Powerful piece and reflection. Pardon the length of my comment. I’m drawn to listening to people who write or speak of loss. Always have been. Even taught a class in college on Death and Dying. This kind of loss really pulls at the heartstrings of our own mortality and why we matter—the acknowledgment and acceptance that no one leaves this earth alive. Imagine if you can, the stirring emotions you’ve just unveiled, experienced at first age 11 and then 14—growing up without parents and no home to go home to, ever again. The raw emotions of loss and grief followed me everywhere, even into adulthood, (because grief has no timeline, nor pull date), and yes, became my muse, to make some kind of sense of it all--taking control of the narrative, so it would not devour or destroy me. A lifetime later, the one area of loss I still focus on and write about in depth, is offering the question–what was it you lost when your innocence was first shattered, and life as you knew it and believed it to be abruptly changed? I’ve learned, without that answer, we fill that void with many things, even sabotage our lives searching for the answer. Yet once discovered, not only can we give to ourselves that which we lost, that answer also becomes a very powerful muse with a courageous voice, sharing experiences and vulnerabilities from our emotional journey through the human experience. What was lost when my innocence was first shattered at age six? Unconditional love. Something I now generously give to others and myself, along with compassion for surviving without it for so many years. It’s paramount to my healing and writing—my ability to share my story and truth. Mid-life crisis—that’s when I finally completing broke down and broke wide open—and met the real me—the me I was before innocence was lost. Welcome the muse. Welcome the opportunity to create the narrative and make sense of it--to put emotions into words. It's a gift. Don't squander it.
Thank you so much for sharing this Bonnie. While I read this, I thought of Mary Karr and her book, The Art of Memoir, which I happen to be reading now? Have you read it? So many of her thoughts seem to mirror yours. Thanks again for this.
Yes, The Art of Memoir sits right behind me on my bookshelf, along with The Liar’s Club. Both fan favorites, creating an aura that courage is contagious. I took off the filters in my memoir writing once she showed me the way.
This hit me on so many levels. Loss became my unwanted muse 11 years ago after my daughter crossed over. I have been processing it through poetry and a graphic novel hybrid project, which I finally figured out the ending last night.
Finally did major spring cleaning this year, learning to let go, decluttering has freed my mind. My writing is starting to flow better.
Thanks for sharing, Marjorie. I'm sorry to hear about your daughter. I'm glad that writing is providing some solace. I'll take the freedoms provided by your decluttering to heart and let Buddhist nonattachment be my guide. Be well.
Love your writing! Words of loss can sometimes get "lost" on the reader. The writer is so connected to the experience itself that it's difficult to disconnect enough to reflect and make meaning. But that is not the case here with this muse!
Thanks so much, Nancy, for the kind words. I'd never thought of loss as being a driver of writing, especially my writing, until reading Sigrid Nunez. She had an interesting take in the NY Times recently:
"We are a grief-avoiding culture, that’s certainly true. But I would think part of the problem is not people not wanting to talk about it, it’s not knowing how to talk about it and not having the language and feeling so uncomfortable about saying the wrong thing. You know perfectly well you don’t have anything good to say, so you’re just going to come up with the same clichés. I’m so uncomfortable saying, “I’m so sorry to hear.” It doesn’t feel good. Sometimes I say, “I wish I had something wise and comforting to say, but I don’t.” I don’t add the “but I don’t.” There’s this famous letter that Henry James wrote to someone who was grieving and he begins by saying, “I hardly know what to say.” Well, if Henry James didn’t know what to say, then how can you expect the rest of us to know?
There is a whole world that doesn’t exist anymore — that’s just what time does. It takes things away from you. Life is a series of losses, so you’re always in a state of mourning to some extent. That’s what nostalgia is, it’s a kind of mourning."
I understand the temptation to say "I'm sorry to hear . . ."
I've been wondering: Is that right? You are sorry to hear?
Or, you are sorry it happened.
I think it's okay to just, simply, say "I'm sorry that happened." Perhaps with a soft touch on the person's arm, or looking at them . . . really looking at them, with love.
Few of us would choose loss as inspiration. But it’s true that ideas can flow from absence and the shadows. I’ve been writing away from my mother’s death and toward her in a spiral, getting somewhere and returning.
I lost both my parents in the summer of 2022 and was left reeling. At first I refused to write about it at all, and even insisted on using present tense when they did come up in my writing. Then, within a few months, it seemed I wrote only about their deaths. I'm finally coming out of those extreme reactions.
