Although I tend to wake up with all sorts of emotions already swirling through my consciousness, indifference is never one of them. Instead – and I don’t think I’m alone in this – I’m often as not overcome with a wild brew of feelings as I stand on my small patch of earth and try to contemplate the much larger world out beyond my view and understanding.

Early yesterday morning, unguarded and unsettled, ears attuned to birdsong and wind, watching the sky brighten and the landscape glow with golden light, it was hard to imagine how life can possibly be both so beautiful and so horrific.

How, I wondered, am I to hold in my small, imperfect human heart both the tragedy that unfolded in Boston on Monday and, at the same time, gratitude that no one I know was hurt? How do we process the unimaginable?

On Monday afternoon, I drove a dear friend to the doctor and then we stopped for ice cream downtown. We sat outside in the mild sunshine eating peppermint stick and chocolate, happy in our innocence, our only worry the fact that we were filling our bellies way too close to dinner time. At home a few minutes later, lacing up my sneakers to take a walk, I had no idea what to make of a text that arrived from Jack saying, “I’m safe.” My first, thoughtless response was, “Well of course you are.”

Only when I opened my computer a moment later, and saw the scrolling news on the Boston Globe website, did I realize how lucky I was that the very first news I heard of the bombings came in the form of assurance from my younger son that he was all right. And yet, alongside my own relief was the realization that thousands of others were still awaiting news of loved ones, and that when it finally did come, not all the news would be good. Indeed, for many it would be devastating.

When tragedy strikes, it feels as if the entire world should stop and reassemble itself into some new pattern. Given the way grief, loss, and violence rip through our own precious complacency, we look around for some corresponding external shift, half expecting the moon and sun and stars to change course, too; wanting the entire universe to register and accommodate our human loss and somehow render it fathomable.

It doesn’t happen.

The sun rises in the morning, unperturbed. The sky turns bright and sheer as a veil and slowly, imperceptibly, the last rim of snow vanishes under the eaves on the north side of the house. Out front, as they do each spring, the indefatigable pansies tip their tiny purple faces toward the warmth. The birds take up their song, regardless. Overhead, a pair of great blue herons glide silently toward the pond, reminding me of the steadiness of their return, year after year. The world spins on, abiding.

How we choose to live in it, and where we look for meaning, is up to us. Standing outside in the early morning — open, attentive, reverent – I allow myself to be filled with the solace of nature’s eternal rhythms. Here, in the gentle breeze upon my cheek, in the joy of watching my dog run at full tilt, pouring across the field, in the squish of mud beneath my boots, I am nourished and restored even as the weight of sadness sits heavily in my heart. Reminded that I’m never far removed from the source and mystery of things, I’m reminded, too, of all that is beyond my comprehension and control.

Two days later, as the investigations into who and why and how grind on, the best response to the violence I can come up with is this: to reaffirm my faith in kindness and to commit myself even more deeply to a practice of living and speaking with compassion.

If I can remember that versions of what happened on Boylston Street on Monday afternoon are occurring each day, all over the world, then I’m reminded that we are all connected, and that there will be no lasting peace for me until there is peace for you, too, no matter who you are.

If I stop to consider that the attack that feels singular and incomprehensible to us – an assault on our home, on our Marathon, on our innocent people – is not unique at all, but the opposite, then I remember that until all people are safe, no one is safe.

If I can dissolve my own barriers and assumptions enough to taste the experience of life from inside someone else’s skin, then I take a small step out of the numbness and daze which keeps me separate from the mistakes and miseries of our own messy human creation.

Last night, Jack called and we talked on the phone for a while. “It didn’t really sink in until today,” he said, “how close I was to what happened. How it could so easily have been me, or anyone I know, there at the finish line.”

“Yes,” I said. “It took me a while to grasp that, too.”

Now I’m coming to think it is our task — as citizens of Boston, of America, and of the earth itself — to hold the truth in our hearts and minds: we are all one, and it is only through our willingness to reach out and touch the pain of others that the world will change.

Let’s get together. . .

Appearances

It seems to me that the best book conversations (well, the best conversations in general) are the ones that take place over a good meal. So my writing buddy Margaret Roach and I are both looking forward to reuniting at a luncheon hosted by The Hickory Stick Bookshop in Washington Depot, CT, this Friday, April 19 at noon.  For the price of a book, you will get a catered lunch, a reading, and time to chat with the two of us too! Call the store at (860) 868-0525 for more info and to reserve your place. (And to read a lovely article about this special bookstore, click here.)

I first “met” Priscilla Warner right here last June, when she left a comment on a blog post I’d written.  I immediately read her wonderful memoir Learning to Breathe, she read my manuscript of Magical Journey and encouraged me through every step of the final revision, and pretty soon it felt as if we’d been friends forever — even though we STILL haven’t ever laid eyes on each other.  That will change this weekend, when I go to Larchmont, NY, to speak at the Public Library  on Sunday, April 19, at 3:30 — an event Priscilla helped organize, in part, so we can finally meet in person.

Other spring-time journeys:

Margaret and I are doing our very last bookstore “duet” at the Concord Bookshop on Sunday, April 28, at 3.  (Think daffodils, home made cookies, and wide-ranging conversation– everything from the thorny questions of midlife to composting secrets revealed!)

I’ll be back at Ann Patchett’s beautiful Nashville bookstore Parnassus on Thursday, May 2, at 7 pm.

And from Nashville, I’ll go straight to Minneapolis for my final two readings this spring: The annual Motherhood and Words talk at the Loft Literary Center on Saturday, May 4 and, finally, to cap it all off, a reading at Common Good Books, Garrison Keillor’s beloved bookstore in downtown St. Paul on Monday, May 6.  Minneapolis friends, St. Olaf connections, Twin Cities readers, I want to see you all there! 

                  Housekeeping . . .

MOTHER’S DAY isn’t far off.  I’m happy to sign book plates for your gift books (just send me an email through the Contact link.) Or, you can order any of my books — signed and personalized as per your instructions — directly through my local independent bookstore, The Toadstool, here in Peterborough, NH.  I asked Willard, the owner, if he’d be willing to gift-wrap books as Mother’s Day gifts, and he said “Sure.”  To order, click HERE.   This will bring you to an order form at the Toadstool’s website.  Leave a note with your order, letting us know if you want your books personalized and/or gift-wrapped.  I’ll sign them, we’ll wrap them beautifully, and we’ll get them right off to you or to the special moms in your life.

I’ve loved hearing from so many of you!  Your letters never fail to make my day — they remind me all over again how lucky we all are, to be part of a community of readers, seekers, thinkers, nurturers.  If you feel inclined to write a bit MORE, however, I will say that each and every reader review on  Goodreads and on Amazon is hugely appreciated  and hugely helpful too.  Thank you for spreading the word!

 

 

You have traveled too fast over false ground;

Now your soul has come to take you back.

Take refuge in your senses, open up

To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain

When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,

Taking time to open the well of color

That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone

Until its calmness can claim you.

