In 2008, I had my first cycle of IVF. I don’t know why, after the long struggle to get pregnant, I never even contemplated miscarriage, but I didn’t. Finally, my body was doing what it was meant to. In photographs from those early months, I’m dressed in colour, rather than my usual grey and black, my broad smile a thank you to whoever or whatever had granted me this gift. Then suddenly it was gone. I’m not brave enough (yet) to write about my feelings for my body then or now, but reading your work gives me hope of such courage in the future.
Ruth - how deeply moved I am by your kind words to me, but also, so very much, by your poem, and the loss & survival it honours. I have read it several times over and it will last in memory. I'm so glad to add it to the story archive. Here is your link
Dear Tanya, thank you in return. I really appreciate you reading and responding to my poem. It's the first time I've shared it. Your writing has come to me at a moment when I'm trying to find a way back into my own life and I'm finding reading your words both terrifying and inspiring in equal measure! Best of luck with the book launch; I have no doubt it will be embraced by so many readers who will resonate with its ideas and its beauty. Enjoy this time x
I am very moved at your words and they bring back to me my feelings on losing my first pregnancy many years ago. It was a lovely summer day too and I can remember exactly what I was wearing and the world around me was vivid and bright, whilst I was dark and cold inside and did not belong there. Thank you for sharing this with us and I send you love and best wishes. x
I've just seen this warm response from you to Ruth's beautiful and very moving contribution, Angela. Thank you for being a supportive presence in our story-sharing community. Tanya xx
I'm naked in the bedroom, doing a mad-woman, thigh-slapping dance. My husband grins from the bed.
"You're feeling better, then?"
And I am. I am feeling better. The cloud of not-me has lifted, and this is me, right here, right now. I can feel life bubbling up in me, the sheer joy of not feeling like that, but feeling like this.
I think C S Lewis described this feeling you get when you emerge after a long illness, or the first day of the long school summer holidays. That sense of things being right, of having things to anticipate. That's how I feel.
I didn't feel like this yesterday, or the day before. I've learned to accept that chemo takes away that feeling for a week or so. In that trough, I have no future, I can't plan, I have no goals. I hate feeling like that. I have carefully recorded how I feel over the chemo cycle, so I know that feeling will end. That's what I tell myself - "Hang on in there. This will be over soon" - but I don't really believe it - so that feeling, that waking up, that rebirth - it surprises and amazes every time. Despite everything, I'm me again.
Is it worth it? Almost. I'd rather do a mad, naked dance every morning. But then again, maybe I wouldn't. Maybe I need to feel reborn to do that.
Dearest Sarah. This is only a brief reply before the online launch, but I didn't want to wait any longer before curating your last and beautiful piece for The Cure For Sleep's Season One of Stories From (And Beyond) The Book! Your link, with my thanks as ever, below. Tx
This is so beautiful and life affirming, your ability to find joy in your body, in your life. I was so touched by the description of the trough and that ending, that ability to find beauty even in the dark times. I hope you are doing well.
Thank you, Sheila. Your timing is amazing! I have chemo tomorrow, so to be reminded of this piece, and the fact that I will emerge from that awful trough is really lovely. Thank you again.
Oh Sarah. I've been lying on my back in a dark room since six, paralysed by migraine. I'm so glad that this is the first thing I've seen now I'm able to check messages, so that I can say thank you again and as ever for your beautiful words for this story archive. And to give all my best thoughts for your chemo tomorrow. xxx
I nearly drowned in medication. Self prescribed, self administered, side effect, eventually, self loathing. Loss started early in my life, but real grief came late. To lose a parent young is to have half of you ripped away at a time when character is forming. It started with Valium for shock — administered by those that had license! I then knew something could take away the pain. Then came cough mixture, and around 17, I discovered the soothing balm of alcohol, regrettable part and parcel, of the rite of passage, and passage is how I survived for a long time. I traveled and briefly escaped myself. As with life there came deaths and always a sense of failure, a sense of being lost in what became a red mist. Others progressed on their journeys bearing fruit. I stumbled along bearing shackles. I came to a clearing where something quietly took the reins thus giving me pause to look inward, and then I awoke. I grieved my losses and started to live life on its terms. No softening the edges. Very quickly, I felt, breathed, heard, smelt, touched laughed and cried in real time and not through a maze of mess. My path appeared and I started walking, sometimes skipping. What had been a mystery took shape and what had seemed impossible became like breathing. I came to see there is no such thing as failure. I released myself from the ropes I had curled up in and threw off the fear! The fear of living.
Thank you again Monique for joining this shared endeavour. You are - as your dear friend Eve said about you on Twitter - a truly positive presence. I love it so much when fellow contributors read and respond warmly to each other's work and life stories on here. I'm also so sorry to know that you have experienced this kind of loss in your life: and hope that stories on this thread and others in this archive will, yes, help you feel less alone in that. Txxx
Dear Louise. This is only a brief reply before the online launch, but I didn't want to wait any longer before curating your latest and beautiful piece for The Cure For Sleep's Season One of Stories From (And Beyond) The Book! Your link, with my thanks as ever, below. Tx
Oh Tanya it was wonderful to see you in the flesh! Great interview. Thank you for being such a generous, sharing woman. My book has not arrived yet but Sheila’s has so will get to read soon one way or another. You have ignited something in me and for that I thank you also for your positivity and unselfishness. You are a great woman! Lxxx
This is a loss that began before I was born. I learned about it as a child: a name on the calendar, the briefest of facts: “Mummy had a baby before you. She was called K. and she only lived a few hours.”
Aside from this, she wasn’t discussed. There were no pictures of my parents from this time, nothing in the photo albums.
I looked for her everywhere. An older sister – I imagined her taller than me, more solid, less erratic. Women of a certain height were put on the shortlist; I’d gauge their age and suitability, and drunkenly ask if they could take her place. Flattered – or caught on the hop – they’d say yes, but these friendships drifted.
In my forties, I felt the loss of her again, keenly, as well as the silence with my parents, and talked to a group of women that I ran, read and mothered with. They listened, this group of sisters, and heard me.
The pandemic made time short and family even more precious. I took a deep breath and asked for K.’s story. My mother described an idyllic first pregnancy. She swam, and sewed summer dresses. And then K was born, one Saturday night in September, and no doctors were on duty when things went wrong. My dad had been sent home to sleep; a policeman had to wake him with the news. I listened, and cried for them, so young, and K., so brief. “That’s why you have your name, Amelia. We hoped you’d make everything better.”