Loss has resonated with me for most of my life. Recently, my 88-year-old father moved in with us. People who don't know us well assume we went through his things, sold, donated, kept whatever made sense, and he said goodbye to his house and old life. It's a convoluted story, but basically, he was forced out of his house because of a delusional wife. For better or worse, I whisked him away to save him from a disaster, and he had about 30 minutes to pack a suitcase. A lifetime of things gone without discussion and in a hurry. All of his friends and connections were her friends and connections, so he's lost his entire network except for me. And since I live in a different state, he's lost every place he's familiar with. He'd lived in the same area for 60 years. Those familiar roads and landscapes and shops are not insignificant, but he will never see them again, and he had little time to say goodbye. Every time we go to the store to buy him something he needs, he says, "I have this at the house." But the house and all its contents have been sold. He can't go back, and I don't think he's fully able to accept it. Witnessing loss has been hard. And of course it makes me think of my own life, my own losses, past and coming. And having my dad here and helping him deal as he ages has so cut into my writing time that it feels like a loss every day. It's been a set back in the life I created for myself and all my writing. But I keep writing anyway, bit by bit, as I can.
P.S. Have you read the short story/essay "Dog Days" by Jeanette Winterson? It speaks to this topic. The song you're listening to reminded me of it. The internet used to have a recording of her reading it, which was lovely and moving.
Sometimes I wait to read your posts for when I have time to read leisurely and when I have time to absorb what you have written (I know it will be deep and meaningful). “Loss as unwanted muse” is such a post.
When reading your posts, I am usually transported back to a time that was meaningful to me. I had a favorite reading chair where I consumed Nancy Drew books and Archie comics.
I wish you could have established a “Faulkner House” for writing retreats and workshops.
Your writing also inspires me to think, to remember, and to write.
I often learn something new: Didn’t know about Kanopy. Or, maybe I heard about it but didn’t pay attention.
And that’s what your posts do . . . give me the gift of paying attention.
I am so glad you are doing this!
Lastly, because of you, I have been researching how to do Substack. Slowly inching towards posting on Substack.
Powerful piece and reflection. Pardon the length of my comment. I’m drawn to listening to people who write or speak of loss. Always have been. Even taught a class in college on Death and Dying. This kind of loss really pulls at the heartstrings of our own mortality and why we matter—the acknowledgment and acceptance that no one leaves this earth alive. Imagine if you can, the stirring emotions you’ve just unveiled, experienced at first age 11 and then 14—growing up without parents and no home to go home to, ever again. The raw emotions of loss and grief followed me everywhere, even into adulthood, (because grief has no timeline, nor pull date), and yes, became my muse, to make some kind of sense of it all--taking control of the narrative, so it would not devour or destroy me. A lifetime later, the one area of loss I still focus on and write about in depth, is offering the question–what was it you lost when your innocence was first shattered, and life as you knew it and believed it to be abruptly changed? I’ve learned, without that answer, we fill that void with many things, even sabotage our lives searching for the answer. Yet once discovered, not only can we give to ourselves that which we lost, that answer also becomes a very powerful muse with a courageous voice, sharing experiences and vulnerabilities from our emotional journey through the human experience. What was lost when my innocence was first shattered at age six? Unconditional love. Something I now generously give to others and myself, along with compassion for surviving without it for so many years. It’s paramount to my healing and writing—my ability to share my story and truth. Mid-life crisis—that’s when I finally completing broke down and broke wide open—and met the real me—the me I was before innocence was lost. Welcome the muse. Welcome the opportunity to create the narrative and make sense of it--to put emotions into words. It's a gift. Don't squander it.
Thank you so much for sharing this Bonnie. While I read this, I thought of Mary Karr and her book, The Art of Memoir, which I happen to be reading now? Have you read it? So many of her thoughts seem to mirror yours. Thanks again for this.
Yes, The Art of Memoir sits right behind me on my bookshelf, along with The Liar’s Club. Both fan favorites, creating an aura that courage is contagious. I took off the filters in my memoir writing once she showed me the way.
Thank you, Bonnie, for your powerful observations. You put into words what I couldn't articulate.
… just WoW!
This hit me on so many levels. Loss became my unwanted muse 11 years ago after my daughter crossed over. I have been processing it through poetry and a graphic novel hybrid project, which I finally figured out the ending last night.
Finally did major spring cleaning this year, learning to let go, decluttering has freed my mind. My writing is starting to flow better.
Still not an easy process, yet very helpful.
Thank you 🙏 ☺️
Thanks for sharing, Marjorie. I'm sorry to hear about your daughter. I'm glad that writing is providing some solace. I'll take the freedoms provided by your decluttering to heart and let Buddhist nonattachment be my guide. Be well.
