Oh thank you Tim. I had no plans to write even a small thing again - have a new diary beside me here in bed and even that I haven’t made a mark in yet. But of all the things that have happened since Mum died and the book of her and me went out into the world in a way that doesn’t need me to speak for it anymore… this suddenly came to me as something worth sharing as more about that stranger than me. I’ve been told I can’t return to painting/decorating and the gym til the new year so I hope I can begin my diary again at least.
Where is the best way to keep up with your writing?
For the moment, I've stopped writing too. Different rationale, but I'm contented to tell stories of where I am by making pictures. We've found each other on Bluesky so that's best for now :)
Yes, and I loved to see that you are making time series/revisitations of place: the kind of art I enjoy the most - so to have you in the Starter Pack (limited reach though it may have) is a good feeling.
Tanya, this story moved me to tears...At the point where you shared that the man had changed his plans so he would be there each time you returned, the tears came. I've been broken open in the past months by destruction and loss all around me, and a lot of little things each day make me cry, some very sad and heart-reading, but some truly beautiful. This story of yours was both, and how often is that true? I think I had not been noticing the beautiful, the kind, the loving around me nearly enough until devastation brought me to my knees. I had not cried, I think, in years, somehow had lost that soul-thread, and now tears are my daily companion as I feel all the pain and the gentle loveliness, all wrapped up together. Thank you thank you for sharing this with us this morning. You are a gift. Keep writing, my dear, if you can. It matters.
Oh Amy. It’s hard to think of you in a difficult time after the loss you wrote of so unforgettably for the Birds of Firle project. I lost heart sending that out into the world after Mum died last August, only went out once this year to someone who sent back a beautiful artefact but didn’t then have time to write an essay I could share. And with Twitter dying where could I share it? But now that Bluesky is feeling like old Twitter, with people reading and reposting essays, I am going to relaunch there in the new year. Sharing previous work by you and others as well as it being where new respondents’ work goes.
And before then, I’m thinking about the mobile you made: I had it up for a while then felt I should keep it carefully archived for the exhibition at Firle I still hope to make happen in 2030. But now I want to get it out again and have it in view (I’m also ordering a 16-image frame for the rook cyanotypes Deborah Parkin gifted me).
All this by way of saying things you have written and made out of your tearful times continue to hold use and beauty in the lives of others, as you say mine do for you.
‘The soul-thread’ - can feel my broken one being re-tied. Thank you xxx
Amy, I read your writing in Birds of Firle some time ago and just went back and re-read it. It was just as beautiful as I remembered. Thank you for sharing!
This struck a chord with me since I am clearing out my own home after 30 years of marriage; very unhappy for the last 10 of those years. And I have to clear it out with my soon to be ex-husband. But also, I'm reminded of a particular moment during the pandemic when I was a pharmacy technician and I had a meaningful, sentimental conversation with a customer. I reached my had under the plexiglass and held his for a moment. This human understanding and love that is so rare among strangers. Never forgotten. Still felt. And, yes, that suspicion of kindness and love - a leftover of abuse - may it fade and fade and fade.
‘May it fade and fade and fade’ - yes, how much I hope that proves true for you once this hard unhappy work of house clearing has been done. My mum had to do that alone for the most part before moving, as it was in pandemic and I couldn’t go to her beyond one emergency week straight after she finally got him out of the big remote house they were in. She was disabled and very weak and I feared for her doing that awful work, and she had OCD which made the mess-making of emptying and sorting truly distressing. But as she dumped more stuff she didn’t heal - nothing so quick or neat - but she did begin to feel herself as a separate person instead of bound to that awful man.
How you reached your hand out to that stranger. This is what we remember more and longest though - even if we don’t know the name of who offered that kindness.
“Life’s not that neat, even though people raised in chaos like me will always want it to be.” ….oh my does this resonate with me and my own story! As much as the subject of this piece of writing isn’t happy, I cannot tell you how thrilled I was to open my email to find it. I’d been meaning to respond to your previous posting about stepping back and not writing etc. (Can I say I cried reading that??) And I will do that. Life has been overly full emotion-wise and physically, so I’m catching my breath at the moment, and wishing the two of us were sitting in front of a fire with some big cups of tea and having a chat. Xx
Dearest Amy. Overfull - yes, yes: the work you and your mother have done for your relative is the kind of thing that needs much time and space afterwards, even if nothing else in your life or health or writing required it.