           ― John O’Donohue, from “A Blessing for One Who is Exhausted”

Hard as it is for my mom to be away from her fourteen-year-old cocker spaniel for a few hours, let alone three days, she couldn’t bear the thought of not being present for her sister’s grandson’s wedding up north this weekend.  My Aunt Gloria’s been gone for three years.  But this winter, my mother says, has been harder than the first one without her; she is missing her big sister more these days, not less.  Being with her extended family, staying in a hotel with my dad in Newport, watching the first grandson take a bride – none of that would fill in the hole carved by loss, but it would make her feel a bit closer to her sister and remind her she wasn’t alone in missing her.  Of course, she was torn between going and staying home with her dog.

“I’ll come down there and take care of Justin, so you can go to the wedding,” I promised her weeks ago, happy to fill in some empty March days on my calendar with a trip to Florida and grateful for any excuse to have a visit with my mom.

“Words Justin knows (but can’t hear),” she wrote in the extensive care-and-feeding manual she left for me.  “Sit. Stay. Off.”  Justin is sweet-natured, deaf, and, above all else, a creature of routine: up to pee at 5 am, breakfast at 5:03, back to bed til 7, dinner at 4:30, a walk at dusk, playtime, bed.  During the day, between periodic call-of-nature visits to a small circle of bleached crab grass in the backyard, he sleeps.

“I’m looking forward to this,” I assured my mother as she packed her suitcase on Friday.  “I’ve been going nonstop since December. Three days alone, with no one who needs me for anything, will be a luxury.”

I meant it.  It feels as if the only conversation I haven’t had lately is one with myself.  So, I had my own plans for the weekend:  disconnect totally and do nothing.  I would read, think, write in my journal. Allow my soul to welcome me back.

What a relief it would be, I was certain, to just close up shop on my life for a couple of days.  I vowed to take a technology holiday — leave my laptop asleep in its case, my phone on vibrate, my emails unread, incoming texts unanswered, my Facebook status unchanged, my Amazon sales figures unchecked.

Yesterday, all alone in my mother’s house, I erected my cathedral of quiet.

And then, moment by moment, I struggled to live inside it.  All day long, I fought against the uneasy, unfamiliar discomfort of keeping company with my own silent, non-doing self.  How humbling, to realize I’ve lately grown so accustomed to distraction and busyness that it’s a challenge to simply stop in one place and be, to inhabit an empty space in time without giving in to the impulse to fill it up.

For months now, I’ve been in high gear, doing not only my normal every-day stuff (shopping, cooking, cleaning, mothering) but also the adrenaline-rush stuff of traveling, giving readings and talks, connecting, and promoting –  what I’ve come to think of as the job of being a person who’s written a book.  And I’ve loved just about every minute of my own thrilling Magical Journey.  It’s been a privilege to visit bookstores all over the country and a joy to hear from readers, to receive their thoughtful, heartfelt letters, to meet new friends and reconnect with old ones.

At the same time, I have to wonder:  have I become so used to being connected somewhere, to something, all the time, that making a deliberate choice to unplug and shut up, even for a day or two, has become a challenge?

“Stop,” I kept reminding myself yesterday, each time I reflexively reached for my phone, “just to check my email,” until at last I just stuck it out of sight in a drawer.

Pausing just to be sounds simple enough in theory, but it can be wildly hard. Making a choice to inhabit a windswept interior emptiness rather than trying to stuff it full of mental furniture feels awkward, even a little scary.  “Is this all there is?”  my busy mind kept demanding, casting about for something, anything, to do or worry about or fixate upon.

Having grown used to velocity as my automatic response to complexity, I’ve become pretty efficient when it comes to getting things done, but somewhat less graceful, apparently, in repose.  Give me a to-do list, and I know how to power through to the bottom line.  But even competence comes at a cost.  Give me a day without an internet connection or a deadline or a self-imposed goal to be met or a finish line to cross, and all my self-doubts and vulnerabilities come rushing out to meet me, jostling for position, demanding to be seen and heard.

I floundered around for a while, at odds with myself, rubbed raw by the rough edges of my own solitude.  It was hard to sit still, hard even to focus deeply and completely on the pages of the book I very much wanted to read.  I did some yoga and tried to match slow steady breaths to slow steady movements.  I took the dog for a walk, frittered the hours away, spoke to no one.  I didn’t try to get Justin to read my lips, as my mom does, or engage in doggie small talk he couldn’t hear, just to break the silence.  I resisted the urge to email a friend, to text my sons, call my husband, or turn on the TV and catch up on Downton Abbey.

In the end, I stretched out in a lawn chair, put down my book, and gazed up into the turquoise expanse of sky. Finally, time slowed down.  Finally, I felt something inside me begin to soften and settle, to release and let go.

This morning, I’ve been reading a memoir called “Until I Say Good-bye,” by Susan Spencer-Wendell, who was diagnosed with ALS two years ago, at the age of forty-four.  Knowing she had, at best, one good year of life left, Susan made a deliberate choice: to plant a garden of memories for her beloved husband and their three young children, and to cultivate joy in whatever time remained for her.

She wrote her book in three months, painstakingly using her one good finger to type into the Notes function on her iPhone.  By the time she was finished, she had lost her mobility, her voice, nearly everything except her courage, her consciousness, and her conviction that although she had no control over her illness, she could control the attitude she brought to her approaching death.  Certain the greatest gift she can give her family is her own acceptance of her fate, Susan is facing the end head on; as her book makes its way in the world, she is preparing, with little fanfare, to leave it.

Last week, following up on an earlier  interview conducted a few months ago when she could still speak, Scott Simon asked Susan how she is doing.  Her written reply to him was simple, straightforward, tremendously moving: “As well as can be expected. My body and voice become weaker every single day, but my mind becomes mightier and more quiet. You do indeed hear more in silence.”

She is right, of course.  And so, with gratitude now, and a good bit more ease than I felt yesterday, I sit outside at my mother’s quiet house, beneath the rustling palms, and watch the sun go down. I receive John O’Donohue’s words of blessing into my being, and feel what it means to imitate the habit of twilight.  I wonder whether, if I abide here long enough, a well of color might somehow open within me, too, just as the evening sky itself grows diaphanous at last light, the clouds translucent veils of rose and gold and mauve.

 

Magical Journey News

On the web

I never thought much about how my yoga practice has shaped my work as a writer, and vice versa, until Kate Hopper at Motherhood and Words, asked me some probing questions about both craft and practice in this lovely interview.

Other recent interviews and blog posts I’ve loved are:

Ali Edwards’s beautiful review. Click here.

An interview HERE, with Harriet Cabelly at her inspiring and rapidly expanding Rebuild Your Life site.

Amy Makechnie’s  brand new and engaging “fascinating person” series,  HERE.

 

Appearances

There’s a bit more magical journeying in my future, and a few new events on the calendar that I’m very excited about — each one an opportunity to meet wonderful, like-minded women, to listen and share our stories, and to reweave and reaffirm our connections with one another.

Next:  A reading and conversation at the Annapolis Book Festival on April 13 with Donna Jackson Nakazawa, author of The Last Best Cure.  (More about this terrific book, and a give-away, here very soon!) In the meantime, do visit Donna’s website and get to know her there.