Love your writing! Words of loss can sometimes get "lost" on the reader. The writer is so connected to the experience itself that it's difficult to disconnect enough to reflect and make meaning. But that is not the case here with this muse!
Thanks so much, Nancy, for the kind words. I'd never thought of loss as being a driver of writing, especially my writing, until reading Sigrid Nunez. She had an interesting take in the NY Times recently:
"We are a grief-avoiding culture, that’s certainly true. But I would think part of the problem is not people not wanting to talk about it, it’s not knowing how to talk about it and not having the language and feeling so uncomfortable about saying the wrong thing. You know perfectly well you don’t have anything good to say, so you’re just going to come up with the same clichés. I’m so uncomfortable saying, “I’m so sorry to hear.” It doesn’t feel good. Sometimes I say, “I wish I had something wise and comforting to say, but I don’t.” I don’t add the “but I don’t.” There’s this famous letter that Henry James wrote to someone who was grieving and he begins by saying, “I hardly know what to say.” Well, if Henry James didn’t know what to say, then how can you expect the rest of us to know?
There is a whole world that doesn’t exist anymore — that’s just what time does. It takes things away from you. Life is a series of losses, so you’re always in a state of mourning to some extent. That’s what nostalgia is, it’s a kind of mourning."
I understand the temptation to say "I'm sorry to hear . . ."
I've been wondering: Is that right? You are sorry to hear?
Or, you are sorry it happened.
I think it's okay to just, simply, say "I'm sorry that happened." Perhaps with a soft touch on the person's arm, or looking at them . . . really looking at them, with love.
I'm guessing all of your readers already know, but the poem (also one of my favorites) is by Elizabeth Bishop.
Thanks, Mary. I had that attribution in the text, and then somehow it got (clumsily) edited out.
I love that statue/urn/vase? at the De Young. I've taken many pics of it up close. But yours is the best angle!
I love it, too. It's such a welter of life.
"Welter of life" -- exactly!
Thank you! Very moving. I feel the same.
I see you in your chair growing on the inside and out. A wonderful image.
Thx
Thanks. I hope so.
Sweet memories, Grant. I wish we could have figured out how to keep the house.
Or at least the chair.
Few of us would choose loss as inspiration. But it’s true that ideas can flow from absence and the shadows. I’ve been writing away from my mother’s death and toward her in a spiral, getting somewhere and returning.
I lost both my parents in the summer of 2022 and was left reeling. At first I refused to write about it at all, and even insisted on using present tense when they did come up in my writing. Then, within a few months, it seemed I wrote only about their deaths. I'm finally coming out of those extreme reactions.
Loss has resonated with me for most of my life. Recently, my 88-year-old father moved in with us. People who don't know us well assume we went through his things, sold, donated, kept whatever made sense, and he said goodbye to his house and old life. It's a convoluted story, but basically, he was forced out of his house because of a delusional wife. For better or worse, I whisked him away to save him from a disaster, and he had about 30 minutes to pack a suitcase. A lifetime of things gone without discussion and in a hurry. All of his friends and connections were her friends and connections, so he's lost his entire network except for me. And since I live in a different state, he's lost every place he's familiar with. He'd lived in the same area for 60 years. Those familiar roads and landscapes and shops are not insignificant, but he will never see them again, and he had little time to say goodbye. Every time we go to the store to buy him something he needs, he says, "I have this at the house." But the house and all its contents have been sold. He can't go back, and I don't think he's fully able to accept it. Witnessing loss has been hard. And of course it makes me think of my own life, my own losses, past and coming. And having my dad here and helping him deal as he ages has so cut into my writing time that it feels like a loss every day. It's been a set back in the life I created for myself and all my writing. But I keep writing anyway, bit by bit, as I can.
P.S. Have you read the short story/essay "Dog Days" by Jeanette Winterson? It speaks to this topic. The song you're listening to reminded me of it. The internet used to have a recording of her reading it, which was lovely and moving.
Sometimes I wait to read your posts for when I have time to read leisurely and when I have time to absorb what you have written (I know it will be deep and meaningful). “Loss as unwanted muse” is such a post.
When reading your posts, I am usually transported back to a time that was meaningful to me. I had a favorite reading chair where I consumed Nancy Drew books and Archie comics.
I wish you could have established a “Faulkner House” for writing retreats and workshops.
Your writing also inspires me to think, to remember, and to write.
I often learn something new: Didn’t know about Kanopy. Or, maybe I heard about it but didn’t pay attention.
And that’s what your posts do . . . give me the gift of paying attention.
I am so glad you are doing this!
Lastly, because of you, I have been researching how to do Substack. Slowly inching towards posting on Substack.
In summary . . . Thank you!