I Did It!

my 54-day memoir-in-Notes project is complete!

Hi, friends!

I’m sitting at my dining room table. I’ve had two matchas already today, plus a piece of toast—both with honey! I’m thinking about what I will have for lunch. The dogs are sleeping at my feet. Outside the window, signs of this morning’s downpour coexist with clearly defined shadows thrown by a hot sun through clear skies. I’m texting with my daughters, and learning about their days. They are happy it’s Friday, happy to have a reprieve from the intense schoolwork of weekdays and looking forward to spending unstructured time with friends. I, too, am looking forward to setting all my various work to the back burner for a couple of days. I am looking forward to a more leisurely dinner this evening, a 5K tomorrow, and hopefully a walk (or walks!) through nature somewhere.

full moon, 17 September 2024, STL St, EDW

To those of you who have been following along on my 54-day adventure, thank you! I hope you know who you are! To everyone who has restacked, ❤️d, left me a comment, sent me a private message, or texted me to say how my words landed with you, I cannot possibly thank you enough. Your actions were like little lanterns that lit my path when I felt otherwise adrift in a morass of indecision and doubt. And to all the NEW SUBSCRIBERS who read a Note and then decided my work was worth reading more of, thank you!

If you haven’t read the Notes to which I am referring, I hope you’ll scroll through to see the project for itself. I set about writing a single piece of flash memoir every day for 54 days, one day for each year I have circled the sun, culminating in my 54th year, which I just completed last week! ♍️

As I like to remind my writers and students, the act of writing itself actually changes us. It changes how we think about ourselves, how we think about the world, and how we think about the stories we want to tell. Which is, of course, only a paraphrase of the brilliant Octavia Butler:

All that you touch / You Change. / All that you Change / Changes you. / The only lasting truth / is Change.*

I find it amazing to think that you and I have been out there changing each other over these last several weeks in all sorts of subtle and not-so-subtle ways. I hope you feel as uplifted and gratified as I do!

Today I met with one of my weekly clients. He is a pastor. He works with me because he is seeking to improve his writing skills which he believes will, in turn, improve his preaching skills. He is also simply looking to make more time and space for the creative act, so our conversations are always affirming and inspiring. Today we talked about a sermon he is planning for this weekend, one that will address the futility of expecting life to be devoid of difficulties. The message is that our challenges—whatever they are, and we all have something!—are not optional, nor is it possible to avoid those challenges with some magical cocktail of hard work, determination, and luck.

It is worth noting that this man knows very little about my personal life, and has only read a very small selection of my work (when I teach / coach, the emphasis is always on the client’s work). But as I read the draft of his sermon this morning, his words hit me as though he was responding to my journal from the last five years, which were pretty much a constant refrain of Why me? Why me? Why me? and Make it stop! Make it stop! Make it stop! I’m not proud of it, but it’s true. I wanted the things that were happening to stop happening simply because they were too painful, and I didn’t trust my ability to withstand them.

When we are in crisis, it is almost impossible, I think, not to look for an escape hatch. After all, we call it suffering for a reason, and most of us are working pretty hard to avoid suffering wherever and whenever possible. (To be clear, I’m talking here about personal suffering, to use a rather clumsy term, and not suffering inflicted upon us through power imbalances, violence, and terror of all kinds.) I’m sure there are folks out there who are enlightened enough, practiced enough, and / or resourced enough to weather their challenges with relatively more grace than I weathered mine, but, honestly, those people feel like the exception! 😂

My client quoted the Catholic theologian Richard Rohr (whose work I highly recommend if you don’t already know it. A favorite podcast is here):

“Sooner or later, if you are on any classic ‘spiritual schedule,’ some event, person, death, idea, or relationship will enter your life, with which you simply cannot cope, using your present skill set, your acquired knowledge, or your strong willpower. Spiritually speaking, you will be—you must be—led to the edge of your own private resources. At that point, you will stumble over a necessary ‘stumbling stone,’ as Isaiah calls it. You will and you must ‘lose’ at something, and then you begin to develop the art of losing. This is the only way that Life/Fate/God/Grace/Mystery can get you to change, let go of your egocentric preoccupations, and go on the further and larger journey.”

I think this language helps to explain why I have felt so drawn to memoirs of illness / wellness over the last few years—I have identified strongly with narratives of people receiving life-changing (or -shattering) diagnoses, accidents, illness. For these writers, there was a clear “before” and a resultant “after” in which the “before” self has no choice but to transform entirely. This was my experience of the end of my marriage and the ensuing chaos. It was an undoing of all I had previously clung to, all the stories I had previously repeated to myself so desperately and ignorantly. The woman I had been was no longer an available option, so I had to find someone else to be, and quick!

So I recognize Isaiah’s “stumbling stone” firsthand. I understand what Rohr means by “the art of losing.” (I couldn’t resist linking to an Elizabeth Bishop poem that uses that same line—I’d love to know if Rohr took it from her poem??) Of course, I have definitely NOT “let go” of my egocentric preoccupations, but perhaps I have loosened my grip just a bit. Perhaps I have made progress on that journey.

I’m not sure, exactly, what comes next for me. I’ll keep writing poetry. I’ll keep trying to piece together a full-length manuscript. I will continue using Notes as a way to share snippets of work-in-progress, themes or scenes I’m trying to flesh out. I will continue to be grateful for this community I have found here on Substack, and to remain firm in my belief that art—integrated, as it is, with love and community—is a powerful anecdote to life’s challenges. Thank you for being here.

xoxo, F

*Butler’s full quote includes the final line, not included above: “All that you touch / You Change. / All that you Change / Changes you. / The only lasting truth / is Change. / God / is Change.” Like Rohr, I encourage all of us to insert whatever word feels most resonant—Life/Fate/God/Grace/Mystery—in the event “God” doesn’t speak to you.