It seems to me that the best book conversations (well, the best conversations in general) are the ones that take place over a good meal. So my writing buddy Margaret Roach and I were thrilled to be invited to speak and read at a luncheon hosted by The Hickory Stick Bookshop in Washington Depot, CT, on Friday, April 19.  Details to follow; in the meantime, you can call the store for more info.

I first “met” Priscilla Warner right here last June, when she left a comment on a blog post I’d written.  I immediately read her wonderful memoir Learning to Breathe, she read my manuscript of Magical Journey and encouraged me through every step of the final revision, and pretty soon it felt as if we’d been friends forever — even though we STILL haven’t ever laid eyes on each other.  That will change next month, when I go to Larchmont, NY, to speak at the Public Library  on Sunday, April 19, at 3:30 — an event Priscilla helped organize, in part, so I can finally come visit her.

Other spring-time journeys:

Margaret and I are doing our very last bookstore “duet” at the Concord Bookshop on Sunday, April 28, at 3.  (Think daffodils, home made cookies, and wide-ranging conversation– everything from the thorny questions of midlife to composting secrets revealed!)

I’ll be back at Ann Patchett’s beautiful Nashville bookstore Parnassus on Thursday, May 2, at 7 pm.

And from Nashville, I’ll go straight to Minneapolis for my final two readings this spring: The annual Motherhood and Words talk at the Loft Literary Center on Saturday, May 4 and, finally, to cap it all off, a reading at Common Good Books, Garrison Keillor’s beloved bookstore in downtown St. Paul on Monday, May 6.  Minneapolis friends, St. Olaf connections, Twin Cities readers, I want to see you all there! 

As always, HUGE thanks to all of you who are creating this community of like-minded souls and keeping the word of mouth going by writing reviews on Amazon, showing my video to your friends, or sharing my blog posts on your Facebook pages and Twitter feeds.  Every week, this newsletter is going out to more people — there are well over 2,ooo subscribers now, but I’d love to widen this circle even more.  My Magical Journey Facebook page, which started with exactly zero followers in November, now has nearly 2500.  (That really DOES feel like magic.)

 

 

As I sat holed up in my bedroom today, making notes for the talk I’ll give to a group of parents on the West Coast on Tuesday, I realized that some of the quotes that have shaped me as a mother are really the spiritual equivalents of those guideposts poking up through the snow:  words that keep me on track when the familiar landscape of our family life is suddenly altered by some challenge or unexpected turn in the emotional weather.

It’s so easy, when things get stormy around here or seem a bit out of control, to lose my way.  But if being the mother of two sons who have now attained the impossibly grown-up ages of 20 and 23 has taught me anything, it’s that storms pass and that control is an illusion anyway.  Still, it helps when the weather is wild, to have some markers pounded into the earth, words that remind me of where I want to put my feet, of the solid ground I know is there for me, just beneath the blinding swirl of whatever’s coming down.

Attachment to outcome has probably been the biggest challenge on my own parenting path. Little wonder then that my central task as a mother seems to be practicing the art of nonattachment.  And so I look to the wisdom of others to remind me of what I already know:  I can love and care for my children, but I can’t possess them.  I can assist them, and pray for them, and wish them well, but in the end their happiness and suffering depend on their choices and their destinies, not on my wishes.

It surprised me to notice today that none of the quotes that keep me on track as a parent actually come from books about parenting.  But perhaps that’s as it should be. For the other thing this journey of motherhood has taught me is that my children are not extensions of me, and my real work isn’t about changing them, or shaping them into the people I think they ought to be. It’s about changing myself – learning to soften, to trust, to pay attention, to accept, and, most of all, finding the faith to let them go.

So, here are the guideposts I’ve placed along my own path, to keep me moving in the direction I aspire to travel.  What words serve as your guideposts on this journey?

(A word about this photo, taken ten years or so ago at sunset on a summer day in Maine:  I love the joy in these shadows, the memory of a vanished, distant time, the fact that Jack and I danced and played in that golden light and Steve grabbed his camera and captured the fleeting, precious moment.  It still makes me smile and get a little teary at the same time. And it reminds me: be present; we will not pass this way again.)

Words for the Journey

“To bow to the fact of our life’s sorrows and betrayals is to accept them; and from this deep gesture we discover that all life is workable. As we learn to bow, we discover that the heart holds more freedom and compassion than we could imagine.”   – Jack Kornfield

“I try to remind myself that we are never promised anything, and that what control we can exert is not over the events that befall us but how we address ourselves to them.”   – Jeanne DuPrau, The Earth House

“It has something to do with submitting rather than dominating. Surrender, submit. Have faith, trust in the mystery. That’s not easy. Surrendering one’s life to living in, and serving, the beauty of a mysterious world is a big step. . . .The purpose of the journey is compassion.”

– Joseph Campbell,  An Open Life

“Who you are is made up of three persons.  There is the one you think you are, the one others think you are, and the one you really are.  Work towards making all three the same. Then there will be peace and bliss.”          –  Sri Sathya Sai Baba

“Live in the present. Do the things that need to be done. Do all the good you can each day. The future will unfold.”  – Peace Pilgrim

 “Life is change.  Growth is optional.  Choose wisely.”  – Karen Kaiser Clark

“The little things? The little moments? They aren’t little.”   – Jon Kabat-Zinn

 “Each morning we are born again. What we do today is what matters most.”    – Buddha

 “To look deep into your child’s eyes and see in him both yourself and something utterly strange, and then to develop a zealous attachment to every aspect of him, is to achieve parenthood’s self-regarding, yet unselfish, abandon.”

“We must love (our children) for themselves, and not for the best of ourselves in them, and that is a great deal harder to do.  Loving our own children is an exercise in imagination.”   – Andrew Solomon, Far from the Tree

A Magical Journey update

Some books are review books. (Think a quotable rave from the New York Times).  That’s not this book.  Some authors appear on The Today Show or The View, with answers to all your questions about how to be happy.  (Think instant ascension on the best-seller list.)  That’s not me.  I am an under-the-media’s-radar kind of writer.  And I’m pretty sure  Magical Journey is a word-of-mouth kind of book.  That’s fine with me.  And I am deeply grateful to every single one of you who have bought a copy, shared a copy, or urged a friend to give it a try, saying, “Here, I think you’ll like this, too.”  Thank you!

Last week, Magical Journey was #1 on the best-seller list at Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord, NH.  Sure, it’s a small independent bookstore in a small city in the middle of my home state, but I’m pretty thrilled to be #1 anywhere.  And yes, readers made it happen.

Want to spread the word?  Here are three quick things you can do.  (With huge thanks in advance for your help.  It really DOES make a difference!)

1. Write a brief review on Amazon.

2.  Like my page on Facebook and share posts with your friends. (I update there often, and post news of every appearance too.)

3. Share the book!  (I just received a new box of beautiful, blank, custom book plates.  And I’m happy to personalize as many as you’d like and mail them right out to you.  Just drop me a line and let me know how many and where to send them. Valentine’s Day gifts, perhaps??)

Also, check my Events page to see if I’m coming this spring to a bookstore near you. Thanks to the generosity of fans and friends, I’m on my way to the West Coast this week:  La Canada, Laguna Beach, and Pasadena.

