Katrina Kenison's Blog, page 13

Changing the world one step at a time

Never doubt that a small group . . . can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

– Margaret Mead

One week ago today, we walked.

Twenty-seven women, ages sixteen to sixty-something, united by a desire to make a difference – and inspired by the faith that, together, we can.

We walked from Hopkinton to Boston, grateful for one another, for clear skies, good company, and comfortable sneakers.

We walked sharing stories, Ibuprofen, sunscreen, Chapsticks and BlisterGlide.

We walked fueled by Gatorade and bananas, popcorn and power bars, laughter and love.

We walked in memory of a dear friend, gone three years but never forgotten.

We walked for our loved ones and for yours.

We walked with blisters, numb feet, bum knees, loose toenails, sore backs, toothaches, weird rashes, annoying socks, tight hamstrings.

We walked anyway.

We walked in the belief that every step counts and that every gesture matters.

We walked knowing we weren’t out there for one woman but for all women.

We walked moved by hope for the future and full of gratitude for the present.

We walked to support one dedicated doctor’s efforts to find effective treatments for ovarian cancer.

And we walked knowing our efforts are about much more than dollars raised for a cause.

We walked to support one another.

We walked because we could and for all those who couldn’t.

We walked knowing that every offering changes the world for the better.

We walked to share the journey and the joy of being alive.

We walked 26.2 miles in ten hours and we crossed the finish line together.

We walked because, on this day, our hearts were strong and our legs were sturdy.

We walked because someday, for any one of us, it will be otherwise.

Gratitude!

I am deeply grateful to each and every one of you who chose to support my Jimmy Fund Marathon Walk last Sunday with Team Diane.  Together, we raised over $35,000 for Diane’s Fund, monies that will go directly to our friend’s beloved, brilliant oncologist at Dana Farber, Dr. Ursula Matulonis, whose cutting-edge research into ovarian cancer is making new strides toward better treatments every day.

Thanks to you, I not only met my own personal fund-raising goal, but exceeded it.  As I watched that number slowly rise last week, I knew that, tooth-ache or not, I would have to summon the strength to be at the starting line with my team mates at 6 am.  Your comments and caring and contributions to this cause I believe in so deeply carried me forward, all the way to the finish line.  I am deeply grateful to you all  – my dear readers, supporters, cheerleaders and fellow travelers upon this path.  Together, we are making a difference, bringing the day closer when a woman diagnosed with ovarian cancer will have a better prognosis than Diane had.

Congratulations to the winners of The View from My Window, my collection of blog posts!  You already know who you are, and your books are on their way.

The post Changing the world one step at a time appeared first on Katrina Kenison.

Small moments

O

k,” I said to my family, “I have a question.”

We were halfway through dinner at my parents’ house in Maine.  The sun was setting, casting the room in warm, amber light.  The table was littered with lobster shells and corncobs and wadded up napkins: the perfect ending to a perfect end-of-summer day.

No one could remember the last time we’d all been gathered together in this place we love, a place layered with memories and history and hallowed artifacts.  Twenty-six years ago next week, my husband and I were married in the church at the head of the cove.  We began our life together in the bedroom off the kitchen (repainted by my mom and dad in honor of the occasion) – the room where we still sleep when we visit and where my wedding dress still hangs in the back of the closet. Our sons spent all the best vacations of their childhoods at “Nana and Bapa’s Maine house.” Even now, the books they read as children are stacked on the bedside table between the twin beds upstairs.  Winnie the Pooh sits in silent meditation upon a pillow; the old board games are piled neatly on the shelf; the sea glass and hermit crab shells they collected line the windowsills. And yet, time and summer jobs and new interests and horizons have their way with all of us. Life doesn’t’ always carry young adults back  to their best-loved places.   But over Labor Day weekend, with both boys home, we seized our chance.  And for one night, my parents and the four of us were under one roof.

Of course, everyone knew what was coming: Mom was going to ask the family to reflect.

My dad rolled his eyes.   “It’s a nice meal,” he said, only half-joking.  “Do we have to make it meaningful?”  The kids laughed.  Steve said, “You can’t stop her, you know.”  And in fact, no one really tried.

What I wanted to know was simply this:  What moment from the summer are you especially grateful for?

Through all the years of our sons growing up, we asked “the gratitude question” at the dinner table at least once a week.  Passing was always an option, but I don’t remember a single time that any of us actually chose to opt out.  There were plenty of  “terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days,” as we used to call them, quoting the shaggy-haired, put-upon Alexander in Judith Viorst’s beloved children’s book.  But even at the end of one those days, it was usually possible to dredge up some small moment worthy of a smidgen of gratitude.  (A Jack classic:  “I saw a toad.”)

But last Saturday, as the golden light faded from the sky, we were all feeling pretty expansive.  Gratitude was easy.

Jack talked about an August afternoon he’d spent at the beach with his best friend from childhood, whacking rocks into the ocean with a stick.  They did it for hours, this impromptu home-run derby, till they couldn’t lift their arms anymore, or swing the stick one more time.  Nothing special, really — except that of course it was.