What can I do? “Live” is the glib answer. Tell stories, ask questions. Be a sister. I have learned how to talk about the loss of K., how to take a deep breath and have difficult conversations. But I will always be looking.
Oh Amelia. Such a moving experience to come back to your words this morning, after listening to your fine questions and observations yesterday in the MA seminar. I have a huge capacity for remembering the names of everyone who writes for this project and as soon as you said you'd written just one, my mind's eye was looking for an Amelia and thinking I would find you here in the Rebirth section.
Please do remember that this space and my always open Ask Me thread here is a way you can test out your work and continue talking with me about how to make and share your words. You write here in this piece with such serious grace and measure. I'd love to see more from you...
Thank you Tanya, for the seminar and for your response here. Your encouragement and warmth is hugely appreciated. I'd felt nervous about coming back, because of the timing of everything last year, but there is much to be gained from re-entering this community. Your framing of writing as creative practice frees something for me.
I've just finished writing a piece for your latest prompt so will head over there.
Dear Amelia. Thank you so very much for this deeply-felt and delicately written piece. It is so moving. I'm sorry that book launch events have delayed my responding to it. It is now curated over the book site, and it is my privilege to have it there. Very best, Tanya x
Dear Tanya, I'm glad you liked my piece, I have been wanting to write it for a while. The delay in replying is because I suffered a totally unexpected loss: my dad died, suddenly, on the 20th of January. A massive shock. And I am even more glad I'd talked about K with him that summer, and hadn't put it off any longer. X
When I began my fourth round of physical therapy and my physical therapist, Samuel, asked me what I wanted to get out of it I said: “I want to be able to complete a hike when I’m in Wales in 6 months. An easy one, but a hike nonetheless, where I’m outside and walking without pain and loving being alive.” “We can get you there,” he said. And for six months, right up until the day I flew across the ocean, I stretched and exercised, had heat and ice treatments to knees, lower back, hips, and shoulders.
Then the big day came. It was sunny, clear blue sky. Those Welsh hills were so green! It wasn’t a mountain that I was going to scale, but a river walk just under three miles along paved and dirt path and through field and trees. My knees encased in neoprene sleeves provided stability, and the trekking poles took the pressure off my hips. I discovered tiny white fairy mushrooms, patted deeply fissured tree trunks, chatted with a group of river ducks. At the end of the trail I ordered a pint from the pub on main street and silently toasted myself. It wasn’t a rebirth but a readjustment: how can I do the things my formerly active body once did with ease, with the body I have now? There is always a way(s). It took six years for my thinking to get to this point, which isn’t surprising because chronic illness takes away so much. It takes time to begin with to simply come to some sort of acceptance that onc is sick and it’s not going away. With the hiking aids suggested by PT, and setting a reasonable goal for the kind of hike to undertake, I got my wish and a general way forward.
My dear Amy. This is only a brief reply before the online launch, but I didn't want to wait any longer before curating your latest and beautiful piece for The Cure For Sleep's Season One of Stories From (And Beyond) The Book! Your link, with my thanks as ever, below. Tx
Thank you so much, Tanya. Being a part of this has been so meaningful and important to me. I did make another submission around this time to the prompt on Regret—I only draw attention to this because I’m not sure you saw it (I submitted in quick succession) and it matters to me that you know I answered each call you sent out, even if not as timely as I’d have liked. Your graciousness in offering this space has meant more than words can capture. That I was able to actually follow something through to completion, for the first time in such a long time, makes me a bit teary—you saw to this possibility because you kept the response date open to the 20th. Thank you…thank you. These months reading your extracts, and responding in kind, has helped me to dig deep and cultivate my writerly courage. I was struck about your comments during the zoom launch about how reading had not gotten you any closer to what you really desired, and how it was only when you went out into the world and made yourself visible that things began to happen. This is something that rings for true for me, too. The opportunity you have provided these past months represents perhaps my first tentative steps out into the world. Again…thank you. Thank you doesn’t seem nearly adequate enough. -AM xx
Simple enough prompt… and yet I don’t know what it means for me to “come back”. Come back where? What if the feeling of loss, shame and failure was part of me from the very first time I was conscious of myself? The feeling of not knowing where you belong and who you really are. What if your whole life is just an attempt to mask that feeling? A generational trauma? Maybe. “Don’t cry and never show your fear. Trust nobody but yourself”, my grandmother used to say. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t trust myself because I didn’t know the meaning of trust. I trusted my grandmother and I trusted my parents, but they never agreed on anything. I was stuck in a triangle of hurt, resentment and secrets. People watching… all the time… learning the lines from their conversations. Trying to piece together a life script. Keeping a simple survival kit under my bed that a small child might need to live in the woods. Feeling how weak and small and helpless you are…
And then I came across a book that I didn’t even need to read. Just the title of it changed everything.
TO HAVE or TO BE - a light bulb moment. I wanted TO BE so badly but everything that I HAD was so fragile and damaged and sticky.
When I moved away from my birth country, left everything that I HAD and for the first time the feeling of being “out of place” and “lost” was justified so I could move on and build on that. I don’t need to “come back” to anything now. All that loss and shame and failure turned into water… flowing …and no bridges... not anymore.
What a poignant and yet also hopeful perspective this is. Read by me, who still, yes, has suitcases under her bed, packed with things I might need in an emergency, even though I long-married to a good man and have two young children who've never even had a nightime fear of monsters. Who sleep all night with the lights out. How much I'm able to inuit (but not of course know) about your childhood from this, despite our different birth countries and cultures. It is my privilege to have this in the story archive. Here is your link...
Monique! For the first time in a year and a half of this project, my email notifications that tell me every time a new comments comes in so i can check it, they have failed me! I've just found your beautiful poem and another regular contributor's fine story. I'm so sorry. If you don't here from me on here within a week of submitting something, don't worry about sending me a reminder in the comments on here.
I've now added your beautiful poem to the story archive, and here is your link. Thank you!
Season 1: 11 Rebirth “You wouldn’t have done that reading a book!” My colleague’s words raised a laugh around the staff room. We knew her aversion to housework.
I resisted the urge to scratch inside the plaster that encased my broken arm. Stepping the wrong way off the step ladder had not been the best way to start half-term. The timing was perfect: four days before my grade 7 piano exam. The last chance on that current syllabus, not only would entry have to be deferred but I would have to start again. Hours of practice felt wasted not to mention the cost.
Up jumped the inner critic. “Why exactly are you doing this? I mean you’re a pretty average pianist, aren’t you? You’ve already failed it once, or was it twice. You know that ‘third time lucky thing’ is a complete fallacy? Might fit the axiom, ‘Fail, Fail again, Fail better,’ but there its ends don’t you think? Might be time for a reality check?”