If you missed Priscilla Gilman’s thoughtful interview  Click Here.

 

 

Two days after New Years, with both sons back at school, I flew to Florida and set up camp in the guest bedroom of my parents’ house. My mom, keeping her promise not to tempt me with distractions, went about her carefree retiree’s life. Meanwhile, I holed up in my self-created bunker, sitting cross-legged on the bed for hours on end, bent over my laptop, pretending no one would ever read what I was writing. My immediate goal was not to send words out into the world, but to be quiet and disciplined and attentive enough to find out if I actually had anything to say.

Now, twelve months later, the book that finally began to take shape during those weeks is in the bookstores. The irony of the title Magical Journey, of course, is that I didn’t actually go much of anywhere, except in search of a bit of solitude and silence. Sometimes the most challenging journeys aren’t the ones that require backpacks and sturdy shoes, but rather a willingness to turn inward, to seek something deep and as yet unformed within ourselves. And sometimes, as the last two weeks have revealed to me, it is the work done in lonely isolation that ultimately forges and affirms our most essential human connections out in the world.

This morning, home again after a flurry of nonstop travel and bookstore appearances, I paged through the journal I kept last winter. Every day, I attempted to clear my mind and face my fears by writing longhand in a notebook before turning on my laptop and confronting my manuscript. A few excerpts from those arduous, uncertain days exactly a year ago:

“I am so slow. What I’ve written is probably not terrible. I’m trying to convince myself that it is at least good enough. Yet moving forward feels really hard. What is the right attitude? Maybe just to try to keep on writing without judging, to think my thoughts and feel my feelings, and get something down on the page, and then decide later whether it’s any good or not.”

And this:

“The slowness, the uncertainty. What am I learning from this process? That in my writing, first and foremost, I must put my faith in the truth. That the truth is mundane, embarrassing at times, difficult to distill clearly, yet still worth reaching for. That the only way through is through. That it doesn’t get easier. That living wholeheartedly can mean going within, rather than without. Not fun, exactly, but wholehearted nonetheless.”

And also:

“So strange to be in a time of life, a place, where Steve and Henry and Jack can all be living separate lives in different places. They are doing just fine away from me; I’m the one who feels the loss of all that used to be. All I used to be. Guess that’s what it’s been like for my own mom for years now. Perhaps I’ll get used to it. I feel alive in different ways – alive when I’m needed at the center of my family, making dinner or having a heart-to-heart with one of the boys, keeping all the balls in the air. And alive in a totally different way now, in solitude, when all the structure and to-dos fall away, and I’m left with my own thoughts, my own demons and dreams, my own inner landscape. Time slows. There is nothing to do but honor my commitment to keep at this, uncomfortable and hard as it is. But I wonder: to write from this vulnerable place, to be who I really am on the page – is this in itself some kind of path or calling? Perhaps, for now anyway, it is. And perhaps, if I can just stick it out, it will even lead to joy. Or at least lead me back out of myself, with some sense of where I’m meant to go next.”

Yesterday, my friend Dani Shapiro, wrote a thoughtful, lovely post about the difference between taking risks in life and on the page. Most of us, as she points out, will go to any length to keep our loved ones safe. Learning how to assess risk is part of growing up; making prudent calls, at the heart of every mother’s job description. And yet, says Dani, “When it comes to the writer’s life, risk is what it’s all about.”

She’s right, of course. We have to step out on that high wire again and again, even though we teeter with every step, even though we’re dogged by insecurity: “Maybe it won’t work. . . . Maybe it will suck. Maybe I’ll waste my time and precious energy on a piece of prose that will be dead on arrival.”

I don’t suppose there’s any way to avoid the inexorable loneliness of the process, the feelings of frustration and powerlessness that come at the end of a day in which the only thing you really accomplished was staying put in your chair. Still, I wish that when I was sitting alone with myself in that Florida bedroom, I could have flashed forward a year, to the joyous scene last week in a hotel room in Nashville.

Every single woman from my book group had flown in earlier in the afternoon to celebrate the launch of Magical Journey with me and to attend my reading at Ann Patchett’s beautiful bookstore, Parnassus. On that first evening, we were all gathered together, toasting our trip, our thirteen years of books and lives shared, and the publication of this new memoir of mine (despite the fact that the work of writing it had kept me from attending a single meeting last year.)

The conversation soon turned to vulnerability, and risk, and the importance of sharing our stories, even the painful ones. After all these years together, we trust one another completely, hold little back, know that we can close the door and bare our souls in safety. And yet, as my friends began to share their first reactions to my book, we found ourselves talking as well about taking risks in public and on the page. And how, perhaps, in taking some risks myself, I’ve cleared a space in which other women might be more willing to share their own stories, or at least come to feel a little less alone.

This, it seems to me, is the reason any writer undertakes the speculative work of memoir. Not so much to tell “what happened,” as to illuminate the slow, halting process by which we learn to make our peace with what is. And in that vulnerable revealing, in the stumbling, wayward truth of that story, lies something that is worth offering: not the gift of what we have accomplished but rather the gift of who we really are.

To be vulnerable on the page is indeed a risk – hang yourself out on the line, and anyone can come along and take a swing at you. Yet my own experience over these last two weeks has been the opposite. People are kind, and words build bridges. As I’ve met and talked with readers in Connecticut and Nashville and Washington, DC, and as I’ve read and responded to the letters and Facebook messages and emails from strangers, I’ve been moved deeply by the stories women have shared with me, joyful stories of change and growth, but also intimate stories of loss and hardship, suffering and grief. Stories told in confidence within this safe space, a space created by kinship and kindness and courage. Publishing a book, any book, is an act of faith – in oneself of course, but in one’s readers even more. How humbling and gratifying it is to have that faith returned a thousandfold.

I would not want to relive last January, all those days spent, as Dani says, “in the teeming, writhing darkness,” trying to beat back my own self-doubt long enough to make something lasting and sturdy out of words. But I’m glad now that I did it. What I’m learning, I think, is something one of my most admired writers, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, knew all too well.

“I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches,” she writes in Gift from the Sea. “If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness, and the willingness to remain vulnerable.” This, it seems to me, is the work of the writer: finding something of value to add to the suffering. Sometimes, yes, it is isolating, to dwell in that place of risk and revelation. And yet what we find on the other side is so worth the effort: community, connection, kinship, healing. Nothing less than the road back to grace.

To all of you who are supporting the birth of this book with your heartfelt letters, your messages, your words of encouragement, your online reviews and your real live attendance at my readings, a most heartfelt thank you. I am honored to be a part of this ongoing conversation, to meet you and to share the path with you, to be reminded that none of us journeys alone, that we are all connected, that my story is your story — and vice versa.

News from the road. . .

Building an audience is the writer’s job once the book is published — and that’s what I’m up to now.  (A far cry from that writerly solitude of a year ago.)  Want to help me spread the word?