Henry told us about the last night of his summer job on the Cape, sitting at the piano with a friend at 1 in the morning, the two of them playing and singing their favorite Bruce Hornsby song together one last time before going their separate ways.  Not a big deal, perhaps, at the end of a summer full of opening nights and performances and drama.  Except that it was.

Steve, who has never had any interest in joining me for chilly early morning swims, decided this year that if I was going to start every morning of our August vacation by jumping out of bed and into the lake, he would do it too.  His favorite moment?  Swimming through the dark cold shadows, all the way out to the place where the rising sun is just hitting the water at dawn. I’m with him on this.  There is nothing quite like greeting the day by diving into it and swimming toward the light.  A small ritual, yes, but precious now to both of us.

My dad, who spent all of last summer wondering if he would ever recover from a debilitating slipped disc in his back, is so relieved to be able to move around again that he had a hard time choosing just one pain-free moment to be grateful for.  At seventy-eight, he wasn’t at all sure he’d ever regain the ground he’d lost. Little wonder that fixing the roof on Saturday made him so happy.  “I was up and down that ladder fifty times today,” he said. “I couldn’t have done that a year ago.”  Not a big deal, perhaps.  Except that, of course, it is.

Well, my life isn’t very dramatic at all,” my mom began.  “But this moment meant a lot to me.”  She had been watering her garden with the hose, she said, when a hummingbird appeared — so close she could have touched it — and then hovered there, thrumming its wings just at the outer edge of the spray.  She didn’t move; the hummingbird didn’t leave – it was the two of them, suspended in time, eyeing each other.  Just a moment, really, nothing dramatic at all.  But, as my mom said, “It meant a lot.”

It probably doesn’t surprise you that what struck me most as we went around the table was how utterly simple each of these memories are.  A moment shared with a friend.  A swim at dawn.  A day of work without pain. An encounter with nature. The kinds of moments available to most of us all the time. But also the very moments that are so easy to miss in our busy, distracted, everyday lives.

At my parents’ house last weekend, there wasn’t a lot to do.  We read books, took walks, made meals, cleaned up after them.  I spent time alone at the water’s edge with each of my sons, and we did exactly what we’ve always done there – climbed on rocks, played with rocks, made piles of rocks, collected rocks, skipped rocks.  We talked about everything and nothing.  We watched the sky and felt our hearts grow calmed by the sea.

On Monday, we cleaned the house, changed all the beds, and loaded our stuff into the cars, Steve and Henry in one, me and Jack in the other.  I drove home in an epic traffic jam through pouring rain, stopped at the farm stand for some groceries five minutes before it closed, threw all our dirty clothes into the wash, and made some vegetable soup for dinner.  Four of us at the kitchen table, just as we were for years and years – and as we are so rarely now.

All week, with summer officially over and yet with both sons still home for a little while more, I’ve been thinking about what I most want them to take away when they leave again – Henry on Friday for a job in Minnesota; Jack, at the end of the month, for school in Atlanta.  I’d hoped for this “togetherness” time to be special, of course.  And I’ve looked forward all summer to these days in early September, when we would have some unscheduled time just to enjoy each other.

Things haven’t gone quite as I planned. Wednesday morning I woke up with toothache that quickly went from uncomfortable to painful to excruciating.  For me it’s been a week of dental visits, curling up on the couch under a blanket, counting the hours between painkillers, sipping liquids through straw, and going to bed hours before anyone else. Not the memorable “togetherness” I’d envisioned.

But it’s also been a week of moments I will remember:  Henry doing the grocery shopping and making dinner, including a killer blackberry hazelnut cobbler, the very last solid food I was able to eat.  Steve and the boys gathered round the TV in the kitchen, switching channels from the Red Sox to the U.S. Open.  Jack preparing ice packs for me and tucking them around my cheek.  The guys doing the dishes together, meal after meal.  My sons have taken care of me over the last few days with all the tenderness and compassion I could wish for.  In the meantime, they’ve happily gone about their lives here — taking runs, playing basketball, going for bike rides, seeing friends, feeding the dog, working for their dad to earn some extra cash.  And no one really needed me to do anything to make it “special.”

What do I want my young adult children to take away with them into their own next chapters?  Maybe just this, the simple life instructions they already seem to have learned:  Be kind.  Pay attention.  Do what needs to be done. And remember that the little things, the small moments, aren’t so little after all.  They are the texture and the truth of who we are and what we care about.

An update on my walk. . .

I did it!  Thanks to antibiotics, Ibuprofen, and my dad (who is also my dentist), I was able to walk yesterday with Team Diane.  Thanks to YOU, I not only made my fund-raising goal, but exceeded it.  More on all of that later.  In the meantime, know that I am deeply grateful for your encouragement and support.  We had a spectacular day and our group of determined walkers raised over $30,000 for Diane’s Fund, all of which will go directly to support ovarian cancer research at Dana Farber.

If you missed my blog post about my friend Diane, and why I support the Jimmy Fund Walk and this work, you can still  read it here.

The post Small moments appeared first on Katrina Kenison.

Happy parents, happy kids

C

ould I be happier? Could I have a happier child?