I really don’t know quite how or where or why today’s piece came to be. I still have a simple day to a page diary for July 24 to Dec 25 that I’ve bought and not made a single private mark in (me, who filled 54 big Moleskine exercise books, even while writing the scrolls, going through heartbreak, writing the book, nursing mum!). So I’m just accepting it as a strange bit of grace arriving in this fortnight of unplanned bedrest, that began a week after my last talk, the big anniversary of the near death and the day after my daughter’s 16th birthday. Perhaps at an unconscious level I needed to STOP and in that quiet a little true tale came out that I didn’t overthink or even craft. The Bluesky version has the kind of typos I’d never let happen usually!
One day we will be in your country or mine and yes, we will drink tea and eat scones or saffron buns with clotted cream (or whatever other English food you’d enjoy most). xxx
Tanya, I understand the process of not being able to write after deep grief. I could not dream after the pandemic for years, it was like global shock. Your story was bittersweet in the memories and feelings you shared, a sort of full circle of life and what remains after death. I loved how your photos kept showing up and the guardian at the dump supported you in your sorting of grief. And hugged you at the completion of making those trips to discard painful remnants of life with your mother. Snapshots of grief and love are difficult to sort through in the raw, pogniant memories. So many people do this unconsciously, not to feel thr memory that lives in objects that are collected over a lifetime and those who are left to make the full circle of letting go of all the things that once mattered. I loved your story Tanya. ❤️ xo
This from you means a lot, Anne, especially after all the other stories we have shared - yours, mine - through Hagitude and here. I’ve missed all those ongoing conversations with you and others - while having an absolute need to go quiet and relearn how it is to be a private person in this small town, getting to know the people who I pass by everyday whose names I haven’t known but am learning now. Thank you for reading. xxx
Thank you Amanda. I never did get the hang of Notes, and so with sadness began to move away from Substack as an active voice and presence - even though I continue to curate any soul stories that find their way to my project (less know of course now that I no longer send monthly prompts, but that it’s just there for whoever may find it feels soulful in a different way to the great expansive years of 21, 22). It means a lot to me that you read my piece and shared it with Jody, who has the kind of presence on here that I hoped to offer people but don’t have the gift for. I share her wish to be of service, but found that my courage and energy finally began to fail me after getting mum to end of life last year...
Well done for both recognising and then honouring what feels right, right now, Tanya. Your writing is so delicate, so seeringly honest and undefended that it touches a deep place in people. At the same time, I know that process extracts a lot from the person actually doing it. There are so many ways to be of service and I trust you will find your way at just the right time
I have not counted the number of letters/shares above, but I have enjoyed reading each and feeling my own quiet pleasure meeting new writers who ‘speak’ the language I most enjoy ..
Losing a parent changes you, especially if there was trauma. I’ve not been the same since my father died in 2008, in fact my whole life changed when he died. I questioned all of my beliefs about the world and realized none of my beliefs were my own. This sent me on a healing journey that I’m still on today. I no longer speak to my mother as a result of this journey. I miss your reflections about life and death. Big hug! 🤗
Yes, our journeys have been similar I think. I no longer speak to my mother-in-law, four years now, although I did return at her request for my father-in-law’s funeral this year, and because my dear husband asked me to. Hard as it was to be there in a place where I’m not valued, despite the decades of trying.
I do miss the conversations about all of this we all shared on here - and you and others continue to have - but after mother’s death last year a great silence took hold of me. But this sudden week of bedrest let at least this one small true tale squeak through xxx
I’ve had a full year of a health issue myself and it feels as if I’m in a liminal space indefinitely. I recently had a minor surgery and the same morning fell and hurt my foot. So now it’s hard to sit from stitches or stand from foot pain so I’m stuck sitting around and the liminal space feels ever more present. I’m trying to have compassion for myself and hope for next year. My astrology forecasted some health issues this year so I’m hoping I’m on the tail end of that. It feels at times that I can’t catch a break, from the foot, to the surgery and the next thing. I feel knocked down by the universe repeatedly but I know that cannot be true?! I understand just wanting to “be” and integrate and marinate. I don’t much feel like writing myself. My husband was laid off most of this year and the stress of that and not knowing what the future holds, where will we go? We’re immigrants in Canada from the US and we wanted to stay here. We bought a cabin in the woods that needs a lot of work and most days I’d rather just live my life than work on a big project. It feels liminal, maybe because we’re heading into winter? I respect you taking the time you need to process your mother’s death, it’s a big deal, this life and death stuff. It’s not to be rushed.