My current practical difficulies were enough never mind the mental stamina needed to keep going. Not driving would increase travel to work by 3 hours a day. It was my right wrist: I’m right-handed. Sleep was evasive. Sigh.
Then there were the pupils. Close to their mock GCSE’s, we had discussed failure and success. Only days earlier, I had put up my last failed piano exam results on the smart board. “In a few days,’ I explained, “I will re-take this exam. We’ve identifed my strengths and I’m going to capitalise on those by working on them. Make them even stronger.”
Not your weaknesses, Miss?”
“No. Strengths. OK. In your groups now. Let’s identify some strengths. And you’ve all got some.”
Me too, I thought. If I could have looked back from the future, to this point, I would see success ahead, grade 8 too, and an ability to teach during retirement from my main job. Then, it needed a sober reset and a dose of strong self-belief, maybe tempered by the hope of showing those young adults a certificate of success one day.
Jean, this is a lovely piece - moving from the loud sound of the inner critic, with all its close attention to probability, difficulty, doubt, to the interplay with your students: you helping them; this helping you. Here is your link:
This rebirth was not a big rebirth in terms of any type of trauma or illness, but just something that came together quickly one morning two weeks ago. I suppose it is a tiny rebirth, a resetting of the day, a day I could have clung to the dislike of doing any type of work with numbers. It will make no sense at all to anyone who is not familiar with the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack....so I'm just going to let go of fear and share....
A morning finishing up tax stuff for Jeff, a tight grip of my stomach, but I am stayin’ alive, leave for work and play songs from Saturday Night Fever and smile wide, let my body feel less than 54 and more than a woman in a green cardigan, khakis and sensible shoes, see a crow in a bare tree, beak open and swear that it is moving its head to the beat of my music and I should be dancing but I am laughing out loud, so hard, alone in my sensible car and this crow, right there with me, both of us early morning jive talkin’. I pass a school van and the lady driver is wearing a cowboy hat and I consider leaving my job to take that job, think of how the kids would smile as I greeted them with a “Howdy” and a tip of the hat each morning, even the kids who wouldn’t want to like me would learn to like me, try hard not to smile, then I’d show them my boogie shoes and they would have to laugh, the goal of my life: to get people to smile. A hawk circles over a Leechburg street, I wonder what it knows, John L waiting outside the Happy Day Cafe for them to open the door and pour him a fresh cuppa joe, 57 degrees in February and the world is burning, disco inferno still playing in my head, burn baby burn, been singing these songs since the 1970s and still don’t know all the words. Think of my new favorite quote: But life is not always beautiful, unless by beautiful you mean raw. (Quote from Caro Giles in Twelve Moons)
Sheila! I've had to be away from my desk most of the week...and what a treat to return to. I can absolutely see and feel you strutting and singing through that day. Huge smile reading it. All of it, but especially love those lines about seeing the school bus lady driver...
But then a twinge of anticipatory sadness: one day you will likely have got all you need from this project here, and your writing will be happening elsewhere... and I will miss so very much seeing what magic you make from each of my prompts! But then a counter surge of excitement... as with Caro, who you quote, I will also get the rare pleasure of reading your work published in other places, after first seeing your writing here...
Tanya, Glad you enjoyed it. I appreciate the optimism of your anticipatory sadness, but I think we are safe for some time to come. Your project has brought so much joy to my life, expanded my creativity. It has been lovely to get to know you more and to follow more rabbit holes from book suggestions and to share with the other contributors. I always look forward to each new prompt. xx
Ruth, I'm so very glad you've also joined the community here. I got the same great infusion of hope and power from reading it again here as I did when you shared it on Hagitude. I've laid it up as prose rather than poetry on the cure for sleep website as the one time I did lay up a poem (also in the Rebirth section) it has caused a loading error on that page that I'm still struggling with today - any time I need to edit that page to add new content it all scrambles!). The format isn't really set up for long poetry only prose. Have a look at it and let me know what you think - I think it reads beautifully as prose too, and there's also a link to your spoken version:
I’m sitting on a bench in front of the white clapboard hut of the bowling club. It’s a warm day in mid April, my first time out of the house since major surgery two weeks ago. I’ve walked here slowly, carefully. To my left, Hebden Water clatters over rocks on it’s way to join the River Calder in the centre of town. To my right, the hillside rises steeply towards Heptonstall. The pristine square of green in front of me feels like an anomaly.
I’m missing my ovaries, my Fallopian tubes, and a tumour that was benign but may not have stayed that way. I feel this as a lack, not a loss, although I am aware this may change. There is a book face down on the bench next to me: Four noble truths for writers.
A sudden movement, and a heron is beating its wings as it rises from the river and disappears over the ridge. The stateliness of it’s flight. A gentle breeze rustles the leaves in the sycamore trees. Then everything is still. Time stops. I feel that I am occupying my body in a different way. There is no distinction between my breath, the rushing of the river, or the fluttering of the leaves. We are all living things, taking up our space in the world. How can I describe this? I feel at peace. I feel a knowing, a settling, which is unlike anything I have ever experienced.
I feel a rush of love, of gratitude, and a dissolving of boundaries. I am alive, as the river is alive, as the trees and the heron are alive.
In a few weeks, or months, or however long it takes, I will be single again after thirty years. A new life is beckoning. It has just started. Here. Now. And my heart is beating, faster.
Kerry....I responded to this first as someone who has shared a wonderful long conversation with you, though we haven't met in real time or place (yet): this response was composed of concern for you, going through so much, and from what I can tell, quite recently.
But then the writer comes in and wants to say how much she admires the Japanese quality of your piece, like the book you invoke within it, like the state of connectedness you experience towards the end. And isn't this the wonder/the paradox of writing well: that even our hard times can produce a story with lines of beauty....
So glad you are part of this project. Here is your link:
I will be doing featured writers from the archives from Season 3 Issue 1 this month. It's a chance for writers who've done more than one piece to give a few lines of bio, answer a few questions from me, and then have a complete piece reproduced in the monthly newsletter. I'd love it if you'd like to be one of these people later in the year.
For Season Three of The Cure for Sleep with Tanya Shadrick…
As you know, I’m wanting to begin featuring pieces from the story archive, and hope also to share some thoughts from their authors.
I’ve been trying to create a form for this purpose, but it’s getting too complicated. Instead, if you’d like to be featured, please may I ask you to give the following information here in comments?
