I’m still thinking about endings. This week I am obsessed with going through the twelve chapters of my memoir in progress before having the book coach put them all together for a read-through to see what is there and what is not there that needs to be there. It was exactly a year ago today that I met with Barbara Boyd, my book coach to begin the process of writing my second memoir.
Polly Young-Eisendrath, published Resilient Spirit: Transforming Suffering into Insight and Renewal, in 1996, the year before my world totally changed, the year before a divorce that I didn’t believe would ever happen happened. Eleven years before I would enter psychoanalysis and begin to understand how important the following sentence from her book would be for me:
“Honest confrontation with this deeper anguish over our ordinary human limitations and imperfections, our inevitable loss, illness, decline, and death, wakes us to the significance of our lives.”
Polly’s book jumped off my shelf last night after I listened to her interview with Joanna Macy. Macy is 94 years old and the title of the interview is, Pay Attention Interviews: Staying Alive – Joanna Macy: Vitality, Love, and Intimacy in your Nineties. You can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zu4FDY1cK2Y
Before psychoanalysis, I never would have guessed that mulling over and identifying my limitations and imperfections would be so painful and transformative. And that waking up to the significance of my human life would lead to living life in a more intentional way. That first redefining and then opening to the spiritual part of life would be so rich. This is what my new memoir seeks to describe.
Do you believe that honest confrontation of your life will wake you up to its significance? Please let me know how you read the sentence from Polly.
Image: One of the best gifts I have ever received was from my oldest son Matt and his wife Marcy. It is this Sacred Mark, 100% Cotton, made in Bangladesh throw, that I drape over my legs every day when at my computer to stay warm. It is so beautiful!