That not feeling able to catch a break - yes, yes, that has been my and Nye’s life for several years now. It was that ever-increasing pressure that in the end led to a strange lifting/release/freedom. So much of what we though we’d be doing once I had a pretty successful book in the world at last is just not possible, and any opportunities that opened up are now behind me. There was an anxious time of thinking thinking thinking how to stay on track with what I’d worked so long to be part of… then a slow but steady move away from it into ‘so we need to spend less, pay bills, be good to each other, our friends, neighbours, kids, cats’ - all the stuff that always does really come first and which matters most, but it’s okay to want other things on top for ourselves isn’t it? But it took me a bit too long to return to those foundational things and believe they could take the weight of a life without anything else. It sounds like you are on a similar kind of unchosen but not-without-value path like this. What can we bear? What small small good things can grown in and around what’s pressing down on us? xxx
Thank you. I never did really feel at home here once Notes took hold and it coincided too with mum’s dying time when a great silence took hold of me. I do so miss the long ongoing conversations I shared here with you and others but to have been a part of it for a while is more than most people get to experience. You and so many beautiful other people I met here and through various other online channels/projects. No less real than life we live in our towns or cities or villages. Just different in kind. xxx
My Dad died at a similar time to your mum and I relate so much to the things you have said since. We are lucky to have had your time and generosity on here - your project opened something up in me that was really unexpected in my own creativity and I will always be so grateful xx
You remain grateful but so do I, remember. As much as its thrilling for a few months to go into bookshops around the country and see your own work there, in piles or face out with little handwritten cards, it isn’t the kind of joy that sustains one, or lasts, or is even very good for a person. It’s heady and there’s no realistic chance it will ever happen again. But to write a book and then have people trust you with tales told back? That was the real thing - each time you and others took part, and still now xxx
Dear Tanya, Thank you for writing and sharing this very powerful piece. I admire the immense courage in what you have shared here. As well, I admire the lovely generosity of spirit that permeates this otherwise very sad story. The generosity of you caring for your difficult mother and sparing your husband and children of the clear out task following her passing. The generosity of welcoming that stranger's hug. Such wonderful generosity is so very YOU! Yet how very human of you to drive away chiding your oh so generous self. This part really resonated with me as I could hear myself in your admonitions. I too have a heart which leaps out to people and sometimes afterwards I find myself agonizing over whether how I behaved was safe or wise. So glad this ended well. So happy that you were carried by a stranger's kindness and your own wild gumption while doing such gut wrenching work. I wish you every wellness as you rest. May you remember to apply abundant kindness to self in this process of exploration and reclamation you are undergoing as a mid-life woman. Hugs from across the ocean from another mid-life woman in a process of reconfiguration of her own. ;) Jill...ps...I too am struggling with writing and have been making art rather than putting pen to paper. I am trying to see it all as expressions of self that are carrying me through a difficult time. Cheers!
Oh Jill. This is what I’ve missed in a year or more of needing to be more and more offline. Minds, histories, able to meet like this. Thank you so much for what you’ve written - a generosity equal, more than, to what you say you find in my way of writing and being. Much love across the miles. xxx
That last line jumped out at me, too. And I remembered having to do a similar clear-out of my mum's house in two weeks flat. I was 23 and our relationship hadn't been easy, as you know. I have a lot of those serious photographs of myself as a child. I didn't realise how strange and sad they were until I watched my grand-daughter growing up and I realised children are meant to be smiling and happy.
I am a great believer in the universe sending us messages from time to time. I wouldn't have wished that horrible injury you've recently had on anyone, but if it makes you reconsider your decision to stop writing, I for one would be really pleased.
There can be all kinds of barriers to writing and it's very hard to navigate them sometimes. I am pouring out page after page in private but can't bring myself to share any of it, and I know it is because a few years ago my daughter objected to something I shared online and considered completely harmless, and the humiliation and fear of it happening again has never left me (It didn't mention her, as it happened, or her child who wasn't even born at the time). It merely made public, at least in her opinion, the fact that in her eyes I was not normal. I wish I knew how to get over the fear that if she catches me doing it again she'll go no contact and stop me seeing my grand-daughter. On the whole we get on well now but it's something we can't quite get over, particularly as my husband completely took her side and refuses to discuss it. So if you feel like being agony auntie while you are housebound, any ideas would be very welcome.