Where are you based (country or county is fine)
Your bio (no more than 50 words; written in third person)
A link to your website or social media – only if you’d like that to be included
(Remind me of) The piece you’d like featured
Where are you in your creative journey right now – and how does writing for this story-sharing community support that? (no more than 100 words)
Is there anything else you’d like to say about how you came to join this community? (no more than 100 words)
It happened over time, the fading, and the faltering. The falling followed, inevitably. Burdens crushed me. Body let me down. Everyone an enemy. Demons neutered joy, desensitised my fifty-something soul. Blinkered. Burned out. Beaten. Somehow, I kept the mask on. And then… someone saw past it. Someone who wanted to save someone who wanted to be saved. But not like this. Surely not like this?
I had a paramedic for my feelings, but that only bought time: I knew I had to perform the operation myself. Understanding this was just the start. Loss, shame and failure were my tumorous trinity. I was becoming made of them, needed to excise them. Or else succumb. I had one advantage: the mask. It had grown with me over the years and stayed in place, visor firmly down: you won’t see anything in my eyes. The mask allowed the fight to stay internal. And what a fight it was. But at least it was fought in private, with pride the least thing at stake.
What about the operation? Dealing with the hostile trinity meant moving on – people, places and positions cut out with a metaphorical scalpel. Surgical precision. The good bits kept, and the memories accepted. Priorities set, choices made, decisions enacted. Now for the rebirth…
I’ve read about rebirths. Been shown that a falling into disrepair and a false attachment need not prove calamitous. So, here’s what I did: I practised optimism, looked after myself, watched plants grow, observed the movement of creatures; I forgot about time by recapturing time, and gave to kind others as they gave to me; I shut out the time-thieves and the energy-drainers, sought out the like-minded. Above all, I walked – away from the crippling past and into a future where every day is called rebirth.
Every line of this held my attention and pulled me on to the next - your journey as a path to be followed. These words towards the end having particular power for me as I try to regain a more private and deep writing/walking practice after this so-public publication year: 'I forgot about time by recapturing time". Love this.
Look forward to sharing a conversation with you and your fellow students tomorrow.
Here is your link to your piece in the story archive:
Thank you for such generosity in your comments - your encouragement is cherished. We all find our own way to strength - you will do that as you dive deep in the next phase.
All of the T&N students loved that time with you this afternoon. What wisdom you passed on, and what inspiration! 🙏🏼✍️💚
It was the best possible way to mark the end of my book's publication year - being with all of you in deep conversation about how art gets made and sustained. In many ways I am right back at the beginning of that process once again in January. No writing plans, but a yearning to make something of use and beauty. It's lovely to feel we are all working in the same deep gear with shared values.
She was right when she said "You are at the start of your recovery and going feel like a pool of sea water all shaken up . Eventually the murky stuff will settle and things will become clearer".
Subtle yet profound shifts are occurring , inside of me and I notice them and I smile and a glow from within warms me , if but for a moment .
I swim again , but differently this time , authentically , as if all the times before I had jumped in the pool simply too 'out swim ' my big feelings , to keep them down and hidden to ignore my own shame and claim the high seat above all . I remember forcing myself with the might of a bully to get on the yoga mat whilst coyly googling 'yoga for hangovers', where now my body tells me when it wants to stretch.
It has been 2.5 years since I drank alcohol and I am a year into a recovery programme and they were right when they said 'pain is the touch stone of growth ' ,because I have felt pain . The pain of facing something I would have usually have drank on is like pulling a plaster off quickly . The growing pains full of humility and watering eyes when seeing and accepting the segments of myself that are undeveloped and immature and the deep emotional pain that sends you into the darkest parts of yourself when old wounds are scratched that were never properly faced and dealt with until now . Stretching , arching , letting go , a beautiful and natural dance . . 'whole ' of my being is gently turning around , recalibrating , forming new and healthy co ordinates .
Tears reading this beautiful piece from you, Charlotte. It's a privilege to share some of your recovery/rebirth journey and to showcase your writing in the project. Thank you.
and I've been working hard this weekend to refresh all the pages in the story archive, to still better honour the work you and others are sharing. I'd love it if you take a look, starting from the new landing page:
I feel the spark of this statement land somewhere deep, at the core of my sadness. I take in the image of this moment from my birth, and find myself unexpectedly give way to an expansive wave of empathy; for my newly born self and for my newly made mother, much younger than I am now, still raw from the stillbirth she endured only 14 months previously, the grief, the fear.
‘You must have been so scared’.
I can only imagine the next part; how I was inspected, tried to made sense of. What was wrong with me? A question so deeply bound into my sense of self that it may take a lifetime to unravel.
I am in the therapists room, eyes closed, trying to connect back to a time in my body when I sensed myself as whole, before I got the message there was something wrong with me, but however hard I try I’m unable to feel into it.
‘Go back further’
I am in utero, enveloped in the darkness, not yet observed. Suddenly there it is! I feel the free flowing wholeness I am searching for; a primary belonging, the great universal acceptance of my being, myself as a spark of the divine. As perfect.
I am preparing for the birth of my first child, reading about the sacred first hour, ‘The Golden Hour’, of skin to skin, of drinking in. I place a flower at the altar of my shame.
I pull my son up from between my legs and onto my chest; his arms stretched out, our bodies wide open, taking each other in. In our embrace we are born, welcoming each other, as we are, with unconditional loving acceptance, into a whole new world.
Oh my. What can I say? This is such a moving and beautifully complete piece of writing - the depth and dimensions of it: it goes back, and in, and forwards so far. I’m not active on Notes here on Substack this season, but I do hope you will share a link to this piece there if you are so it might find readers beyond this project - it’s a story and perspective that will be speak so strongly to so many I feel. A privilege to have received this. Thank you.
In 2008, I had my first cycle of IVF. I don’t know why, after the long struggle to get pregnant, I never even contemplated miscarriage, but I didn’t. Finally, my body was doing what it was meant to. In photographs from those early months, I’m dressed in colour, rather than my usual grey and black, my broad smile a thank you to whoever or whatever had granted me this gift. Then suddenly it was gone. I’m not brave enough (yet) to write about my feelings for my body then or now, but reading your work gives me hope of such courage in the future.
Winter
It was summer,
but a chill settled
in my bones,
my spirit froze
in fright
at its loss.
I tried to move
with the world
but every step
was stilted,
my feet
sloths in my shoes
In Tourmakeady
we trudged the hill
behind Mary Anne’s
in the slanting rain,
up to the pool
where we’d swam naked
the year before,
pretending to be
fearless,
the sheep looking on
then as now
in stolid rumination.
We drove to Westport
and ate seafood in O’Malley’s.