Ever asked yourself these questions?

I certainly have.  Indeed, they’re the very questions that first led me to reflect on what kind of mother I wanted to be and what kind of life I wanted our family to have.  They are the questions that inspired me to slow down, to pay attention to the little things, to do less and to enjoy more.  They helped me redefine what it means to have a good life – a life that is less about accomplishing and acquiring things and more about accepting and loving people.

This summer, these questions led Beth Spicer to launch an extraordinary conversation about happiness, parenting, and the ongoing work of aligning our lives with our deepest values and desires.

Beth is a successful life coach and a single mom.  Working, raising a toddler, juggling her own hopes and dreams with the demands of her clients and her son, advising others about how to bring more meaning and fulfillment into their lives, Beth found herself coming back again and again to one word: happiness.

Happiness is, of course, what we all long for — for ourselves, for our kids, for one another.  And yet, what an elusive a goal it can be!  Is there a secret?  Does it have to do with staking out and protecting down time or, is it about simply taking a deep breath even in the midst of the day’s chaos and giving thanks for life just as it is? (Maybe both?)  Is happiness a matter of temperament or character? Discipline or practice? Choice or luck?  Why are some families happier than others?  How do we cultivate joy for ourselves? How do we bequeath it to our children?

In search of answers and strategies, Beth reached out to a wide-ranging group of experts – teachers, therapists, and visionaries – and brought them together in one place, to participate in a unique virtual event: The Happy Parents and Kids TeleSummit.

Although I’m not an educator, a family therapist, or an expert, Beth invited me to be a part of this extraordinary panel of men and women.  For a moment, I’ll admit, I hesitated.  I’m a mom, a memoir writer, a blogger, not a pro.  I looked at the list of speakers and felt a bit intimidated.

But then I realized that my own 23 years of mothering two sons from birth to young adulthood have indeed taught me a few things about happiness – my own and theirs.  And, although I’ve written much about this journey of the heart, beginning over thirteen years ago in the pages of Mitten Strings for God, I’ve never actually spoken about it in this context before: parenthood as an ongoing education in the art of living joyfully.

Many mornings over the last couple of weeks, I’ve lingered over my coffee and tuned in to a conversation with one of my fellow panelists. (I’ve especially loved hanging out with Bonnie Harris, Dan Millman, Sonia Choquette, Dan Siegal, and  Cheryl Erwin.)  And that really is what it’s been like: having a daily check-in with a support group of like-minded souls who’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the very questions and issues I grapple with each day myself.

What attitude do I bring to my life?  What do my children need from me? How can I cultivate more harmony and peace in our relationships? What patterns and old habits are holding us back? What could I do differently today to make things easier for all of us tomorrow?

By the time I finally sat down to talk with Beth myself, it felt as if we were already friends.  Our chat was the kind I like most:  unrehearsed, intimate, personal, with plenty of sharing on both sides.  Forty-five minutes flew by, and what we both really wanted to do at the end was continue the conversation.

And, in a way, we do:  we get to share it with you.

To listen, simply click on this link:  http://happyparentsandkids.com

Once you arrive at the Happy Parents And Kids website, you will be invited to register for the tele-summit (it’s free).  And then you will have access not only to my interview (here’s the link), but to Beth’s conversations with all of my colleagues as well.

Happy Labor Day weekend, and happy listening!

P.S.  A word about these pictures.  I took the first one at sunset at my parents’ house in Maine, on a summer night just about fifteen years ago. To me it says, “Happiness.”  (When I showed it to Steve the other day, it brought tears to his eyes. Jack was such a cuddler; now he’s taller than his dad.) The other, also taken on vacation in Maine, I snapped with my iPhone just two weeks ago.  So much has happened.  We have grown old and our boys have grown up and we’ve all had our share of struggles and challenges along the way.  But here we are.  And this photo of Steve and Jack says the same thing to me: “Happiness.”

A few more days. . .

A huge and heartfelt thanks to all of you who have supported my upcoming Boston Marathon Jimmy Fund Walk. As I enter my final week of training to walk those 26.2 miles next Sunday, I’m buoyed by your encouragement and generosity. You are the wind in my sails!  May our combined efforts help to ensure that all women who follow in my friend’s footsteps will have a better prognosis than she did.

If you missed my blog post about Diane and her journey with ovarian cancer, I hope you’ll take a few minutes to read it here.  I am so close to achieving my goal for next Sunday, that I’ve decided to extend the opportunity to donate (and enter to win a copy of my collected blog posts).

A contribution to Team Diane and a comment on my Aug. 15 post will make you eligible to win one of the 12 copies I’m giving away of the book of my blog posts — my way of saying thank you.  (Much as I would love to give every single one of you a bound copy of The View from My Window, I have only a dozen left on my shelf. Still, your odds are good! And please know that I am enormously grateful for every single donation.)

Winners will be drawn on Tues. Sept 3. Thank you, my friends, and good luck to all!

The post Happy parents, happy kids appeared first on Katrina Kenison.