Oh Miranda. This: "I know it is because a few years ago my daughter objected to something I shared online and considered completely harmless, and the humiliation and fear of it happening again has never left me (It didn't mention her, as it happened, or her child who wasn't even born at the time). It merely made public, at least in her opinion, the fact that in her eyes I was not normal. I wish I knew how to get over the fear that if she catches me doing it again she'll go no contact and stop me seeing my grand-daughter.”
I had to go no-contact with my mother-in-law of a quarter century just when the book deal was announced. An email she sent after seeing the good news made it clear that I would not survive all the risks of having a book in the world while continuing to be spoken to the way I’d accepted for my husband’s sake (then the children’s) since age 20.
But your fear is worse and the stakes are higher. You have more to lose. You say you’d appreciate my thoughts on that and I absolutely will think and come back here to this exchange when I feel I can say something of use. It may take me a while not because I’m busy but because I want to think on it. Be of real use. xxx
Thanks for the reply. I honestly don’t know how it will work out but I look for guidance through synchronicity and coincidence, even dreams. I knowo that being with my little grand-daughter has been incredibly healing for me and that the relationship is important to us both. I don’t want anything that comes from my ego to threaten that. I’ve also been in psychotherapy for a while and we’ve talked a lot about this together. So although it’s painful for me, I also feel it’s under control. So I will write anyway, write from the heart and if it’s meant to find its way out into the world, eventually it will, perhaps in a way I could never have imagined.
It’s so lovely to see you writing again. Thank you for everything x
I love to read your words Tanya . Your tender and earthed approach to ‘life ,love & death’ , soothes even when you express deep emotional pain , I think it’s because your words create an entrance / access to feelings that I find hard to put words to . Thank you for sharing your experience . Your writing is so beautiful . Charlotte xx
This is a beautiful connection, no less powerful for the anxiety that followed. I’m glad you decided to share it. ♡
A musician whose shows I used to attend always greeted me with the cushiest hugs, as if I were a friend he had been missing—and not only me, but everyone he met, even at first meeting. I once told him, “You hug with your whole heart,” and he responded, bewildered, “Well, yeah. It’s an embrace.” He emphasized ‘embrace’ in a way that made me register what a hug really means, what it is at its best. I realized I’d been primarily doing the standard American torso touch, palms only briefly resting on the back, and calling that a hug. How little that act conveyed when I really thought about it.
Since that moment, every time someone opens their arms to me, I consciously and wholeheartedly embrace them. Given that kind stranger’s efforts to be there for you, I do believe you received a whole-heart hug that day. :)
Firstly, I'm so glad you are back writing, and what a deep pleasure to read your words. The lightness and depth, and emotional honesty are everything I loved about The Cure for Sleep.
I had tears in my eyes reading this. What a kind and sensitive man to do that, and what a rare gift to connect like that to a stranger.
I'm sorry you have had to go through this complex ending of the relationship with your mum. So many feelings when a parent dies.
Fragility and strength: I love that combination in what you do. Thank you.
I nearly didn't read this as (coincidentally!) it's black bin day tomorrow and I want to collate all our waste paper bins before an early meal and a Zoom workshop, but I'm so glad I did. I'm so, so sorry for the pain and mixed emotions you describe. I'm lucky enough to have had a much easier burden to carry when I had to clear my mother's house on the other side of the Irish Sea from where I now live, but I remember those many trips to the dump, and the difficulty of disposing of things carefully. My Mum had done so well downsizing and keeping her little house tidy and free of clutter, but there was still a vast amount of stuff packed methodically into every nook and cranny. It took so long to distribute it all to charity shops, my siblings and niece, and the dump, and some of it is still in boxes in my house a dozen years later. We all have to do this eventually, or most of us do, but it's rarely discussed. Your post is resonant and eloquent. I hope it helped to write and share it.
I didn’t notice any! Although my own have been strewn with them this week - I’m still on quite a few strong meds and perhaps it’s been good to just type and not read back!
a tender reminder that we are to witness, notice each other. not fix (how could this gentle man know your "whole" story?). make an offering of ourselves and then listen to the response (internal and external.) and that listening to ourselves as we journey with our losses is so important. thank you so much for sharing.
Well that was worth the wait Tanya. A deeply humane story, beautifully told, as always.
There's no rush and no pressure, but I look forward to the next time you feel able to tell a short story. It'll be a gift, just like this one.