I heard my laughter
and wondered
if it would ever
again ring true.
At a session in Paddy’s
a girl played an air
on the low flute,
but not even those
mellow notes could
warm me.
This, then, was grief:
a cold companion
come to stay;
a world blunted
to lead;
a winter that began
that summer
and lasted
many seasons more,
making one
as indistinct
as the other.
Until one day
in Spring
I stood by a waterfall
in Edenvale
not long after snow,
and heard the last of the ice
crack and yield,
bursting like afterbirth
into the Sow,
and knew at last
that the thaw
had begun.
Ruth - how deeply moved I am by your kind words to me, but also, so very much, by your poem, and the loss & survival it honours. I have read it several times over and it will last in memory. I'm so glad to add it to the story archive. Here is your link
https://thecureforsleep.com/january-issue-on-rebirth/#ruthpetherick
Thank you and I hope when I resume monthly posts in March that you will continue to find words that will keep you good company in what I send. Tanya x
Dear Tanya, thank you in return. I really appreciate you reading and responding to my poem. It's the first time I've shared it. Your writing has come to me at a moment when I'm trying to find a way back into my own life and I'm finding reading your words both terrifying and inspiring in equal measure! Best of luck with the book launch; I have no doubt it will be embraced by so many readers who will resonate with its ideas and its beauty. Enjoy this time x
I am very moved at your words and they bring back to me my feelings on losing my first pregnancy many years ago. It was a lovely summer day too and I can remember exactly what I was wearing and the world around me was vivid and bright, whilst I was dark and cold inside and did not belong there. Thank you for sharing this with us and I send you love and best wishes. x
I've just seen this warm response from you to Ruth's beautiful and very moving contribution, Angela. Thank you for being a supportive presence in our story-sharing community. Tanya xx
This is so very moving. I am sitting here with tears in my eyes. I recognise that cold companion, you describe it so well.
I'm naked in the bedroom, doing a mad-woman, thigh-slapping dance. My husband grins from the bed.
"You're feeling better, then?"
And I am. I am feeling better. The cloud of not-me has lifted, and this is me, right here, right now. I can feel life bubbling up in me, the sheer joy of not feeling like that, but feeling like this.
I think C S Lewis described this feeling you get when you emerge after a long illness, or the first day of the long school summer holidays. That sense of things being right, of having things to anticipate. That's how I feel.
I didn't feel like this yesterday, or the day before. I've learned to accept that chemo takes away that feeling for a week or so. In that trough, I have no future, I can't plan, I have no goals. I hate feeling like that. I have carefully recorded how I feel over the chemo cycle, so I know that feeling will end. That's what I tell myself - "Hang on in there. This will be over soon" - but I don't really believe it - so that feeling, that waking up, that rebirth - it surprises and amazes every time. Despite everything, I'm me again.
Is it worth it? Almost. I'd rather do a mad, naked dance every morning. But then again, maybe I wouldn't. Maybe I need to feel reborn to do that.
Dearest Sarah. This is only a brief reply before the online launch, but I didn't want to wait any longer before curating your last and beautiful piece for The Cure For Sleep's Season One of Stories From (And Beyond) The Book! Your link, with my thanks as ever, below. Tx
https://thecureforsleep.com/january-issue-on-rebirth/#sarahconnor
This is so beautiful and life affirming, your ability to find joy in your body, in your life. I was so touched by the description of the trough and that ending, that ability to find beauty even in the dark times. I hope you are doing well.
Thank you, Sheila. Your timing is amazing! I have chemo tomorrow, so to be reminded of this piece, and the fact that I will emerge from that awful trough is really lovely. Thank you again.
Oh Sarah. I've been lying on my back in a dark room since six, paralysed by migraine. I'm so glad that this is the first thing I've seen now I'm able to check messages, so that I can say thank you again and as ever for your beautiful words for this story archive. And to give all my best thoughts for your chemo tomorrow. xxx
I nearly drowned in medication. Self prescribed, self administered, side effect, eventually, self loathing. Loss started early in my life, but real grief came late. To lose a parent young is to have half of you ripped away at a time when character is forming. It started with Valium for shock — administered by those that had license! I then knew something could take away the pain. Then came cough mixture, and around 17, I discovered the soothing balm of alcohol, regrettable part and parcel, of the rite of passage, and passage is how I survived for a long time. I traveled and briefly escaped myself. As with life there came deaths and always a sense of failure, a sense of being lost in what became a red mist. Others progressed on their journeys bearing fruit. I stumbled along bearing shackles. I came to a clearing where something quietly took the reins thus giving me pause to look inward, and then I awoke. I grieved my losses and started to live life on its terms. No softening the edges. Very quickly, I felt, breathed, heard, smelt, touched laughed and cried in real time and not through a maze of mess. My path appeared and I started walking, sometimes skipping. What had been a mystery took shape and what had seemed impossible became like breathing. I came to see there is no such thing as failure. I released myself from the ropes I had curled up in and threw off the fear! The fear of living.
This is wonderful and speaks to me how well you have articulated that loss of a parent at a young age
That fight to sooth our troubles that then becomes our troubles
Grief of a parent when still formulating one's self has been a road I travel still to this day it's comforting to know I'm not alone X
Thank you again Monique for joining this shared endeavour. You are - as your dear friend Eve said about you on Twitter - a truly positive presence. I love it so much when fellow contributors read and respond warmly to each other's work and life stories on here. I'm also so sorry to know that you have experienced this kind of loss in your life: and hope that stories on this thread and others in this archive will, yes, help you feel less alone in that. Txxx
It's amazing to read eveyone human experience and I'm so grateful this place is here ❤🙏
Dear Louise. This is only a brief reply before the online launch, but I didn't want to wait any longer before curating your latest and beautiful piece for The Cure For Sleep's Season One of Stories From (And Beyond) The Book! Your link, with my thanks as ever, below. Tx
https://thecureforsleep.com/january-issue-on-rebirth/#louisenewman
Oh Tanya it was wonderful to see you in the flesh! Great interview. Thank you for being such a generous, sharing woman. My book has not arrived yet but Sheila’s has so will get to read soon one way or another. You have ignited something in me and for that I thank you also for your positivity and unselfishness. You are a great woman! Lxxx
This is a loss that began before I was born. I learned about it as a child: a name on the calendar, the briefest of facts: “Mummy had a baby before you. She was called K. and she only lived a few hours.”
Aside from this, she wasn’t discussed. There were no pictures of my parents from this time, nothing in the photo albums.