Still hard, and more beautiful than ever

Iwas outside at dawn this morning, as I’ve been most days this summer.  Standing in the wet grass, watching the molten, majestic sun slide from behind the mountain into a rose-colored sky, two thoughts occurred to me at exactly the same time:  Life is still hard.  And it’s more beautiful than ever.

The hard things are easy to list.  They’ve been running on an endless loop in my head through every sleepless night this week: An ongoing conversation with my younger son that keeps ending badly.  The helplessness of not knowing how to make things better.  Worries about the other son as he wraps up a summer job he’s loved and embarks on a new life chapter. A slightly frayed, unraveling edge in my marriage — and not knowing how to mend that, either. The piles of things around the house that I should have cleared away by now and the to-do list that doesn’t ever seem to get any smaller. The familiar, nagging sense that I’m spread too thin, letting too many people down, not doing enough or being enough or giving enough.

Wakefulness takes its own toll, as if exhaustion has peeled off a protective layer, leaving me a little more raw and vulnerable than usual. I am less resilient and resourceful; more prone to sudden, silly tears, frustration, anxiety.   I do an interview over the phone, make a birthday dinner for my dad, hand-write a stack of letters, pay the bills, read a bound galley that needs a blurb, call to congratulate a friend who’s just finished writing her book, sort the laundry, sweep the floor. I try again with my son.  Take my husband’s hand.  Pick flowers for the table and bake scones from scratch.  Take a deep breath, and then another.  Take a run.  Smile at a stranger on the street.  These are all good things to do. And yet. My mind feels not quite all here.  I’m tired.  And it’s still hard.

And beautiful.

There was, for starters, that sunrise. The spectacle of it, with a just-past-full moon fading away in the west as, for one fleeting moment, night and morning shared the sky.  There was my phone vibrating in my hand even as I snapped this picture, a cherished friend’s morning greeting arriving with the sun to lift my heart.  There was the sleek beaver swimming silently upstream as I ran along the river toward town.  There were my own two feet standing on my yoga mat, the stillness of mountain pose and eagle pose, the compassionate words of a teacher who knows precisely where I hurt, her instructions whispered in my ear. There was the sound of forty voices chanting, “Peace, Peace, Peace”.

There is the quiet day unfurling as I sit here allowing thoughts to come and go, the steady accumulation of hours, the pulse of time passing.  There is this house, this hilltop, this place we call home and the people who pass through the door; the memories layered over the course of years, the joy and sadness that have been accommodated beneath this roof.  The knowledge that there will surely be more of each in all our futures.

There was dinner on the porch last night, the clatter of dishes, the deepening shadows, the white lights strung around the windows, the first stars. Good, strong coffee this morning in a smooth pottery mug that fits my hand just so; ripe peaches in a blue bowl; a row of tomatoes on the kitchen sill, gazpacho already made and in the refrigerator for tonight.

There is our beloved border collie who turned thirteen this week and still begins each day with a wild dash through the fields, the white flag of her tail wagging in enthusiasm.  There are the lessons she teaches all of us, free of charge: roll in the grass, savor the moment, run while you can.  And of course, this, a dog’s essential truth:  it’s enough to offer love, no matter how imperfectly received or given.

There are the bronze-faced sunflowers blooming everywhere, taller than I am and still growing an inch a day, and creamy hydrangeas, their heavy heads bowing gracefully to the ground.  There is the woodpecker upside down at the feeder, the dragonflies cruising open-mouthed above the shaded potted plants.  There is the softness of this August afternoon, the gentle touch of wind on skin, the bees thrumming in the flower garden, the constancy of crickets, the wide, pale expanse of sky, the arc of a swallow’s flight.

There is a sentence written by a stranger that takes my breath away.  A letter from a reader in Ireland that erases miles and cultures and differences. There is the slow reaching out for connection, as my son wanders into the kitchen to make a sandwich and pauses to ask what I’m writing about.  There is the relief, at last of, simply speaking  a few words of kindness in return.  There is the sound of the basketball thwacking the driveway and there is the knowlege that soon enough the ball will sit, silently deflating, in the closet. There is my husband, emailing from his desk at his office twenty miles away, making plans for next week and the week after that – the moving truck secured, the airline tickets bought, the rental cars, the dates on the calendar, the reminder that, come what may, we will get both of these sons of ours moved – one to Atlanta, one to Minnesota – and launched into the next phases of their newly-grown-up lives away from us.   There is his steadiness and my gratitude for who he is and what he does.

There is, for now, this solitary hour on the screened porch. The laundry waiting to be folded.  The few, final days we will all spend together in this house. The sense of summer’s ending.  The first red leaf on the maple tree. All that is unknown and unknowable. The densely woven fabric of our lives. The words that come. The feelings that need to be felt.  Remembering, all over again, that this is the way life is.  Hard. Beautiful.  Both.

 

You still have one more week. . . 

If you are a longtime reader here, you know that losing a dear friend to ovarian cancer three years ago was a turning point in my own life.  I still miss Diane every day.  I also know the best way I can honor her memory is to carry on the work to which she was so passionately committed — ensuring that any woman who follows in her footsteps will have a better prognosis than she did.