Oh thank you Tim. I had no plans to write even a small thing again - have a new diary beside me here in bed and even that I haven’t made a mark in yet. But of all the things that have happened since Mum died and the book of her and me went out into the world in a way that doesn’t need me to speak for it anymore… this suddenly came to me as something worth sharing as more about that stranger than me. I’ve been told I can’t return to painting/decorating and the gym til the new year so I hope I can begin my diary again at least.
Where is the best way to keep up with your writing?
For the moment, I've stopped writing too. Different rationale, but I'm contented to tell stories of where I am by making pictures. We've found each other on Bluesky so that's best for now :)
Yes, and I loved to see that you are making time series/revisitations of place: the kind of art I enjoy the most - so to have you in the Starter Pack (limited reach though it may have) is a good feeling.
Tanya, this story moved me to tears...At the point where you shared that the man had changed his plans so he would be there each time you returned, the tears came. I've been broken open in the past months by destruction and loss all around me, and a lot of little things each day make me cry, some very sad and heart-reading, but some truly beautiful. This story of yours was both, and how often is that true? I think I had not been noticing the beautiful, the kind, the loving around me nearly enough until devastation brought me to my knees. I had not cried, I think, in years, somehow had lost that soul-thread, and now tears are my daily companion as I feel all the pain and the gentle loveliness, all wrapped up together. Thank you thank you for sharing this with us this morning. You are a gift. Keep writing, my dear, if you can. It matters.
Oh Amy. It’s hard to think of you in a difficult time after the loss you wrote of so unforgettably for the Birds of Firle project. I lost heart sending that out into the world after Mum died last August, only went out once this year to someone who sent back a beautiful artefact but didn’t then have time to write an essay I could share. And with Twitter dying where could I share it? But now that Bluesky is feeling like old Twitter, with people reading and reposting essays, I am going to relaunch there in the new year. Sharing previous work by you and others as well as it being where new respondents’ work goes.
And before then, I’m thinking about the mobile you made: I had it up for a while then felt I should keep it carefully archived for the exhibition at Firle I still hope to make happen in 2030. But now I want to get it out again and have it in view (I’m also ordering a 16-image frame for the rook cyanotypes Deborah Parkin gifted me).
All this by way of saying things you have written and made out of your tearful times continue to hold use and beauty in the lives of others, as you say mine do for you.
‘The soul-thread’ - can feel my broken one being re-tied. Thank you xxx
Amy, I read your writing in Birds of Firle some time ago and just went back and re-read it. It was just as beautiful as I remembered. Thank you for sharing!
This struck a chord with me since I am clearing out my own home after 30 years of marriage; very unhappy for the last 10 of those years. And I have to clear it out with my soon to be ex-husband. But also, I'm reminded of a particular moment during the pandemic when I was a pharmacy technician and I had a meaningful, sentimental conversation with a customer. I reached my had under the plexiglass and held his for a moment. This human understanding and love that is so rare among strangers. Never forgotten. Still felt. And, yes, that suspicion of kindness and love - a leftover of abuse - may it fade and fade and fade.
‘May it fade and fade and fade’ - yes, how much I hope that proves true for you once this hard unhappy work of house clearing has been done. My mum had to do that alone for the most part before moving, as it was in pandemic and I couldn’t go to her beyond one emergency week straight after she finally got him out of the big remote house they were in. She was disabled and very weak and I feared for her doing that awful work, and she had OCD which made the mess-making of emptying and sorting truly distressing. But as she dumped more stuff she didn’t heal - nothing so quick or neat - but she did begin to feel herself as a separate person instead of bound to that awful man.
How you reached your hand out to that stranger. This is what we remember more and longest though - even if we don’t know the name of who offered that kindness.
“Life’s not that neat, even though people raised in chaos like me will always want it to be.” ….oh my does this resonate with me and my own story! As much as the subject of this piece of writing isn’t happy, I cannot tell you how thrilled I was to open my email to find it. I’d been meaning to respond to your previous posting about stepping back and not writing etc. (Can I say I cried reading that??) And I will do that. Life has been overly full emotion-wise and physically, so I’m catching my breath at the moment, and wishing the two of us were sitting in front of a fire with some big cups of tea and having a chat. Xx
Dearest Amy. Overfull - yes, yes: the work you and your mother have done for your relative is the kind of thing that needs much time and space afterwards, even if nothing else in your life or health or writing required it.
