Let the Whole Thundering World Come Home: A Memoir

by Natalie Goldberg

A saying exists: a writer gets to live twice. First we live, and then we write about what we have lived. Like a cow that brings up its feed and chews it again, a writer has a second chance to digest experience. The second time is in the notebook or in front of a computer screen. Often the second time is the real life for a writer. It is then we get to claim our existence.

I wanted to grab a hunk of living again and hold on tight. But it wouldn’t have been genuine if I skipped over what was raw, dark, and painful. Another adage a writer needs to know: the things we avoid have energy. If I ignored suffering, the life of my writing would die. You can’t hold back, hide, disclaim. You have to bare your teeth and go back into the seething heat. If I didn’t write this book, no other book would possibly ever come.

For me this wasn’t war, something to fight. Disease was another aspect of human life. Could I be in the middle of it, not so much be victorious but actually flower, become more tender, more inside human understanding? Could it open love? And reflection? Could I stand inside the storm, be drenched and endure, whether into life or into death?

quickly. No time to think. Pipsqueak gave me a prescription for twenty prednisone tablets. “Begin tonight and you’ll be ready for treatment tomorrow.” “I want to see what my blood results are first,” I said. I was scheduled