftermath of our shared experience. And how long it took to share our separate truths.

 

It begins:

          "The aftermath of childhood illness can linger for a lifetime. You think you’re over it when, out of nowhere, you remember the way the nurse rolled you onto your side and bared your little buttocks. First came the jab, then the dull ache that lasted until the next shot was due. One moment you’re a fully functioning adult. The next, you’re a sobbing three-year old.
          Like a stain that won’t come out, like a fog that never lifts, it stays with you. It can send you down a path you never intended to follow. It has the power to transform you into someone you never wanted to be. The memory of it catapults you back to a time you'd rather forget."

I started working on this project in earnest six years ago. This is as far as I've gotten. The details are vivid in my mind, the story arc is clear, and I already know how it ends. What, then, is so difficult about telling it?

 

I think the hardest part is convincing yourself that your story is worth telling. And after that, engaging the reader. Convincing him that your story is also his. Compelling him to read on in order to make sense of his experience in light of yours. Finding meaning not so much in the recitation of events, but in their cause and effect, in your process and outcomes, in the truth you summoned the courage to share.



"When you stand and share your story...

your story will heal you

and your story will heal somebody else."

~Iyanla Vanzant~ 

 

For reasons that will take a full-length book to explore, my brother spent most his adult life battling the anxiety, fear, shame, and insecurity that followed his hospitalization, as well as the addictions that helped him cope. His story is an epic quest for healing.

 

I went on to study medicine.

 

If you are mystified by the way your life unfolded as it did, if you have spent sleepless nights reflecting on the people, places, and circumstances that shaped you as a human being, if you have ever wished things had been different, you have an important story to tell.

 

"Other people are going to find

healing in your wounds.

Your greatest life messages

and your most effective ministry

will come out of your deepest hurts."

~Rick Warren~

 

If you are discouraged about telling your story because you don't know where to begin, start by writing something. Anything. Start with your name.

jan