I really don’t know quite how or where or why today’s piece came to be. I still have a simple day to a page diary for July 24 to Dec 25 that I’ve bought and not made a single private mark in (me, who filled 54 big Moleskine exercise books, even while writing the scrolls, going through heartbreak, writing the book, nursing mum!). So I’m just accepting it as a strange bit of grace arriving in this fortnight of unplanned bedrest, that began a week after my last talk, the big anniversary of the near death and the day after my daughter’s 16th birthday. Perhaps at an unconscious level I needed to STOP and in that quiet a little true tale came out that I didn’t overthink or even craft. The Bluesky version has the kind of typos I’d never let happen usually!
One day we will be in your country or mine and yes, we will drink tea and eat scones or saffron buns with clotted cream (or whatever other English food you’d enjoy most). xxx
Tanya, I understand the process of not being able to write after deep grief. I could not dream after the pandemic for years, it was like global shock. Your story was bittersweet in the memories and feelings you shared, a sort of full circle of life and what remains after death. I loved how your photos kept showing up and the guardian at the dump supported you in your sorting of grief. And hugged you at the completion of making those trips to discard painful remnants of life with your mother. Snapshots of grief and love are difficult to sort through in the raw, pogniant memories. So many people do this unconsciously, not to feel thr memory that lives in objects that are collected over a lifetime and those who are left to make the full circle of letting go of all the things that once mattered. I loved your story Tanya. ❤️ xo
This from you means a lot, Anne, especially after all the other stories we have shared - yours, mine - through Hagitude and here. I’ve missed all those ongoing conversations with you and others - while having an absolute need to go quiet and relearn how it is to be a private person in this small town, getting to know the people who I pass by everyday whose names I haven’t known but am learning now. Thank you for reading. xxx
@Jody Day … this you will appreciate this article from Tanya Shadrick … Tanya I think I love you, very moving writing as always
Thank you Amanda. I never did get the hang of Notes, and so with sadness began to move away from Substack as an active voice and presence - even though I continue to curate any soul stories that find their way to my project (less know of course now that I no longer send monthly prompts, but that it’s just there for whoever may find it feels soulful in a different way to the great expansive years of 21, 22). It means a lot to me that you read my piece and shared it with Jody, who has the kind of presence on here that I hoped to offer people but don’t have the gift for. I share her wish to be of service, but found that my courage and energy finally began to fail me after getting mum to end of life last year...
Well done for both recognising and then honouring what feels right, right now, Tanya. Your writing is so delicate, so seeringly honest and undefended that it touches a deep place in people. At the same time, I know that process extracts a lot from the person actually doing it. There are so many ways to be of service and I trust you will find your way at just the right time
What a gift of words you’ve given me. Thank you. xxx
I have not counted the number of letters/shares above, but I have enjoyed reading each and feeling my own quiet pleasure meeting new writers who ‘speak’ the language I most enjoy ..
I will be back.
Thank you x
Losing a parent changes you, especially if there was trauma. I’ve not been the same since my father died in 2008, in fact my whole life changed when he died. I questioned all of my beliefs about the world and realized none of my beliefs were my own. This sent me on a healing journey that I’m still on today. I no longer speak to my mother as a result of this journey. I miss your reflections about life and death. Big hug! 🤗
Yes, our journeys have been similar I think. I no longer speak to my mother-in-law, four years now, although I did return at her request for my father-in-law’s funeral this year, and because my dear husband asked me to. Hard as it was to be there in a place where I’m not valued, despite the decades of trying.
I do miss the conversations about all of this we all shared on here - and you and others continue to have - but after mother’s death last year a great silence took hold of me. But this sudden week of bedrest let at least this one small true tale squeak through xxx
I’ve had a full year of a health issue myself and it feels as if I’m in a liminal space indefinitely. I recently had a minor surgery and the same morning fell and hurt my foot. So now it’s hard to sit from stitches or stand from foot pain so I’m stuck sitting around and the liminal space feels ever more present. I’m trying to have compassion for myself and hope for next year. My astrology forecasted some health issues this year so I’m hoping I’m on the tail end of that. It feels at times that I can’t catch a break, from the foot, to the surgery and the next thing. I feel knocked down by the universe repeatedly but I know that cannot be true?! I understand just wanting to “be” and integrate and marinate. I don’t much feel like writing myself. My husband was laid off most of this year and the stress of that and not knowing what the future holds, where will we go? We’re immigrants in Canada from the US and we wanted to stay here. We bought a cabin in the woods that needs a lot of work and most days I’d rather just live my life than work on a big project. It feels liminal, maybe because we’re heading into winter? I respect you taking the time you need to process your mother’s death, it’s a big deal, this life and death stuff. It’s not to be rushed.
