More on this book
Kindle Notes & Highlights
This is not a chronological fact-check of my life, and I am sure my sisters or my husband or my children remember some of these events very differently. I have abandoned my reliance on the external facts to support an individual truth, and everyone is entitled to his or her own. This is mine: So far, so good. More to come. More is always to come.
Acknowledgement that not all memories are the same — and emotions while universal are not the same at any one point in time.
I started painting, so I could learn about the absence of words and sound, and why I needed them, and what I actually wanted to say with them.
Creativity requires multi-disciplinary outlets. Sort of like a kid who wants to be a baseball player — old school is she should play lots of different sports for physiological and emotional development.
She was forever lifting people up. It took me a long time to understand that what she did when she lifted you up was to mirror the very best parts of you back to yourself.
On June Carter Cash. Mirroring the very parts of someone back to themselves. It's more than about knowing someone well. Although that helps. Perhaps lt's about assuming everyone has something worthy of lifting up. Treat people with kindness. Giving them the benefit of the doubt. Being wary of someone with potentially dangerous flaws? Has nothing to do with finding something good worth reflecting back.
She was like a spiritual detective: She saw into all your dark corners and deep recesses, saw your potential and your possible future, and the gifts you didn’t even know you possessed, and she “lifted them up” for you to see. She did it for all of us, daily, continuously.
Spiritual detectives perceive everything, even when others don't. Consistency in uplifting people is more effective than sporadic insights, whether in light or dark.
When I was a young girl at a difficult time, confused and depressed, with no idea of how my life could unfold, she held a picture for me of my adult self:
Painting a future of someone's adult self is less about career advice and more about the person they could become.
She did not give birth to me, but she helped me give birth to my future. Recently, a friend was talking to her about the historical significance of the Carter Family, and her remarkable place in the lexicon of American music.
She did not give birth to me but she helped me give birth to my future. What does it take for a woman to *help* a young person find their own future?
With time the unbearable becomes shocking, becomes sad, and finally becomes poignant. Or maybe poignancy isn’t the conclusion to grief. Maybe there is something beyond poignant that I haven’t experienced yet. I was able to renegotiate my inner relationship with my dad through the first few years of his absence, and much has been resolved.
On grief
If enough has been resolved—not everything, for everything will never be done, but just enough—then deep grief begins to transform the inner landscape, and space opens inside. You begin to realize that everyone has a tragedy, and that if he doesn’t, he will. You recognize how much is hidden behind the small courtesies and civilities of everyday existence. Deep sorrow and traces of great loss run through everyone’s lives, and yet they let others step into the elevator first, wave them ahead in a line of traffic, smile and greet their children and inquire about their lives, and never let on for
...more
On grief. The kindness of others is transformational once we remember they too have experienced unbearable loss. And they're still here.
I had first wanted to be a writer, in a quiet room, setting depth charges of emotion in the outside world, where my readers would know me only by my language. Then I decided I wanted to be a songwriter, writing not for myself but for other voices who would be the vehicles for the songs I created. Then, despite myself, I began performing my own songs, which rattled me to the core.
Creativity requires discomfort.
