The Gift of Resilience

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As a child I thought Christmas was doll clothes my mother was secretly making for my ballerina doll. It was the smell of homemade coffee cake. It was placing too many lights on the tree. It was singing loudly in church with friends. It was visiting with and my Grandma Rose’s family. But at age eighteen, Christmas gave me a bigger gift.

It was nearing Christmas, and it was bone cold as the darkness of night lifted. My hair was damp from my early morning swimming class as I scurried across campus to English class in Beering Hall where I would discuss Moby-Dick with twenty other confused freshmen. I would try to understand what Ahab’s search for the whale had to do with my life—or any life. But I would draw a blank, and our final essay was due the next Monday.

I remember seeing the snow fall outside the classroom window, and in my mind, I was counting down the days until Christmas vacation when the buzzer ended our class. The boy sitting next to me asked me out for Saturday night, and I said I couldn’t go for I was heading home. He was a nice enough boy, but I said no because he felt like a stranger. I said no because I didn’t even know his name. I said no because I hated beer as much as I hated strange boys trying to kiss me in their cars in the stadium parking lot on frigid nights. But mostly I said no because my mind was too chaotic and unsettled, and I wanted to spare him.

That September I had moved into Vawter Hall with sky high college hopes. I chose Purdue because I marveled at how complicated the human mind was, and I had read in a catalog that Purdue was home to a fine psychology department. But secretly, like many of us, I had another dream inside. I wanted to be a writer. I believed I had a book inside of me. But as the end of my first semester drew near, I was not sure about either psychology or English as a major. In psychology lab all of our rats died of a virus, and I began to dread a future filled with dead laboratory rats and severely depressed patients. In English my instructor never warmed up to my essays. The professor tortured me with B after B. Perhaps worse he couldn’t remember my name—or anyone’s name.

That Saturday evening, instead of being stuck in the stadium parking lot, I finished reading Moby-Dick. The book loomed large and incomprehensible. What did it mean? I had skimmed parts, and I borrowed a friend’s Cliff Notes to try to make sense of Ahab’s quest for the whale and to help me write my final essay. I wrote it and turned it in that Monday, and the long slog of my first semester in college was over.

I headed home to Indianapolis and suddenly the strain of college was miles behind me. When I arrived, I was greeted with hugs and the smell of mom’s coffee cake. The sounds of my dad laughing and my mother teasing him about his addiction to Chuck Norris jokes. The banter sounded like music to me. I had missed them.

A day later our kitchen was filled with the laughter of my best high school friend, Kaye, She had gone south to Indiana University, and I had not seen her for months. We swapped stories for hours centered on the surprises college held for us. She described her college math instructor who could not speak English. She said she planned to study Chinese so she could pass math. I told her about the travesty of rat lab.

Then I remember a flurry of present buying with my younger brother Charley. He had his driver’s permit and we headed to L. S. Ayres where we bought a blue sweater for mom, and then we dug through a pile of Chuck Norris paraphernalia on clearance until we settled on crazy socks for my dad with images of Chuck Norris, dad’s hero. Afterwards we landed at Bob’s Big Boy where Charley explained what it was like to be the guy most-likely-to-be-cut Southport’s basketball team that winter, and I explained how psych lab was a disaster and how my future appeared to be a blur. He listened. It was a wonderful thing not only because I needed it, but because my little brother was growing into my friend.

On Christmas we drove to Grandma Rose’s in Richmond. Grandma Rose made a feast fit for kings that her five kids and fourteen grandchildren devoured. Uncle Junior dumped peas all over everything—turkey, mashed potatoes, veggie casserole. He always did this, and the rest of us always moaned at the sight of it. My Uncle Herb asked if I had managed to find an ugly college boyfriend yet—and everyone laughed. Before we left Grandma Rose gave me a special lace hanky she made for me. In it she had wrapped cinnamon rolls made from left-over pie dough. My favorite.

That evening Mom made hot chocolate and I sat with my family for a long time by the warmth of the fireplace and the twinkling lights of the Christmas tree. We were quiet. Reflecting. The clear lights sparkled and the star atop the tree seemed to pour light right into me. With the first semester of college in the rearview mirror, I felt like I had been hijacked from all I knew and loved. But I could also see through the glow of Christmas that my home, my friends, and my family had grounded me. Had helped me become someone who was strong enough to go away, to experience challenges, and to find my way forward. I knew I would head back to Purdue that January and eventually make deep friendships, date a boy, find a major, and follow my path forward. And I did.

That Christmas ended up giving me the gifts of insight and resilience, and as the season unfolds, I wish those gifts for all of us.

The Circle of Gratitude

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My mother always said, “Gratitude begets gratitude.” I wondered what she meant.

I began writing daily gratitudes back in 2019 while my mom’s health was failing, and I hated facing the loss of her beautiful self. She had always listened like no one else. She had always understood. I knew her loss would be irreplaceable in my life. It was. But the gratitudes were a gift that helped me cope.

Gratitudes lifted me up each morning. They taught me to notice tiny, beautiful things–the cardinal who stopped to sing to me at the top of the juniper tree, the sunlight that surprised me on my hike by painting a kaleidoscope of orange and yellow dancing across the red rocks. With gratitude I learned to stretch and breathe deeply as I practiced my simple yoga. With gratitude I learned to light candles as a ritual to honor the people and writings that walk the path into my heart.