That not feeling able to catch a break - yes, yes, that has been my and Nye’s life for several years now. It was that ever-increasing pressure that in the end led to a strange lifting/release/freedom. So much of what we though we’d be doing once I had a pretty successful book in the world at last is just not possible, and any opportunities that opened up are now behind me. There was an anxious time of thinking thinking thinking how to stay on track with what I’d worked so long to be part of… then a slow but steady move away from it into ‘so we need to spend less, pay bills, be good to each other, our friends, neighbours, kids, cats’ - all the stuff that always does really come first and which matters most, but it’s okay to want other things on top for ourselves isn’t it? But it took me a bit too long to return to those foundational things and believe they could take the weight of a life without anything else. It sounds like you are on a similar kind of unchosen but not-without-value path like this. What can we bear? What small small good things can grown in and around what’s pressing down on us? xxx
So very moving. My heart went out to you both. Much love
Thank you dear Tamsin. xx
Ah Tanya- so beautiful and poignant. And so nice to read words from you again on here, much love xx
Thank you. I never did really feel at home here once Notes took hold and it coincided too with mum’s dying time when a great silence took hold of me. I do so miss the long ongoing conversations I shared here with you and others but to have been a part of it for a while is more than most people get to experience. You and so many beautiful other people I met here and through various other online channels/projects. No less real than life we live in our towns or cities or villages. Just different in kind. xxx
My Dad died at a similar time to your mum and I relate so much to the things you have said since. We are lucky to have had your time and generosity on here - your project opened something up in me that was really unexpected in my own creativity and I will always be so grateful xx
You remain grateful but so do I, remember. As much as its thrilling for a few months to go into bookshops around the country and see your own work there, in piles or face out with little handwritten cards, it isn’t the kind of joy that sustains one, or lasts, or is even very good for a person. It’s heady and there’s no realistic chance it will ever happen again. But to write a book and then have people trust you with tales told back? That was the real thing - each time you and others took part, and still now xxx
Dear Tanya, Thank you for writing and sharing this very powerful piece. I admire the immense courage in what you have shared here. As well, I admire the lovely generosity of spirit that permeates this otherwise very sad story. The generosity of you caring for your difficult mother and sparing your husband and children of the clear out task following her passing. The generosity of welcoming that stranger's hug. Such wonderful generosity is so very YOU! Yet how very human of you to drive away chiding your oh so generous self. This part really resonated with me as I could hear myself in your admonitions. I too have a heart which leaps out to people and sometimes afterwards I find myself agonizing over whether how I behaved was safe or wise. So glad this ended well. So happy that you were carried by a stranger's kindness and your own wild gumption while doing such gut wrenching work. I wish you every wellness as you rest. May you remember to apply abundant kindness to self in this process of exploration and reclamation you are undergoing as a mid-life woman. Hugs from across the ocean from another mid-life woman in a process of reconfiguration of her own. ;) Jill...ps...I too am struggling with writing and have been making art rather than putting pen to paper. I am trying to see it all as expressions of self that are carrying me through a difficult time. Cheers!
Oh Jill. This is what I’ve missed in a year or more of needing to be more and more offline. Minds, histories, able to meet like this. Thank you so much for what you’ve written - a generosity equal, more than, to what you say you find in my way of writing and being. Much love across the miles. xxx
Hand on heart, receiving! Xo
That last line jumped out at me, too. And I remembered having to do a similar clear-out of my mum's house in two weeks flat. I was 23 and our relationship hadn't been easy, as you know. I have a lot of those serious photographs of myself as a child. I didn't realise how strange and sad they were until I watched my grand-daughter growing up and I realised children are meant to be smiling and happy.
I am a great believer in the universe sending us messages from time to time. I wouldn't have wished that horrible injury you've recently had on anyone, but if it makes you reconsider your decision to stop writing, I for one would be really pleased.
There can be all kinds of barriers to writing and it's very hard to navigate them sometimes. I am pouring out page after page in private but can't bring myself to share any of it, and I know it is because a few years ago my daughter objected to something I shared online and considered completely harmless, and the humiliation and fear of it happening again has never left me (It didn't mention her, as it happened, or her child who wasn't even born at the time). It merely made public, at least in her opinion, the fact that in her eyes I was not normal. I wish I knew how to get over the fear that if she catches me doing it again she'll go no contact and stop me seeing my grand-daughter. On the whole we get on well now but it's something we can't quite get over, particularly as my husband completely took her side and refuses to discuss it. So if you feel like being agony auntie while you are housebound, any ideas would be very welcome.