Here are three things you can do:

1. Write a brief review on Amazon.

2.  Like my page on Facebook and share posts with your friends.

3. Share the book!  (One of my favorite stories: A reader wrote to tell me she was ordering five copies for friends for Valentines Day.  No sooner had she placed her order than an Amazon rep called to ask if there had been some mistake.  “No,” she replied, “I loved this book, so I’m buying more for my friends.”  The Amazon clerk read the description and said, “It does sound good.  I’m going to buy it too!”  Talk about word of mouth!)

Also, check my Events page to see if I’m coming to a bookstore near you. I’m visiting lots of independent bookstores — we need these stores in our towns, and they need our business to survive.  (This week I’ll be in:  Concord, NH; Portsmouth, NH; Manchester, VT; and Cohasset, MA.)

If you haven’t read Priscilla Gilman’s probing interview with me, Click Here.

A nice review from the Chicago Tribune (Editor’s Choice).

Finally, a word about The View from My Window, the collection of blog posts my husband gave me for Christmas.  Your comments — all 264 of them!–stunned me.  I read each one of them with gratitude.  And then I wished I could send every single one of you a copy of the book.  Which of course made me think:  there has to be a way.  For now, all I can say is, stay tuned. (This sounds like a project to take up a bit later, after Magical Journey is well on its way.)  Meanwhile, congratulations to winners Ann Laurence and Louise Olmstead, whose names were drawn at random on my pub. date.  

Soon, I will turn lights on, brew coffee, let the dog out, confront the pile of unwrapped Christmas gifts in the basement. But here in the shadowed quiet before dawn, I’m thinking of gifts that aren’t wrapped and placed under a tree. Gifts that are hidden within each of us, waiting to be brought forth and shared with the world.

This week, to celebrate Henry’s birthday, our family went to see the dark, dazzling revival of “Pippin” at the American Repertory Theatre in Harvard Square. “How far will you go to be extraordinary?” the show’s narrator asks Pippin, an aimless young man with oversized hopes and dreams who’s desperate to find his “corner of the sky.” Will he choose a life that’s mundane and ordinary, or sacrifice all in exchange for one blazing moment of glory?

Last night, we went to another production, right here in our home town: an abridged version of the medieval Shepherd’s Play, performed in a church hall by members of our local life-sharing communities, men and women whose mental and physical challenges require special care in special homes devoted to their well-being.

Rehearsals for each of these performances began months ago. All fall, the actors in each committed themselves to the work of learning lines and music, preparing for their roles. And then, when the moment came to shine, each and every one of them got up on stage, took a long deep breath, and offered everything they had to give.

In the case of “Pippin”: death-defying, gasp-inducing acrobatics; soaring, searing interpretations of the killer Stephen Schwartz score, and a faithful recreation of Bob Fosse’s dazzling original choreography. Thrilling moments of pure, over-the-top theatrical magic and stripped-bare moments of aching, human vulnerability.

And at The Shepherd’s Play: simple lines painstakingly recited (with some unobtrusive support from unflappable volunteers and patient staff members), age-old songs and exuberant comic bits, a few inevitable stumbles and a few unexpected onstage tears. And, yes, here too, thrilling moments of theatrical magic and stripped-bare moments of aching, human vulnerability.

In the plush theatre, my eyes filled as a young Broadway star sang an exquisite love song to the older woman who finally cracks open his heart. And in the dusty church hall, I wept again, as a stout, shy young Mary hesitantly lifted her arms in silent rapture to receive the divine touch of an awkward, determined angel Gabriel, a Gabriel whose hair stuck up and whose mouth was a little odd and whose words were a little garbled, and whose white tunic didn’t quite fit his gawky frame.

At the end of both of these plays, the audiences leapt to their feet. The ovations were long and heartfelt and joy-filled– our grateful human response to gifts shared openly, offered in good faith and with nothing held back.

There is, of course, no way to compare these two productions, the extravagant New York- bound musical and the humble small-town pageant. One is not “better” than the other; they are both special, both worthy, both performed with all the love and courage their players had to offer. I wouldn’t have missed either of them.

And side by side, they have set me to thinking. All year, I’ve been squirreling presents away in closets; yesterday, I was out in the stores, buying yet a few more. But today, as I wrap these gifts and put them under the tree, I realize how quick I am to judge my own gifts and find them wanting.

I love finding the perfect something for a friend, surprising a loved one with just the “right” treasure, taking time to spend with those near and dear, answering letters from strangers. I take deep satisfaction in sharing the books I love, the food I prepare, the seats at our dinner table, the hours in my day, the freshly made bed in the guest room.

Yet, I am much less sure when it comes to sharing the gift of myself. Looking at my schedule of bookstore visits and public appearances in January and February, my stomach clenches into a tight little knot. Can I really go out and do all that? Will I disappoint readers who expect more from me than I can possibly deliver? Do people understand that, just because I’ve written a book about growing older, I don’t actually have all that much figured out? That I’m still grappling myself with losses and changes and questions that leave me at a loss for answers?

At the end of his two and a half hour search for fulfillment, Pippin discovers that his own “corner of the sky” isn’t fame or fortune after all, but the place in his heart that’s filled with love for others. His search ends not with a blaze of glory, but with acceptance of his own ordinary, un-glorious and imperfect but truly compassionate self. He chooses a life that’s authentic and meaningful to him, rather than a flashy trick to impress an audience.

The message hit home. As I watch my own two sons at twenty and twenty-three, each struggling in their own way to make sense of their inchoate hopes and dreams, each wondering what mark they’ll leave on the world, I do know what they cannot possibly have learned yet: it’s the journey itself, not the destination, that matters most.

Only time and hard-won experience can teach them this lesson, that the more truth they are willing to risk along the way, the more courageously they are willing to give of themselves, the more they will have to offer. And, of course, each time they do step forward and bring their own humble gifts into the world, the more they will receive in return.

Perhaps that’s exactly the reminder I need myself at this vulnerable moment before my new book arrives in bookstores. And perhaps this is my task for now: to remember that my job over these next few months isn’t to judge the worthiness of my gift, but to find the courage to show up and offer it.

For what, after all, do any of us really want from one another? Certainly it is not more stuff. Nor is it perfection or fool-proof answers or second-hand wisdom. We want more presence, not more presents. And the most valuable gift we have to give is, always, the unvarnished, unadorned truth of who we really are. Joy comes when we are both courageous and generous – brave enough to be who we are, and as generous with the gift of our own flawed, vulnerable, unique selves as we are with the gifts we wrap up in pretty paper and ribbons and bows.

A quick MAGICAL JOURNEY update – and books to give away!

Events: I hope to meet you in 2013! To see where I’ll be and when, visit my events page by CLICKING HERE. (Check back often!)

News: My deep gratitude this week to fellow travelers David Abrams and Beth Kephart, two much-admired writers who graciously share their own gifts by generously celebrating the works of others. I am honored to be featured on their websites.

CLICK HERE for Beth’s. And HERE for David’s.

Finally, it’s not too late to win an advance copy.

• You can enter to win one of ten that Goodreads is giving away by clicking HERE.
• And, I have five author copies right here on my desk, waiting to be signed and shared with you. To win, subscribe to my weekly newsletter (if you haven’t already done so), and then leave a comment here. (Any comment at all will do, but feel free to share a gift you’ve given this year, or one you’ve received that touched your heart.) I’ll draw one winner at random each day from December 26-30.