If you missed my blog post about Diane last week, I hope you will read it here.

A contribution to Team Diane and a comment on my Aug. 25 post will make you eligible to win one of the 12 copies I’m giving away of my collected blog posts — my way of saying thank you for supporting my 26.2 mile walk on Sept. 8.  (Much as I would love to give every single one of you a bound copy of  The View from My Window,  I have only a dozen left on my shelf.  Still, your odds are good!  And please know that I am enormously grateful for every single donation.)

Winners will be drawn on Aug. 29.  A huge thank you, my friends, and good luck to all.

The post Still hard, and more beautiful than ever appeared first on Katrina Kenison.

A friend, a cause, and a special thanks for you

Three years ago this week, my friend Diane and I took a walk around her neighborhood.  I remember we went slowly, taking our time, enjoying the sunshine and each other.  Although we talked and laughed as we always had, my heart was heavy. I knew it would probably be our last walk together.

But what I couldn’t have known on that August morning was that although Diane’s own four-year journey with ovarian cancer was coming to an end, my walking partner’s legacy would live on.

As I set out just after dawn today for a long, solitary walk on a quiet country road, I found myself thinking of my friend.  Not a day goes by when I don’t miss her. I miss our long walks, our trips to the farmers’ market, our overnight get-aways, fast rides in her little chocolate brown sports car.  I miss her e-mails (which always seemed to contain the words I most needed to hear), the sound of her voice, her perfect, light-as-air scones, her pleasure in a glass of good champagne, her no-nonsense advice about kids and recipes and neighborhood dilemmas.  I miss hearing her views on politics and tv shows and books and which jeans looked best on me. 

At the same, as the years go by, I find myself increasingly grateful for the clear sense of purpose she bequeathed to all of us she left behind. More than anything, Diane hoped that more effective treatments and earlier detection might make other women’s prognoses better than her own. Nearly three years after her death, Diane’s commitment to ovarian cancer research has not only endured, it has become an increasingly vital legacy

Given how dedicated Diane was to this cause, how tirelessly she worked even after her diagnosis to raise money, and how many miles she walked to support the ongoing research at Dana Farber, where she was treated, it’s no surprise that so many of her friends have been inspired to follow in her footsteps.

Team Diane was founded as a personal way for a group of us to remember our dear friend by continuing the work Diane herself began. On Sunday, September 8th, we will once again lace up our sneakers and walk the 26.2 miles of the Boston Marathon route.

The funds we raise go to Diane’s Fund, established by Diane’s family to directly support the cutting-edge efforts at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute to better understand the biology and improve the detection and treatment of ovarian and other gynecological cancers.

But Team Diane has become much more than a handful of friends raising money for a good cause. Our circle has widened, our commitment has deepened, our impact has strengthened, and we have built a community of hope and support for the many amongst us who have been touched or suffered loss as a result of these diseases. While we walk in Diane’s honor and in her name, our walk is not about one woman’s journey, it is about our journey, together.

Raising money has never been easy for me.  For years, while my sons were growing up, I happily volunteered to cook, clean, drive, edit, and organize for various causes I believed in. I was always happy to do anything – anything, that is, that didn’t involve asking other people to open their checkbooks.

Joining Team Diane took me out of my comfort zone in several ways.  But training for months to prepare to walk 26. 2 miles has proved to be far easier for me than asking others to contribute cash – even for a cause I believe in deeply.  In the end, as I’ve done so often in the past, I look to my friend’s example for courage.  Raising money was not easy for her, either.  But she did it — gracefully and with absolute commitment,  knowing the funds she raised would make a difference for others. And so, I gather my own courage and carry on; my guess is, nothing would have pleased Diane more.

Last year, Team Diane collectively raised over $50,000 to directly support the research efforts led by Diane’s oncologist, Dr. Ursula Matulonis. She and her team are making significant progress every day. And she has reached out to thank us personally for making such a meaningful contribution to this urgent work. Our walk and your donations help make this work possible.

I am deeply grateful for any support you, my readers, are able to give. Together, we are walking and giving and working to change lives — and perhaps to save them.

How to donate, and a special thanks  from me to you!

As you know already, if you’ve been reading here for a while, I received a very special gift from my husband at Christmas time – a hardbound volume collecting all of my blog pieces, from the very first one I wrote back in 2009 up through last October (when he had to send the book to press in order to have copies ready for Christmas).  The View from My Window  is a personal book, created for me to share with family and friends (you can read more about it here).  But I do have a dozen of the original 30 copies left, and I would love to give them to you –  my way of saying “thank you” for supporting me in this year’s walk.

To learn more or to donate to my walk, simply click here.

And then make sure to leave me a comment in the comments section below.  On August 29 I will draw the names of twelve contributors, at random and using the tool at Random.org, to receive a signed, hardbound copies of The View from My Window.  (I wish I could give a copy to each and every one of you.)

Thank you so much for reading, for being here, and for your generosity.  It means more than I can say.

The post A friend, a cause, and a special thanks for you appeared first on Katrina Kenison.

“Handling the Truth”–the perils and pleasures of memoir (and how to win this book!)