Of course, I began sharing my gratitude writing practice with my students. I learned when we share gratitudes we increase the positive feelings that come of it. Last week I wrote this gratitude in my journal.

From Sandra–I am grateful for my writers. Teaching them is my passion. My love of teaching centers on the fact that I am always the student. Learning from my writers. Inspired by my students.

That same morning, I began sifting through gratitudes I had collected from students. I read and reread Martha Bonnie’s gratitudes. I am a bit star-struck with her words. They are heartfelt, meaningful, and artful. I always want to stick them on a billboard for others to see or convince the New York Times that these words should grace their pages. While humble with her work, she allowed me to show you just these few. Perhaps the beautiful words that weave themselves through our class are the real teachers. Words that teach us to find and hold our gratitude.

From Martha–I am grateful for–finding a monarch butterfly while hiking today. Monarchs symbolize transformation and are also seen as spirit guides. I’ve always loved butterflies–so has my daughter– we’re both drawn to them. This one was stuck on the trail, so I picked it up to keep it from being trampled. It crawled into my hands, up my wrist and delicately up my arm. It unfolded its paper-thin wings, pulled them back together and sat for a moment. Then it opened its wings and flew away. I feel as if I dreamed the moment. 

Martha and I have worked together off and on in writing groups for three years. She faced these years, like all of us, with the fear of COVID threaded into her days, but she also faced a difficult accident and a long-distance move to Arizona. While speaking does not come easily, her words filled with resilience flow onto the page.

From Martha–I am grateful for my courage because this recovery is grueling, and I have never once considered giving up on myself or my family or my fight.

Last week when we chatted on Zoom, Martha read a new poem to me. I cried. The words were that good. While she is not ready to release her poem yet, she gave me a greater gratitude.

From Martha–I am grateful for my writing class, the writing I’ve been doing through it, and the community of writers I am part of because of the class. I’m so grateful for all of the inspiration and the perspective I’ve gained just from being part of this group of writers. I’m grateful for my own courage and the courage of all of the other women, when we choose to share a piece of ourselves through our writing. I’m even more grateful for the kindness in the feedback of others after the sharing.

My students, like Martha, have taught me that in finding our words together we can create a space where we write and share and grow. We can even make it a circle of gratitude.

In this month of Thanksgiving I wanted to share this with you. My gratitudes have  taught me to hold a light up to the blessings in my life. They have made my life brighter. May you find your gratitude. May it surround you.

A New Voice

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I have always loved words. But I did not always love poems. It took years before the brilliant insights embedded in a poem began to seep into me. It would take another decade before I would dare to share poems with my students. Now when I find a quote or poem rich in wisdom, I like sharing them with others. But they are not always well received. A lesson I learned from Emma.

A few weeks ago, I was caught up in teaching story writing to a dynamic group of fifteen storytellers. In this Zoom writing workshop there were eight women with cancer; two of them had stage four and were, of course, unsettled by their diagnosis. Three women, all from California, were cancer survivors who wanted to write their stories. Two women had lost their spouses and wanted to write about their dramatically different losses–one wanted to honor her loss, and the other wanted to help others escape the nightmare she had endured. There was Maria with razor sharp insights, and there was Emma, both beautiful and a bit befuddled.

One day I shared with them my favorite poem, “The Journey” by Mary Oliver. We read it. We wrote about it.  Midway through a robust discussion, Maria lifted her head, shoved a huge curl out of her face, and read these words,

“there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

“I love these words from the poem for this struggle is the struggle we all have. I think I am finding my voice, and it lifts you up, changes you, to find your voice.”

Emma’s turquoise eyes flickered, and then she unexpectedly popped on her Zoom mic, and her voice had an urgency that was new.  “I want a voice.  But I can’t always understand what is being said.  I read the poem, and I want it to make sense to me, but I don’t get it.” She paused and bit her lip, looking down with a shadow cutting across her face. “As a traumatic brain injury survivor, I get frustrated. When I don’t understand things, I don’t know how I can find my voice.”

I understood her pain. I think we all did. But her words carried me back to a time when I felt my voice had been ripped out of me. Haven’t we all had that experience? For me it was in a medical office, a box-like room that felt like a coffin, where I met an awkward radiologist who stammered my fate, “You—you—you have breast cancer.” In the coming days life became a dark rabbit’s hole that I had tumbled into.

For months I struggled to find the words to talk about my cancer. Indeed, I found solace in a bright red journal. On those pages I raised questions, poured out my fears, and shared painful memories of test after test, physician after physician, and surgery after surgery. In that time, I would see my ninety-year-old mother’s scars from losing her breasts. In that time, I would lose both my breasts. In that time, I would cry and struggle to find my way forward. But I did. Cancer changed me, and my writing in the bright red journal was a huge part of this. It took time, but word by word I found my way back. I found my voice, perhaps a new voice.

Yesterday, as I finished teaching my writers, each one read her story. Even Emma.  She read about her struggle with her traumatic brain injury. She explained that the biggest surprise came when she returned to her first-grade teaching job, a job she had loved. It proved impossible. She read of her struggle to make dinner for her three children. Possible but hard.  She talked of wanting to understand a beautiful poem but acknowledged she could only learn about it from others. She explained how hard it is to be this new person who tries to understand and often doesn’t—but sometimes surprises herself. She described her new life as a puzzle that needed to be put together. Some days the pieces fit. Some days not so much.

When she finished there were tears. Her tears. Our tears. In this way we welcomed another beautiful, reclaimed new voice.