“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.
❤️