I don’t quite remember how Beth Kephart and I first met; it feels as if we’ve been friends forever. More than two decades ago, we were young mothers at the same time.  We bore babies within a year of each other – beautiful, sweet-souled sons who didn’t fit the mold or pass the tests or walk or talk on schedule. Sons we loved passionately, observed endlessly, fretted over, and prayed for.

Motherhood gave each of us our first subject.  And I suspect we both began to write for much the same reason: not because we had things figured out, but because we didn’t.  Alone with our wondering and our worries, we turned to the page; perhaps it seemed to each of us the safest, most accessible place to wrestle with our mysterious maternal baggage — the unanswerable questions, irrational fears, and secret self-doubts, all inextricably bound up with our faith and hope and unwavering dedication to the vulnerable, precious beings we’d delivered out of our bodies and into the world. Writing about the joys and heartbreaks of raising boys who seemed destined to forge their own solitary paths through the untrammeled territory of childhood, we found our footing as both mothers and writers.  And then, through grace or happenstance, we found each other.

In the midst of my own early mothering journey, I discovered Beth’s luminous, brave (and now classic) 1999 memoir about her son, A Slant of Sun, and knew I’d found a soul mate.  In that pre-Facebook era, we reached out through time and space and made a connection — a few heartfelt letters and emails, a couple of intimate, memorable phone conversations, a flurry of cards.  She came to Boston to speak; I sat in the audience.  Afterwards, talking in person at last, we cemented things for good: we might live markedly different lives hundreds of miles apart, but we would also be friends, writing colleagues, fellow travelers.

As I’ve read my friend’s work over the years – blog posts, novels, YA fiction, book reviews, five quietly magnificent memoirs – I’ve been increasingly in awe.  I’m dazzled not only by her output, which is prolific, but even more so by the sheer gorgeousness of her writing, the depth of her knowing and the intensity of her watching, the shimmering intensity with which she translates human experience into words that breathe with life and pulse with truth.

My e-mails to her are boring, I fear. “How do you do it?”  I’ve asked her again and again – as if Beth could actually offer up the secret ingredient that makes her sentences sing.

But I should have known that, one day, she’d try to do just that.  For she is as generous a writer as she is a friend.  And – lucky for the rest of us – she is also a thoughtful and devoted writing teacher.  For years, she has been teaching the art and craft of memoir, sharing the hard-won lessons of experience, dedication, and a lifetime’s worth of reading with the students lucky enough to sit in her Penn classroom.

Now, the rest of us get to join those students and benefit from Beth’s teaching. This week her beautiful new book about writing memoir, Handling the Truth, arrived in stores.  Which means I don’t ever need to send her one of those “How do you do it?” e-mails again.  I can just return, over and over, to these pages. Ever since I read an early galley months ago (in one day, in one sitting, in awe, as usual), I’ve been eagerly awaiting the day I could finally share finished books with you here.

Beth has, as the reviewer at Library Journal noted, “created a work of art simply by reflecting on her own art—the writing and teaching of memoir. . . . She writes with the same lyricism found in her own works and offers here passionate encouragement for would-be memoir writers to embrace truth and empathy, mystery and exploration.”

I want to give copies of this book to all my reading and writing friends.  I want to spread the word, gather up an impromptu book group, and then sit down and talk about the perils and pleasures of the writing life, the joys of reading the real stories of real people, and the courage it takes to share your life on the page.  This is a subject dear to my heart, of course, and Beth Kephart brings urgent news of the how-to’s and the how-not-to’s.  Here, a paragraph from her introduction:

Handling the Truth is about the making of memoir, and the consequences.  It’s about why so many get it wrong, and about how to get it right.  It’s about the big questions: Is compassion teachable? Do half memories count? Are landscape, weather, color, taste, and music background or foreground? To whom does then belong? And what rights to memoirists have, and how does one transcend particulars to achieve a universal tale, and how does a memoirist feel, once the label is attached, and what is the language of truth? Handling the Truth is about privileges and pleasures, about knowing ourselves.  It’s about writing, word after word, small signifiers, and if it swaggers a little, I hope it teaches a lot.”

It does teach a lot.  It does.  I needed this book.  So do you.

How to win a copy. . .

I’ve bought a copy of Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir to give away here.  To win, just leave a comment below, answering the question: If you were giving your best friend a copy of your favorite memoir, what would it be?  Of course, you can also just say, “Count me in!”

I’ll draw a winner on Sunday, August 18.  Good luck to all!

P.S.  As you’ve no doubt noticed, there have been some changes in this space.  My new, subtly redesigned website was a year in the making, and then, as life would have it, I’ve been too busy with various urgent family concerns to properly “launch” it.  So, in lieu of online fanfare, I’ve decided to simply give away a book I love  each week for the next month — one for each of the four themes featured on the new site.  This week, obviously, we are firmly in the Writing and Reading realm.  To read more about my own writing process and some books that mean much to me, click here.

P.P.S. And finally, a big thank you to Elizabeth Marro for her exquisite essay about loss, friendship, and the effect that reading Magical Journey had on her as she found her way through grief’s dark night of the soul and, bit by bit, back into the light. I was touched and honored by her humanity and eloquence as she struggled to find a blessing even in a time of great loss.

