Second Book Is Out: A Guide to Growing Wings: Words after Mum's Suicide

“And the Day Came When the Risk to Remain Tight In a Bud Was More Painful Than the Risk It Took to Blossom.” – Anais Nin.

After nine years, one million drafts, one upstate New York workshop (shout out to Matt Leone, Joni Tevis and Colgate Writer’s Conference), a zillion moments of self doubt self sabotage etc etc, my second book A Guide to Growing Wings: Words after Mum’s Suicide is out, available as an ebook or paperback on Amazon.

<<Breath>>

What to say about this project? It began and came to fruition because I’m a writer and when things happen (actually even when they don’t happen) writers write. And so, when my mother took her life on March 16, 2013, it wasn’t long before I picked up my pen. I knew I had to tell my story, and I knew I needed to release a tribute to my mother. Mostly I needed to write my way out of the woods. That’s where I would still be, I’m sure, without writing this and without the myriad forms of grace that found their way to me in the last nine years, which I recount in this book.

Author Cheryl Strayed has an interesting notion called ghost lives—all the lives we might have lived that we simply have to wave to from shore, like a ship going by. Any artist, writer, maker, knows that projects have the same thing: A million different ways the story could be told, the wood could be shaped, the painting could come to life—a million different ghost lives. It’s bittersweet and necessary, to make decisions about how to proceed in a creative work, to finally say “This is done. It’s imperfect and blessed and done.” Over the years I took the book in so many directions, squandered much time (necessarily) but last fall, with my belly growing bigger with our daughter, I realized I just had to commit and finish the project.

I am proud of it.

Throughout, I wanted the book to be tight like a fist and beat like wings. That was my mantra, my north star. I hope in some places that’s how it feels. What I know is I feel good, that it’s out there, that my mother is remembered, that my song of her, of us, of me is lilting on the wind. I wrote a small poem years ago and it went like this:

i let my regrets fall away

into the sea.

they became the song of whales.

-sara dyer

When we tell a story, we engage in alchemy. Our story becomes a part of who reads it, a part of the world. It’s released from the bony birdcage surrounding our heart where it’s been working to claw its way out.

And, as Anne Lamott would say, we can get on with things.

❤️

Sunny Daze: Lo cotidiana magica

Every day the Boss wakes up mewling, demanding MILK. NOW DAMMIT.

After a gluttonous intake of whatever white liquid appears, her head falls askance and we tiptoe her back to the bassinet, smiting one another with enraged glances if one of us stubs a toe audibly on the bedpost. No sympathy for a broken toe here, nay- if that broken digit wakes the baby, you’ll be the one limping around swaying her for the next hour, my friend.

Between 6am and 9am, the Boss issues her Incantations from a somnambulant state; they are a mix of a trumpeting elephant, billy goat and the dinosaurs that attack Newman in the Jeep scene of Jurassic Park 1. The Incantations are accompanied by vigorous arm swinging and occasionally some head bobbing before falling back into the deep REM cycle her dad and I haven’t obtained in weeks. If there are messages within the Incantatjons, we know them not, but they’re issued with great passion.

Then she and I settle in for Morning Snuggles, the highlight of my day. She burns like a furnace on my chest and I lie there frantic at the thought of waking her and frantic at the thought she’ll overheat in her fleece sleep sack so as she smiles contentedly and with closed eyes, dreaming of a river of milk, my heart rate steadily increases, my throat grows tight and I wonder if I’ll pass out from anxiety.

Her cries and breathing and strange utterances are our morning soundtrack, the morning’s tintinnabulation and, like church bells ringing across the sky, she calls us to mind, and to hark, and to listen and to be present. Church bells give you pause, strike the sky, pierce the ho hum of daily life, and she is just like that, this tiny boss. She is the ringing of bells, clear, piercing the air, calling you to mind, mind life.

And to bring the milk.

Unexpected Feelings after Soft Launch of my Second Book A Guide to Growing Wings

I’ve been working on my memoir about my mother, and my healing journey after she took her life in 2013, for a long time. I think I first picked up the pen about it a year or so after she died. I scrawled hundreds and hundreds of pages in an effort to wring the sorrow out of me—to get it out, to make sense of the Biggest, Hardest Thing I’d ever met.

This project has taken up a huge space in my life—I’ve put it on the back burner a couple times, pushed it away, but I knew it was an incredibly important tribute to my mother and me that I would need to release in order to move on. After I published Be Surf, I picked the memoir back up. A few lessons I learned through Be Surf helped me finally give the memoir shape and, more importantly, complete it.

And as for a sense of urgency—the baby in my belly gave me a natural deadline. I knew that I wanted to get this book out, in some way, before the baby arrived. So I released the ebook on Amazon last week—a soft launch. At this time, I’m only telling a few people, because I want to really launch it with the print book.

I expected to feel proud, and confident, of the accomplishment (which I do) but I did not expect this—the feeling of an immense boulder suddenly rolling out of my path, and the feeling that I was free to choose other types of work and projects now. I hadn’t realized how tethered and cuffed I felt to the project. Not even in a bad way (right, because prison metaphors are a “good” thing…) but it’s true. I felt an incredible amount of pressure and duty to complete this project. It felt necessary to honor my mother in this way, and to share that story which is uniquely ours, one that no one would ever tell the same way.

And so, when I pressed “Publish,” and the book went live—it just felt like my world opened up. It’s like—ok wow! This tribe of elephants that has apparently been blocking my path has scattered and now my road is totally open. This is a really exciting and beautiful feeling.

I’m really excited to complete the book in its additional incantations—print and audio—on my on pace, around the baby, and I’m also really excited for what opportunities I get to give time for now that this incredibly important, urgent and individual project is done.