Joy! In the meantime, from my house to yours, warm wishes for a most wonderful holiday. May you both generously give and gratefully receive the precious present of presence!

Dark. The night before, crowding into the small room at the funeral home, surrounded by family from near and far. The photograph of my uncle as a young man himself, crew-cut earnest and just out of school, gazing toward an unknown future that would hold more than its share of heartbreak. The small urn full of ashes, a fishing scene etched onto the side, and above it that photo I’ve known all my life, the same photo that hung on the parlor wall of my grandmother’s house alongside two more, a triptych of brothers framed in gold and presiding silently there through the long quiet afternoons of my childhood, when I would study every ancestral image, every picture in the crowded gallery of family likenesses.

Reassembling those memories to meet the present: the dear, familiar faces of aunts and uncles and cousins, each one softened and creased by age and time; it has been too long since I last saw them. My cousin’s children, suddenly grown and confronting a new truth: even larger-than-life grandfathers die. (Wasn’t it just yesterday that they were children running wild with my own boys through the frozen November field behind my parents’ house?)

Anecdotes gathered up and shared haltingly. The unaccustomed effort of giving voice to what’s hard and sad and lost. The three brothers who have suddenly become two, oldest and youngest, the one in between gone at seventy-one. An image in my mind from years ago: my brawny uncle with his sideburns and beard and aviator glasses, his inexhaustible supply of stories, holding forth at Thanksgiving dinner, spinning tales from events he remembered that everyone else had long since forgotten. And then, later, the long trip home, fighting to stay awake as my father drives down the empty highway. The odd sensation of being both a fifty-four year old mother of two grown sons and, at the same time, a child again myself, sitting alone in the back seat of my parents car, the backs of their heads as familiar to me as my own two hands.

Light. It is dusk. The only lamp on in the dark, silent house is here, beside the sofa where I sit surrounded by evening shadows. I type these words slowly, from within a small, golden patch of brightness.

Dark. The paragraphs above, written early yesterday morning, so trivial today, as the news from Connecticut settles upon our shoulders like a heavy, black cloak of brutal knowing. Innocent children dead, families ripped apart, the nation shaken once again by tragedy beyond reason or comprehension. Grief and anger, the deep sense of failure and helplessness. Gratitude for a life that is intact intermingled with mourning for lives lost and for lives ruined.

Sun and shadow. Joy and heartache. Life and death. To be human is to become intimate with both darkness and light. It has always been so. Yet on this somber December day, we are asked to do even more: somehow we must carry on with our lives as they are and, too, we must stop in our tracks, and look with clear gaze into the ruins.

How to respond to such a random, meaningless act of violence? How to open ourselves to the grief caused by this rampage of mindless destruction? How to accommodate and embrace both the darkness and the light of today?

Perhaps there is no good answer, other than to honor the sanctity of life by loving more and loving better, whatever that means for each of us. Compassion is the thread that binds us to one another. Compassion is the balm that heals the soul. Compassion is the offering we carry to the altar of regret and anger and grief. Compassion is what clears our vision, so we may begin to see, even in the midst of the darkest and most unspeakable horror, the light of something larger than our own understanding at work. Compassion is what allows us to seek redemption in the midst of tragedy — to reach out a hand and step toward rather than away from, to act rather than to wait for others to act in our stead. Compassion is, perhaps, the point of the journey, both our purpose and our calling, the place where healing and hope for tomorrow resides. A reminder that in all its shadow and its light, this fragile, fleeting life is full of beauty and meaning nonetheless.

.

sunrise
flannel sheets
cold water
hot water
peppermint soap
oatmeal
long underwear
iTunes
sturdy legs
running shoes
dogs
silence
online friends
close-by friends
new friends
forever friends
traditions
sons with jobs
nephews and neices
oranges in a bowl
peppermint tea
tech support
hardcover books
1.50 reading glasses
a good haircut
a good husband
cardinals
clouds
stone walls
old trees
pink geraniums
piano music
faith
photos
grandmothers
grown children
little kids
handwritten notes
child pose
new kitchen sponges
Mary Oliver
parents
laughter
magazines
folded towels
matched socks
candlelight
cloth napkins
soup
resilience
forgiveness
footrubs
wrinkle cream
peppermint ice cream
chocolate sauce
sunset
stars
the moon
the sky
space
wonder
the words “good night”
flannel sheets
dreams
breath
today
tomorrow
this
now

Inspired by my friend Maezen

All week, the images of devastation have burned into our collective consciousness. Having ascertained that friends and loved ones are alive and safe, we watch the news with a combination of horror and disbelief and grim fascination. How could this be happening? The heartbreaking scenes of fire, flooding, destruction, and loss are almost too much to assimilate here in the comfort of my own business-as-usual life. The coffee drips and the heat kicks on and the laptop pings the arrival of email, while not at all far from here, in homes and neighborhoods no different from this one, thousands of people wait for the basics to be restored: water, lights, gasoline, phone lines.

“Overwhelmed emotionally,” a friend typed at dawn this morning. Although she is fine, the city she called home for decades is not. How to make sense of that?

I’m not the only one who’s laid awake this week, in the grip of vague fear and nameless anxiety, safe and yet unsettled by the knowledge that while I snuggle into flannel sheets in a warm house, others go without.

“It seems almost like a betrayal,” I said to Steve at breakfast this morning as we ate cereal and read the New York Times, “to have it so easy while so many others are suffering. I’m not even sure how to feel, other than helpless and lucky and sad all at once.”

This afternoon, another email from a dear friend: “I just want to return those baby boys to their mother and the photographs to those who lost them and life to the man who was crushed by the tree. I want to do what can’t be done.”

That is surely the crux of it. Wanting to do what can’t be done, we’re reminded that all life is fleeting, security an illusion, suffering part of the human condition, the threshold of death never further than a step away.

Perhaps the only way to move beyond fear and helplessness is to cultivate a different response. Aware that we are, all of us, participants in this great ongoing dance of both living and dying, we can gently transform sorrow for all that’s lost into gratitude for all that is. Awakened to the fragility of our own existence, we do see through fresh eyes: each moment is a new thing, life itself a gift. And any act of kindness, no matter how small, brings a bit more light into the darkness.

Compassion, it turns out, is a powerful antidote to helplessness. And so I remind myself to simply stop, and look around. There is always some way to be useful, someone nearby who could use a hand, a hug, a listening ear, some kind of sustenance, be it physical or spiritual or emotional.

“Anything you do from the soulful self,” says activist and writer Clarissa Pinkola Estes, “will help lighten the burdens of the world. Anything. You have no idea what the smallest word, the tiniest generosity can cause to be set in motion.”

She goes on to offer an assignment particularly suited for these chaotic and confusing times, one that just may be worth ordering an entire life around: “Mend the parts of the world that are within your reach. To strive to live this way is the most dramatic gift you can ever give the world.”