 

 

 

The post “Handling the Truth”–the perils and pleasures of memoir (and how to win this book!) appeared first on Katrina Kenison.

A moment of silence

Ihad a whole month’s worth of blog posts planned out.

I was going to give you a little tour of my new website, which has been a year in the making and which I’ve been eager to share with you — including the new sections on parenting, soul work, hearth and home, and writing and reading.

In honor of the six-month, “half-birthday” of my latest book, Magical Journey, I intended to excerpt some of the inspiring, heartfelt letters I’ve received from readers – and to ask you to consider buying a hardcover copy before they vanish for good from bookstore shelves, to make way for the last wave of summer beach reads.

I’ve been  looking forward to writing about my friend Beth Kephart’s wonderful new book, Handling the Truth, which will be published next week, about the art of living well and the equally demanding art of making the personal universal. (For now, I’ll simply say: if you write memoir in any way, shape, or form, you need this book.)

A summer vacation in Montana without our sons gave me lots to think about, as I both missed my boys on a daily basis (actually, on a moment-by-moment basis) and, at the same time, appreciated the freedom of not having to worry about meeting the needs and expectations of a younger generation of travelers. There is, I know, an essay to be written here.

And then, early last Sunday morning, came the news of a death. A dear friend’s nineteen-year-old son — killed instantly in a tragic accident.

He was a boy I’ve known ever since the day his mom joyfully revealed her pregnancy by announcing to a group of us women friends, “I did it again!” A boy I’ve loved and cheered for and prayed for since he arrived on this earth. A boy who grew, right alongside my own younger son, from a chubby blond toddler into a handsome, thoughtful, athletic teenager with a passion for music and motorcycles. A boy whose young life was both touched by early loss and full of hope and promise. A boy whose childhood was inextricably intertwined, day in and day out, with two other boys I love with all my heart. In the backyard that our three families shared, it was always Jack and Nick and Will. Three boys, born within a year of one another and living within a stone’s throw of one another, who never had to arrange a play date because there was always a best friend right next door, ready to throw a baseball or play a game of hide and seek or go in search of an adventure.

There is a part of me, of course, that yearns to write about the loss of this boy here, now, because writing is the way I work my way toward peace. But there is also a part of me that must acknowledge at this moment the utter failure of words.

I can’t quite imagine writing any of those planned blog posts.  I can’t do a Facebook update, or tweet about loss, or even wrestle an essay into shape in an attempt to make some kind of sense of things. When a young person dies, words fail and peace is a long time coming and there isn’t any sense to be made. Perhaps “peace” isn’t ever achieved. He was only nineteen and now he is gone. There is no peace in that. It may be that the most we can hope for is a slow, painful comprehension of one the hardest truths of all for a parent to bear: we can love our children, but love isn’t enough to keep them safe. And that is simply all the more reason to love them as they are, while we can.

So, for now, I am going to be quiet. It’s time for reflection and grief and presence where my presence is needed most. I’ll be back soon.

The post A moment of silence appeared first on Katrina Kenison.

A healing journey

Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to learn

~ Pema Chodron

We looked at the X-rays together, my son Jack and I.

“This is last August,” the orthopedist said, pointing to the image on the left, showing two clear fractures in Jack’s L-5 vertebrae, fractures that, after 6 months, were showing no signs of healing on one side and only a minimal feathering of bone growth on the other.

“And this is now,” he said, indicating the scan from last week. “Completely healed.

“I can tell you,” he said turning to Jack and raising his hand for a high five, “this hardly ever happens.”

I remember my very first glimpse of my younger son: the dark, cool room; the ultrasound wand sliding through the goop on my swollen stomach; my husband peering over me to get a look at the shadowy little curlicue of a person floating deep within my belly. It was, I am suddenly realizing, twenty-one years ago this summer – my son’s entire lifetime ago, and yet still fresh and vivid in my mind’s eye. The technician asked if we wanted to know the sex of our baby. Steve and I looked at each other, but he waited for me to say yes.

“It’s a boy,” she said, sliding the cursor over, showing us. I can admit it now: one brief tear slid out of one eye, for the daughter we would never have. And then, in that same moment, we began to imagine our future as the parents of two sons, a family of four. By the time we’d walked back to our car, Jack had a name.

A couple of weeks ago, on the 4th of July, I sat in my brother’s living room watching his little boy do his six-year-old version of a hip-hop dance. Gabriel knows the words to “Stronger,” (though, thankfully, not what most of the lyrics mean) and he has some nasty moves. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, stand a little taaaaa–ller,” he sang along with Kelly Clarkson, dropping down to the floor, swinging his legs around, thrilled to have an audience.

It’s an old saying, probably true. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” Character is built by adversity. And yet, as my exuberant nephew and his younger sister danced with abandon, all I could think was how beautiful they are in their perfect, tender innocence. And how hard it will be for all of us who love these two children to stand by and watch when, inevitably, life starts roughing them up a bit.