I looked for her everywhere. An older sister – I imagined her taller than me, more solid, less erratic. Women of a certain height were put on the shortlist; I’d gauge their age and suitability, and drunkenly ask if they could take her place. Flattered – or caught on the hop – they’d say yes, but these friendships drifted.
In my forties, I felt the loss of her again, keenly, as well as the silence with my parents, and talked to a group of women that I ran, read and mothered with. They listened, this group of sisters, and heard me.
The pandemic made time short and family even more precious. I took a deep breath and asked for K.’s story. My mother described an idyllic first pregnancy. She swam, and sewed summer dresses. And then K was born, one Saturday night in September, and no doctors were on duty when things went wrong. My dad had been sent home to sleep; a policeman had to wake him with the news. I listened, and cried for them, so young, and K., so brief. “That’s why you have your name, Amelia. We hoped you’d make everything better.”
What can I do? “Live” is the glib answer. Tell stories, ask questions. Be a sister. I have learned how to talk about the loss of K., how to take a deep breath and have difficult conversations. But I will always be looking.
Oh Amelia. Such a moving experience to come back to your words this morning, after listening to your fine questions and observations yesterday in the MA seminar. I have a huge capacity for remembering the names of everyone who writes for this project and as soon as you said you'd written just one, my mind's eye was looking for an Amelia and thinking I would find you here in the Rebirth section.
Please do remember that this space and my always open Ask Me thread here is a way you can test out your work and continue talking with me about how to make and share your words. You write here in this piece with such serious grace and measure. I'd love to see more from you...
Tanya xx
Thank you Tanya, for the seminar and for your response here. Your encouragement and warmth is hugely appreciated. I'd felt nervous about coming back, because of the timing of everything last year, but there is much to be gained from re-entering this community. Your framing of writing as creative practice frees something for me.
I've just finished writing a piece for your latest prompt so will head over there.
Thank you so much for this space.
a xx
Dear Amelia. Thank you so very much for this deeply-felt and delicately written piece. It is so moving. I'm sorry that book launch events have delayed my responding to it. It is now curated over the book site, and it is my privilege to have it there. Very best, Tanya x
https://thecureforsleep.com/january-issue-on-rebirth/#ameliah
Dear Tanya, I'm glad you liked my piece, I have been wanting to write it for a while. The delay in replying is because I suffered a totally unexpected loss: my dad died, suddenly, on the 20th of January. A massive shock. And I am even more glad I'd talked about K with him that summer, and hadn't put it off any longer. X
Readjustment
When I began my fourth round of physical therapy and my physical therapist, Samuel, asked me what I wanted to get out of it I said: “I want to be able to complete a hike when I’m in Wales in 6 months. An easy one, but a hike nonetheless, where I’m outside and walking without pain and loving being alive.” “We can get you there,” he said. And for six months, right up until the day I flew across the ocean, I stretched and exercised, had heat and ice treatments to knees, lower back, hips, and shoulders.
Then the big day came. It was sunny, clear blue sky. Those Welsh hills were so green! It wasn’t a mountain that I was going to scale, but a river walk just under three miles along paved and dirt path and through field and trees. My knees encased in neoprene sleeves provided stability, and the trekking poles took the pressure off my hips. I discovered tiny white fairy mushrooms, patted deeply fissured tree trunks, chatted with a group of river ducks. At the end of the trail I ordered a pint from the pub on main street and silently toasted myself. It wasn’t a rebirth but a readjustment: how can I do the things my formerly active body once did with ease, with the body I have now? There is always a way(s). It took six years for my thinking to get to this point, which isn’t surprising because chronic illness takes away so much. It takes time to begin with to simply come to some sort of acceptance that onc is sick and it’s not going away. With the hiking aids suggested by PT, and setting a reasonable goal for the kind of hike to undertake, I got my wish and a general way forward.
My dear Amy. This is only a brief reply before the online launch, but I didn't want to wait any longer before curating your latest and beautiful piece for The Cure For Sleep's Season One of Stories From (And Beyond) The Book! Your link, with my thanks as ever, below. Tx
https://thecureforsleep.com/january-issue-on-rebirth/#amymillios
Thank you so much, Tanya. Being a part of this has been so meaningful and important to me. I did make another submission around this time to the prompt on Regret—I only draw attention to this because I’m not sure you saw it (I submitted in quick succession) and it matters to me that you know I answered each call you sent out, even if not as timely as I’d have liked. Your graciousness in offering this space has meant more than words can capture. That I was able to actually follow something through to completion, for the first time in such a long time, makes me a bit teary—you saw to this possibility because you kept the response date open to the 20th. Thank you…thank you. These months reading your extracts, and responding in kind, has helped me to dig deep and cultivate my writerly courage. I was struck about your comments during the zoom launch about how reading had not gotten you any closer to what you really desired, and how it was only when you went out into the world and made yourself visible that things began to happen. This is something that rings for true for me, too. The opportunity you have provided these past months represents perhaps my first tentative steps out into the world. Again…thank you. Thank you doesn’t seem nearly adequate enough. -AM xx
Simple enough prompt… and yet I don’t know what it means for me to “come back”. Come back where? What if the feeling of loss, shame and failure was part of me from the very first time I was conscious of myself? The feeling of not knowing where you belong and who you really are. What if your whole life is just an attempt to mask that feeling? A generational trauma? Maybe. “Don’t cry and never show your fear. Trust nobody but yourself”, my grandmother used to say. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t trust myself because I didn’t know the meaning of trust. I trusted my grandmother and I trusted my parents, but they never agreed on anything. I was stuck in a triangle of hurt, resentment and secrets. People watching… all the time… learning the lines from their conversations. Trying to piece together a life script. Keeping a simple survival kit under my bed that a small child might need to live in the woods. Feeling how weak and small and helpless you are…
And then I came across a book that I didn’t even need to read. Just the title of it changed everything.
TO HAVE or TO BE - a light bulb moment. I wanted TO BE so badly but everything that I HAD was so fragile and damaged and sticky.
When I moved away from my birth country, left everything that I HAD and for the first time the feeling of being “out of place” and “lost” was justified so I could move on and build on that. I don’t need to “come back” to anything now. All that loss and shame and failure turned into water… flowing …and no bridges... not anymore.
What a poignant and yet also hopeful perspective this is. Read by me, who still, yes, has suitcases under her bed, packed with things I might need in an emergency, even though I long-married to a good man and have two young children who've never even had a nightime fear of monsters. Who sleep all night with the lights out. How much I'm able to inuit (but not of course know) about your childhood from this, despite our different birth countries and cultures. It is my privilege to have this in the story archive. Here is your link...
https://thecureforsleep.com/january-issue-on-rebirth/#Elena
💙🙏
All losses group together as you get older , all merge into that place of letting go the surrender to it ,if your lucky or work hard enough for it .