Slowly then, day by day and bit by bit, what is broken will surely be healed. Each and every part of the world is within someone’s reach. Sometimes, our arms are even longer than we know. Meanwhile, with full hearts, we carry on. We do what we can, with what we have, from where we are.

My first task, on my very first day of work at Ticknor & Fields (a small, long-defunct New Haven subsidiary of Houghton Mifflin Company) back in January of 1981, was to sit down with an empty scrapbook, a pair of scissors, and a jar of rubber cement. There had been some recent press about Houghton Mifflin’s resistance to a corporate buy-out. (Loyal, long-time authors like Kenneth Galbraith and Louis Auchincloss had made their voices heard, and the powers-that-be had listened. Houghton Mifflin, in 1981, was determined to remain fiercely independent. ) I was given the assignment of sorting through a huge stack of newspapers sent to us by the hired clipping service (talk about quaint!), carefully cutting out the articles, and pasting them neatly into the scrapbook. I worked on a stool in the kitchen, where it was also up to me to keep the coffee pot full and the sherry glasses washed. (Tea was served in the front room at four; sherry on Friday afternoons, or when well-known writers came to call. Calvin Trillin’s visits were occasions for cloth napkins and Chinese take-out.) I was twenty-one years old and in heaven.

In our tiny subsidiary, we all did a bit of everything, which meant, as time went on, that I often had a hand in book publicity as well as editorial work: writing press releases, putting press packets together, and then, of course, pasting all the positive newspaper reviews and feature stories into those precious scrapbooks.

It was a perfect way to familiarize myself with the names and faces in my new company, with the authors I was getting to know and the books I’d eagerly carry home to read over the weekends. Soon, I was also taking dictation and typing letters for my boss (three carbon copies of each for the files, a bottle of Wite-Out close at hand), fact –checking manuscripts in the reference room at Yale’s Sterling Library, packing up pages to be overnight mailed to authors, scribbling phone messages on little pink pads, studying the Chicago Manual of Style, and learning to wield a blue pencil as I began to proofread copy.

What amazed me the most about my thrilling (to me!) new career in publishing was the realization that every single book was really the physical manifestation of countless details, all lovingly and expertly attended to over the course of many months, and in some cases, years. It boggled my mind to watch the process unfold — from an innocuous, unread pile of typewritten pages secured with rubber bands to boxes of finished, pristine, beautiful books, ready to be stacked up on a book store’s front table.

How extraordinary it was to witness this alchemy up close, to become part of it, to understand that every single book I’d ever read had required the faith and expertise of so many different people, from the acquisition editor who said the first determined “yes,” to the copyeditor who carefully considered the placement of every semi-colon, to the production manager who inspected the glue application on the inside binding. Countless decisions to be made, and a nearly infinite number of tiny questions to be answered: fonts, margins, paper, leading, initial caps, space breaks, advertising budgets, print runs — the list went on. Names to be verified, serial commas to be made consistent, every line of every page of proof at every stage of the process to be checked, from sample pages to final pass. Every color in every jacket was examined against its Pantone original, while in the back room, our meticulous designer worked with a ruler and Exacto knife to ensure that every word of type on the front cover was perfectly placed into position – by hand.

Flash forward thirty-plus years, to my current life on the other side of the process and in a very different world. A world that can be summed up in a word: digital. What was once done laboriously and time intensively (searching for the spelling of some obscure actress’s name in an old edition of Who’s Who, for instance) can now be done in an instant, with a click of a key and a Google search. Long gone are the antique tools of the trade as it once was. Including paper.

The first manuscript I ever worked on was a first novel by a young author who appeared at the front door of our office with his 700-page mystery neatly typed and packed into three dark blue Brooks Brothers shirt boxes. A few months ago, I delivered my own manuscript to my publisher — by hitting a SEND button. Weeks later, when the copy-edited manuscript was returned to me, I opened it not as a meticulously hand-edited original typescript sent in an insured and tracked padded manila envelope, but as a Microsoft Word document. And then I set to work learning how to accept or decline the editor’s changes online, in the digital margins of my text, carrying on a virtual color-coded conversation with my copy editor, whose actual voice I will probably never hear. (Even a ringing phone is largely a thing of the past; why call and talk to a stranger, when you could text or email instead?)

As a writer with a new book coming out, I hold out little hope for print reviews; most of the small newspapers that do survive these days have long since shut down their book pages. My print run this time will be half what it was for my last book; that’s how many readers my publisher estimates have shifted to electronic devices.

And even though I have a publicist in New York who is already hard at work arranging my visits to bookstores and sending out bound galleys, the process of spreading the word about a new book has gone largely digital as well. Which means that my job as author no longer ends with writing the final lines and holding forth in a few publication-week interviews, but extends into the equally essential and ongoing industry of ensuring that, in the midst of this busy, distracted on-line world, potential readers actually know that my book exists.

For the first time, my latest book contract included a clause about social media. Maintaining a website and a Facebook presence and a Twitter account is now part of the writer’s job description. (I think I’m supposed to bone up on Pintrest and Tumblr, too.)

Three years ago, when The Gift of an Ordinary Day was published, a friend suggested it might be fun to make a video to go along with it. I invited my book group and some neighbors over, read a few pages out loud in front of the camera, and pulled a bunch of my husband’s family photos out of the albums. It was fun. And the video took on a life of its own, becoming a virtual messenger for the themes of the book.

This time, there was no question: Nowadays, nearly every new book arrives with its own book trailer video. The truth is, all of these new publishing to-dos have been making me anxious. Not only have I felt the pressure of making the book itself all it can be, but also the pressure of fulfilling my authorial obligation to initiate word of mouth about it in every possible venue: updating my website, planning a blog tour, producing a video, setting up events at bookstores. In other words, going public. (If you are someone who chooses to spend much of her life sitting quietly at home alone in a room, the prospect of making self-promotion your new full-time job — even if it is largely on-line — is enough to keep you awake at night. It does me.)

All summer the video project loomed. I had an idea, but no certainty that my vision would actually work. The friendly crew that filmed my first video had moved on. Finally, the deadline was upon me. I had no choice but to put my faith in the process, hire a couple of strangers to come film it, and begin.

And what I found myself thinking this week — as shooting began on my four-minute film, as Steve snapped countless potential author photos, as the book jacket was being finalized, and as plans for recording the audio version were made — is that much as things have changed in this business, it is STILL exacting attention to detail, and the concerted efforts of many passionate people, that make book publishing such a special and uniquely collaborative endeavor.

The scrapbooks of my publishing youth may be gone, my manuscript may exist in pixels instead of on paper, my book may not ever be reviewed in the pages of the Boston Globe or the New York Times, and yet the process remains as exacting and, in its own way, as deeply collegial, as viscerally satisfying, and as detail-oriented as ever.

The other day, three final jacket proofs arrived from the designer, real covers to be spread upon my dining room table, the type in each a slightly different shade of burnt orange. Which to choose? The audio producer sent me the script, printed out in large type, so that I’ll have time to practice reading it aloud before heading to New York next month to record in the studio; careful attention to detail is what will make our four days together go off without a hitch. And for two days, as our house became a film set and as Tom and Melissa of Long Haul Films shot hour upon hour of footage here, I marveled at their ability to maintain enthusiastic concentration as they focused their lenses upon the minutiae of my tactile, ordinary, everyday life and somehow turned it into art. Perhaps it is simply the willingness to pay such close attention, to bring such devotion to the details, that is, in the end, what lifts any process from mundane to meaningful.