Oh Miranda. This: "I know it is because a few years ago my daughter objected to something I shared online and considered completely harmless, and the humiliation and fear of it happening again has never left me (It didn't mention her, as it happened, or her child who wasn't even born at the time). It merely made public, at least in her opinion, the fact that in her eyes I was not normal. I wish I knew how to get over the fear that if she catches me doing it again she'll go no contact and stop me seeing my grand-daughter.”
I had to go no-contact with my mother-in-law of a quarter century just when the book deal was announced. An email she sent after seeing the good news made it clear that I would not survive all the risks of having a book in the world while continuing to be spoken to the way I’d accepted for my husband’s sake (then the children’s) since age 20.
But your fear is worse and the stakes are higher. You have more to lose. You say you’d appreciate my thoughts on that and I absolutely will think and come back here to this exchange when I feel I can say something of use. It may take me a while not because I’m busy but because I want to think on it. Be of real use. xxx
Thanks for the reply. I honestly don’t know how it will work out but I look for guidance through synchronicity and coincidence, even dreams. I knowo that being with my little grand-daughter has been incredibly healing for me and that the relationship is important to us both. I don’t want anything that comes from my ego to threaten that. I’ve also been in psychotherapy for a while and we’ve talked a lot about this together. So although it’s painful for me, I also feel it’s under control. So I will write anyway, write from the heart and if it’s meant to find its way out into the world, eventually it will, perhaps in a way I could never have imagined.
It’s so lovely to see you writing again. Thank you for everything x
I love to read your words Tanya . Your tender and earthed approach to ‘life ,love & death’ , soothes even when you express deep emotional pain , I think it’s because your words create an entrance / access to feelings that I find hard to put words to . Thank you for sharing your experience . Your writing is so beautiful . Charlotte xx
This is a beautiful connection, no less powerful for the anxiety that followed. I’m glad you decided to share it. ♡
A musician whose shows I used to attend always greeted me with the cushiest hugs, as if I were a friend he had been missing—and not only me, but everyone he met, even at first meeting. I once told him, “You hug with your whole heart,” and he responded, bewildered, “Well, yeah. It’s an embrace.” He emphasized ‘embrace’ in a way that made me register what a hug really means, what it is at its best. I realized I’d been primarily doing the standard American torso touch, palms only briefly resting on the back, and calling that a hug. How little that act conveyed when I really thought about it.
Since that moment, every time someone opens their arms to me, I consciously and wholeheartedly embrace them. Given that kind stranger’s efforts to be there for you, I do believe you received a whole-heart hug that day. :)
Firstly, I'm so glad you are back writing, and what a deep pleasure to read your words. The lightness and depth, and emotional honesty are everything I loved about The Cure for Sleep.
I had tears in my eyes reading this. What a kind and sensitive man to do that, and what a rare gift to connect like that to a stranger.
I'm sorry you have had to go through this complex ending of the relationship with your mum. So many feelings when a parent dies.
Fragility and strength: I love that combination in what you do. Thank you.
I nearly didn't read this as (coincidentally!) it's black bin day tomorrow and I want to collate all our waste paper bins before an early meal and a Zoom workshop, but I'm so glad I did. I'm so, so sorry for the pain and mixed emotions you describe. I'm lucky enough to have had a much easier burden to carry when I had to clear my mother's house on the other side of the Irish Sea from where I now live, but I remember those many trips to the dump, and the difficulty of disposing of things carefully. My Mum had done so well downsizing and keeping her little house tidy and free of clutter, but there was still a vast amount of stuff packed methodically into every nook and cranny. It took so long to distribute it all to charity shops, my siblings and niece, and the dump, and some of it is still in boxes in my house a dozen years later. We all have to do this eventually, or most of us do, but it's rarely discussed. Your post is resonant and eloquent. I hope it helped to write and share it.
Thank you so much for reading, Clare, and sharing some of how it has been for you in turn.
I've now fixed the typos in my post! (Sorry ... it seems disrespectful not to have checked it more carefully.)
I didn’t notice any! Although my own have been strewn with them this week - I’m still on quite a few strong meds and perhaps it’s been good to just type and not read back!
a tender reminder that we are to witness, notice each other. not fix (how could this gentle man know your "whole" story?). make an offering of ourselves and then listen to the response (internal and external.) and that listening to ourselves as we journey with our losses is so important. thank you so much for sharing.