We fight to hold on , we fight to let go it is said and I found this to be true
Of parents , of lovers , of pets and the idea of ourselves born of yesterday's
to many influences not enough just stopping and listening to who we really are if we just stop.
We carry these ideas like identities , passes to move through this life with the hope of less fuss , less uncertainty .
Ideas we thought of who we would be and images we curate of ourselves for others to see and for us to know our place and not feel any kind of loss
any kind of unsettlement
Until it happens
And they are not there anymore to hold on to
Life little deaths and big ones and all thats in-between
But grouped all together for us to mourn
To lay flowers for
And move on.
Monique! For the first time in a year and a half of this project, my email notifications that tell me every time a new comments comes in so i can check it, they have failed me! I've just found your beautiful poem and another regular contributor's fine story. I'm so sorry. If you don't here from me on here within a week of submitting something, don't worry about sending me a reminder in the comments on here.
I've now added your beautiful poem to the story archive, and here is your link. Thank you!
https://thecureforsleep.com/january-issue-on-rebirth/#moniquekennedy
Tanya xx
Ah Tanya please don't worry it was more cathartic just to slip it in there in a way it wrote itself as these do .
It needed to come out and I'm so grateful to have a beautiful place to lay it all out !
Passed your book on to a friend and recieved a text from her to say she's as spell bound as I was with you writing too
Lots of love
Monique xxx
I
I’m touched you would pass my book on in this way: what I most hoped for it. Xx
Season 1: 11 Rebirth “You wouldn’t have done that reading a book!” My colleague’s words raised a laugh around the staff room. We knew her aversion to housework.
I resisted the urge to scratch inside the plaster that encased my broken arm. Stepping the wrong way off the step ladder had not been the best way to start half-term. The timing was perfect: four days before my grade 7 piano exam. The last chance on that current syllabus, not only would entry have to be deferred but I would have to start again. Hours of practice felt wasted not to mention the cost.
Up jumped the inner critic. “Why exactly are you doing this? I mean you’re a pretty average pianist, aren’t you? You’ve already failed it once, or was it twice. You know that ‘third time lucky thing’ is a complete fallacy? Might fit the axiom, ‘Fail, Fail again, Fail better,’ but there its ends don’t you think? Might be time for a reality check?”
My current practical difficulies were enough never mind the mental stamina needed to keep going. Not driving would increase travel to work by 3 hours a day. It was my right wrist: I’m right-handed. Sleep was evasive. Sigh.
Then there were the pupils. Close to their mock GCSE’s, we had discussed failure and success. Only days earlier, I had put up my last failed piano exam results on the smart board. “In a few days,’ I explained, “I will re-take this exam. We’ve identifed my strengths and I’m going to capitalise on those by working on them. Make them even stronger.”
Not your weaknesses, Miss?”
“No. Strengths. OK. In your groups now. Let’s identify some strengths. And you’ve all got some.”
Me too, I thought. If I could have looked back from the future, to this point, I would see success ahead, grade 8 too, and an ability to teach during retirement from my main job. Then, it needed a sober reset and a dose of strong self-belief, maybe tempered by the hope of showing those young adults a certificate of success one day.
Jean, this is a lovely piece - moving from the loud sound of the inner critic, with all its close attention to probability, difficulty, doubt, to the interplay with your students: you helping them; this helping you. Here is your link:
https://thecureforsleep.com/january-issue-on-rebirth/#jeanwilson
Txx
Thankyou so much
This rebirth was not a big rebirth in terms of any type of trauma or illness, but just something that came together quickly one morning two weeks ago. I suppose it is a tiny rebirth, a resetting of the day, a day I could have clung to the dislike of doing any type of work with numbers. It will make no sense at all to anyone who is not familiar with the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack....so I'm just going to let go of fear and share....
A morning finishing up tax stuff for Jeff, a tight grip of my stomach, but I am stayin’ alive, leave for work and play songs from Saturday Night Fever and smile wide, let my body feel less than 54 and more than a woman in a green cardigan, khakis and sensible shoes, see a crow in a bare tree, beak open and swear that it is moving its head to the beat of my music and I should be dancing but I am laughing out loud, so hard, alone in my sensible car and this crow, right there with me, both of us early morning jive talkin’. I pass a school van and the lady driver is wearing a cowboy hat and I consider leaving my job to take that job, think of how the kids would smile as I greeted them with a “Howdy” and a tip of the hat each morning, even the kids who wouldn’t want to like me would learn to like me, try hard not to smile, then I’d show them my boogie shoes and they would have to laugh, the goal of my life: to get people to smile. A hawk circles over a Leechburg street, I wonder what it knows, John L waiting outside the Happy Day Cafe for them to open the door and pour him a fresh cuppa joe, 57 degrees in February and the world is burning, disco inferno still playing in my head, burn baby burn, been singing these songs since the 1970s and still don’t know all the words. Think of my new favorite quote: But life is not always beautiful, unless by beautiful you mean raw. (Quote from Caro Giles in Twelve Moons)
Sheila! I've had to be away from my desk most of the week...and what a treat to return to. I can absolutely see and feel you strutting and singing through that day. Huge smile reading it. All of it, but especially love those lines about seeing the school bus lady driver...
But then a twinge of anticipatory sadness: one day you will likely have got all you need from this project here, and your writing will be happening elsewhere... and I will miss so very much seeing what magic you make from each of my prompts! But then a counter surge of excitement... as with Caro, who you quote, I will also get the rare pleasure of reading your work published in other places, after first seeing your writing here...
Here is your link:
https://thecureforsleep.com/january-issue-on-rebirth/#sheilaknell
Txx
Tanya, Glad you enjoyed it. I appreciate the optimism of your anticipatory sadness, but I think we are safe for some time to come. Your project has brought so much joy to my life, expanded my creativity. It has been lovely to get to know you more and to follow more rabbit holes from book suggestions and to share with the other contributors. I always look forward to each new prompt. xx
There is a map
on my body,
like one
of those prized ones,
in all great storytelling.
It is not for
the faint of heart,
for the journey
it represents
is never for
the uninitiated.
I can follow silver trails
across my torso that trace
the journey of my life.
These trails
once stitched my muscles
back together
after they’d been
sliced open
to take out both my babies
and all of the cancer
which would have killed me.