Perhaps it’s human nature: we want to protect our offspring from pain and struggle for just as long as possible. We want their lessons to be painless, the road to be smooth, the waters calm, the sky clear. When the challenges begin, we want to do everything in our power to take the sting out, to ease our children’s way.

How many times did I field calls of distress? “I left my math homework at home”; “I forgot my lunch”; “I lost my sweatshirt”; “Mr. D. was mean to me in class.” My natural inclination, always, was to rush to the rescue — to jump in the car with the forgotten homework, to deliver the lunch, to replace the missing sweatshirt, to make the phone call that would make things better.

Did I do my boys any favors by helping them avoid some of the bumps and bruises of childhood? I’m not sure. Perhaps I made things too easy for them, delayed their understanding that every action has a consequence, that people aren’t always kind, that sweatshirts don’t grow on trees.

On the other hand, perhaps there’s something to be said for knowing, when you’re young and impulsive and distracted and forgetful, that there’s a safety net in place, ready to catch you if you fall.

Eventually, though, life delivers its hard lessons anyway. Kids do stupid things and then have to pay the price for their mistakes. Bad stuff happens, and they must summon enough resilience and moxie to pick up the pieces, dust themselves off, carry on. Our children reach, and fall short. They try, and fail. They hope, and have their hopes dashed.

And somehow we parents must learn to step back and allow them to absorb the hard knocks of growing up. Slowly, and with more than a little heartache, we figure out what our job really is: not to prepare the world to meet our children, but to prepare our children to meet the world — in its splendor, but also in its dark places.

Letting go means putting our trust in the rightness of their journeys and our faith in their resilience. It means remembering that there are larger forces at work in our children’s lives, carrying them to the places they need to go.

Watching my athletic, active, competitive son live with chronic pain over the last eighteen months has taught me a lot about letting go. It was hard to see him suffer. It was just as hard to accept my own helplessness in the face of that suffering. I could make him dinner when he was home, give him some Reiki touch, love him, encourage him. We could pay the medical bills, the physical therapy bills, help out with expenses when he couldn’t work. But whether he recovered or not wasn’t up to us.

Jack has spent much of the last year, while his friends were off at college, on the floor, stretching his hamstrings – the only way to bring the broken vertebrae into proper alignment so they could have a chance to mend. At one point, discouraged and wondering if he would ever again be able to move through a day without pain, he pointed out that at least if he had a broken arm in a cast, people would be able to see his injury. They wouldn’t expect him to lift heavy boxes or carry groceries or shoot hoops. Jack looked fine. He was worried that, to rest of the world, he also looked lazy.

In fact, there was a lot of invisible work going on, and not just in the hamstrings and L5 vertebrae. Much as I might have wished my son to have traveled a different path, much as my  heart hurt right along with him during the hardest times, I’ve also come to see this: what he learned this year are lessons that only a dark night of the soul can teach.

He learned that he can do hard things. He learned that pain is often invisible. He learned that empathy begins with the understanding that there is always more going on than meets the eye. He learned that even when dreams shatter and plans go awry, life continues. He learned (a lot) about anatomy. He learned that the rocky road he’s on has its own beauty, its own logic and shifting landscape, its own rightness for him.

Last week, when he was home, Jack spent hours outside in the driveway shooting baskets. He played before breakfast in the morning and under the lights before he went to bed – happy, sweaty, grateful. Nothing like a year of not moving to make every dunk or rebound cause for celebration. He is twenty, and I’m pretty sure he will never again take feeling fine for granted. In the meantime, his plans have changed. In the fall, he’s going to Atlanta, to major in exercise science and nutrition in a pre-chiropractic program at Life University. “I like the idea of helping people,” he says. “When someone comes to me in pain, I’ll know how they feel.”

How little I knew twenty-one summers ago, as I gazed at that first hazy gray picture of my younger son, floating in amniotic fluid. All I could do then, as he grew deep inside me, was say “yes” to him, to the mystery of  this unknown being, to my innocent faith that things would all work out. They have. They do. In ways I never could have anticipated, never would have chosen, wouldn’t change.

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, stand a little taller. Yes. And this, too, from poet David Whyte:

To be human

is to become visible

while carrying

what is hidden

as a gift to others.

(And thanks to Jack for giving me permission to share his X-ray.)

The post A healing journey appeared first on Katrina Kenison.

“So beautifully written, I wore out a yellow marker hig...

[image error]

“So beautifully written, I wore out a yellow marker highlighting my favorite lines.” –People

read an excerpt»

[image error] watch the video»

“An intensely moving tribute to the importance of enjoying every moment of life.” –Publishers Weekly

[image error] [image error] [image error] [image error] [image error]

The post appeared first on Katrina Kenison.

“It was so beautifully written, I wore out a yellow mar...

[image error]

“It was so beautifully written, I wore out a yellow marker highlighting my favorite lines.” –People

“An intensely moving tribute to the importance of enjoying every moment of life.” –Publishers Weekly

read an excerpt»

[image error] watch the video»


[image error] [image error] [image error] [image error] [image error]

The post appeared first on Katrina Kenison.