It took one whole extra trip from Boston to New Hampshire to nail the shot the film makers wanted of hands around a steaming mug of tea. Six takes of zipping a jacket, tying up shoes. Lots of waiting around for the clouds to break and the sun to shine. Gracie, making tennis ball catch after tennis ball catch for the camera. And during that time, as my family and two dear friends willingly gave up big chunks of their day to assist in this project, and as a slew of last-minute emails arrived from Grand Central, my publisher in New York, I found myself feeling suddenly and immensely grateful for the entire team that fate and circumstance have brought together here, to help guide one modest midlife memoir into the world.

Of course, all this makes me see that what really matters to people who work with books has not changed at all in thirty years: A passion for a well-told story. A profound, ongoing love affair with words. The quiet thrill of holding a new hardcover in your hands, turning the first pages, receiving the urgent, insistent news that is shared between human beings when we summon the courage to reveal ourselves to one another.

In January, this book I’ve been laboring over for the last year and a half will be published. But the Magical Journey, I’m happy to say now, didn’t conclude with the final sentences I wrote last spring. In fact, that brief moment of ending simply marked the beginning of another journey, from the intensely private work of writing to the very public work of sharing. How lucky I am to be accompanied on this new path by such a dedicated group of friends and readers and co-workers, each of whom is as delighted by and as dedicated to the details as I am. Already I feel less alone. And even, dare I say it, excited about the next leg of the trip. Stay tuned!

So begins Kasey Mathews’ moving memoir Preemie, an account not only of a birth story gone terribly awry but also of a young woman giving birth to herself, learning to love and accept the person she is through the harrowing, humbling process of learning to love and accept her tiny, excruciatingly fragile baby girl, born more than four months premature.

Nearly twenty-three years after my own first pregnancy, I still remember a line from one of the many parenting books I read in preparation for my daunting new role of “mother.” The gist of it was something like this: “In the days after you give birth, you will grieve the death of the idealized baby you have envisioned for nine months. And you will begin to love and accept the real, imperfect, and perfectly beautiful child who has come to you.”

The very idea of grief having any part to play in the miracle of birth was too frightening to contemplate. And the notion that my own baby might be anything less than perfect was the kind of middle-of-the-night anxiety that I tried desperately to avoid. Much better, I was certain, to envision only the best outcomes: an easy delivery, a healthy baby, happiness all around.

But best outcomes are not always ours to call, and sometimes perfection is found not in our idealized images of the way we believe things “ought” to be, but in our fumbling, awkward, valiant efforts to grow up and become the people we are truly meant to be. For of course, before we can deeply love another flawed, imperfect, vulnerable soul, we must first be willing to love ourselves — even if who we are is so much less than who we still aspire to become.

Any woman who has experienced the trauma of giving birth to a premature baby knows just how quickly, and how devastatingly, a life can turn. One day you are choosing paint colors for the nursery, the next you are staring at the ceiling of a hospital emergency room; one minute you are diligently practicing your “hut” breathing, the next you are being prepped for anesthesia; one minute you are envisioning your own beautiful baby at your breast, the next you are swaddled in sterile scrubs, staring down at a pitifully small one-pound creature that looks nothing like the newborn of your dreams but, as Kasey so vividly describes, more like “a potato with tiny arms and legs.”

“I thought if I could figure out why this was happening, I could make it stop,” Kasey writes, describing the confusion she feels as emergency room nurses begin the race to save her unborn baby’s life. She searches for clues, chronicling the past week’s activities: the bath she took, the sushi she ate, a game of paddle tennis. The nurses assure Kasey it’s not her fault that her March baby is coming in November, that it’s nothing she did, nothing she can control.

Finally, I clutched a nurse’s arm. She was walking backwards, facing me, guiding the gurney down the hall. I dug my fingers into her flesh. I needed to know she was real. She looked at me. Her eyes, framed in dark circles, softened. I thought I’d found my sympathetic audience. “You don’t understand,” I said to her in a more coherent, controlled voice. “This sort of thing doesn’t happen to me.”
She held my gaze for a moment, and I waited. A gold cross swung at the base of her neck.
She continued to look at me. And then she said, “It does now.”

Last week, I wrote here about the momentous challenge inherent in the words “amor fati,” or “love your fate.” Preemie is the courageous account of one woman’s struggle to do just that, to love not only her fate but also the small, desperately vulnerable and miraculously determined little girl who survived against all odds to become her mother’s greatest spiritual teacher.

Kasey Mathews tells deep, painful truths about how it feels when a “perfect” life is jolted by reality. She writes about guilt and failure, shock and shame, loneliness and confusion and loss. And she writes about her own halting journey from darkness into light and from fear toward faith, a journey that surely illuminates our greatest and most universal human task: the work of learning to embrace imperfect beauty, of realizing that a good life is determined not by what happens to us, but by what we choose to make of it. Once again, amor fati.

I first met Kasey just three years ago this week. My own memoir, The Gift of an Ordinary Day had been in the stores for two days, and I was doing my very first book signing at a nearby book shop. There were all of four people in attendance; two of them were blood relations (my mother and my brother), the third was a mother from Jack’s class at school, and the fourth was a lovely woman I’d never seen before. She sat down in a chair near the back and waved to me with a warm smile, as if we were already friends. I thought perhaps she’d wandered in by mistake, so little publicity had been done for this event. But no, it turned out that she was an actual reader; she had in fact come that day to see me. I scrapped my prepared talk, read a couple of chapters, and then sat down to chat a bit with my charitable audience of four.

Kasey introduced herself, and told us she was writing a book. As she shared the story of her daughter’s birth, and of the fear and surrender and hard-won happiness of the last nine years of her family’s life together, I found myself wishing that she would hurry up and finish writing. I wanted to read it, to hear about how Andie persevered and grew, and even more, how her beautiful mom had grown right alongside her. I didn’t doubt for a moment that Kasey had a book in her. Her quiet eloquence confirmed her as a story teller, and her determination to offer hope and support to other women facing challenges of their own would surely carry her across the finish line.

A couple of weeks ago, I ran into Kasey and Andie, now a lively twelve year old, outside the grocery store downtown. Although I’ve followed each stage of Preemie’s long labor and triumphant delivery (nothing premature about this birth!) I had missed Kasey’s book publication party, earlier this summer. It was my first opportunity to say “Congratulations!” in person.

“I want to write about your book!” I told her. And with that, she reached into the back seat of her car, grabbed a copy, signed it, and handed it to me.

To win this signed copy of Preemie, along with a signed copy of my very first book, Mitten Strings for God: Reflections for Mothers in a Hurry, just leave a comment below. Write about how the words amor fati have resonated in YOUR life. Or, of course, just let me know you’d like to read this special book. I will draw a winner at random on Saturday, September 8. (In the meantime, visit Kasey at http://www.kaseymathews.com/.)