My nerve endings
were destroyed but
they knit themselves
new pathways,
so I could feel
radiation butterflies
rising under the skin
on that knife edge sensation
between agony
and ecstasy,
as they fluttered over
the tattoos
which mark
the borders
of radiation country.
Like all powerful medicine,
in all the best stories,
it has to be contained,
as it heals,
or harms,
in equal measure.
In my cleavage,
one radiation tattoo nestles
like a secret symbol
of a society
to which no one
would choose to belong.
Those who notice
and understood
where I have been and,
what I have lived through,
never explicitly say,
but I know,
that they know,
as a softness
seeps into the conversation
and wraps me in their love.
But my story
is not just mapped
across my body,
it is steeped
in my soul
grief and loss,
joy and laughter,
and all
the wonders of this world.
No map needed,
no x marks the spot,
the treasure is all mine,
a lifetime lived
and the privilege
of being me.
(spoken here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHvIbpMucgU&t=9s)
Ruth, I'm so very glad you've also joined the community here. I got the same great infusion of hope and power from reading it again here as I did when you shared it on Hagitude. I've laid it up as prose rather than poetry on the cure for sleep website as the one time I did lay up a poem (also in the Rebirth section) it has caused a loading error on that page that I'm still struggling with today - any time I need to edit that page to add new content it all scrambles!). The format isn't really set up for long poetry only prose. Have a look at it and let me know what you think - I think it reads beautifully as prose too, and there's also a link to your spoken version:
https://thecureforsleep.com/january-issue-on-rebirth/#ruth
Really hope you'll be interested to try other themes here in the project.
And if you'd like to add your full name to the piece just let me know.
Tanya xx
Thank you Tanya, it looks beautiful and I definitely will see if I can fit into another theme in this wonderful life-affirming project, (just) Ruth x
Thank you for your lovely words Tanya. Have had a tough few weeks so it was good to remember that moment on the bench!
And what an honour to be asked to join the new thing later in the year…all I can reply is yes please. Would be delighted.
I’m sitting on a bench in front of the white clapboard hut of the bowling club. It’s a warm day in mid April, my first time out of the house since major surgery two weeks ago. I’ve walked here slowly, carefully. To my left, Hebden Water clatters over rocks on it’s way to join the River Calder in the centre of town. To my right, the hillside rises steeply towards Heptonstall. The pristine square of green in front of me feels like an anomaly.
I’m missing my ovaries, my Fallopian tubes, and a tumour that was benign but may not have stayed that way. I feel this as a lack, not a loss, although I am aware this may change. There is a book face down on the bench next to me: Four noble truths for writers.
A sudden movement, and a heron is beating its wings as it rises from the river and disappears over the ridge. The stateliness of it’s flight. A gentle breeze rustles the leaves in the sycamore trees. Then everything is still. Time stops. I feel that I am occupying my body in a different way. There is no distinction between my breath, the rushing of the river, or the fluttering of the leaves. We are all living things, taking up our space in the world. How can I describe this? I feel at peace. I feel a knowing, a settling, which is unlike anything I have ever experienced.
I feel a rush of love, of gratitude, and a dissolving of boundaries. I am alive, as the river is alive, as the trees and the heron are alive.
In a few weeks, or months, or however long it takes, I will be single again after thirty years. A new life is beckoning. It has just started. Here. Now. And my heart is beating, faster.
Kerry....I responded to this first as someone who has shared a wonderful long conversation with you, though we haven't met in real time or place (yet): this response was composed of concern for you, going through so much, and from what I can tell, quite recently.
But then the writer comes in and wants to say how much she admires the Japanese quality of your piece, like the book you invoke within it, like the state of connectedness you experience towards the end. And isn't this the wonder/the paradox of writing well: that even our hard times can produce a story with lines of beauty....
So glad you are part of this project. Here is your link:
https://thecureforsleep.com/january-issue-on-rebirth/#kerrywhitley
I will be doing featured writers from the archives from Season 3 Issue 1 this month. It's a chance for writers who've done more than one piece to give a few lines of bio, answer a few questions from me, and then have a complete piece reproduced in the monthly newsletter. I'd love it if you'd like to be one of these people later in the year.
Txx
For Season Three of The Cure for Sleep with Tanya Shadrick…
As you know, I’m wanting to begin featuring pieces from the story archive, and hope also to share some thoughts from their authors.
I’ve been trying to create a form for this purpose, but it’s getting too complicated. Instead, if you’d like to be featured, please may I ask you to give the following information here in comments?
Where are you based (country or county is fine)
Your bio (no more than 50 words; written in third person)
A link to your website or social media – only if you’d like that to be included
(Remind me of) The piece you’d like featured
Where are you in your creative journey right now – and how does writing for this story-sharing community support that? (no more than 100 words)
Is there anything else you’d like to say about how you came to join this community? (no more than 100 words)
It happened over time, the fading, and the faltering. The falling followed, inevitably. Burdens crushed me. Body let me down. Everyone an enemy. Demons neutered joy, desensitised my fifty-something soul. Blinkered. Burned out. Beaten. Somehow, I kept the mask on. And then… someone saw past it. Someone who wanted to save someone who wanted to be saved. But not like this. Surely not like this?
I had a paramedic for my feelings, but that only bought time: I knew I had to perform the operation myself. Understanding this was just the start. Loss, shame and failure were my tumorous trinity. I was becoming made of them, needed to excise them. Or else succumb. I had one advantage: the mask. It had grown with me over the years and stayed in place, visor firmly down: you won’t see anything in my eyes. The mask allowed the fight to stay internal. And what a fight it was. But at least it was fought in private, with pride the least thing at stake.
What about the operation? Dealing with the hostile trinity meant moving on – people, places and positions cut out with a metaphorical scalpel. Surgical precision. The good bits kept, and the memories accepted. Priorities set, choices made, decisions enacted. Now for the rebirth…
I’ve read about rebirths. Been shown that a falling into disrepair and a false attachment need not prove calamitous. So, here’s what I did: I practised optimism, looked after myself, watched plants grow, observed the movement of creatures; I forgot about time by recapturing time, and gave to kind others as they gave to me; I shut out the time-thieves and the energy-drainers, sought out the like-minded. Above all, I walked – away from the crippling past and into a future where every day is called rebirth.
Every line of this held my attention and pulled me on to the next - your journey as a path to be followed. These words towards the end having particular power for me as I try to regain a more private and deep writing/walking practice after this so-public publication year: 'I forgot about time by recapturing time". Love this.
Look forward to sharing a conversation with you and your fellow students tomorrow.
Here is your link to your piece in the story archive:
https://thecureforsleep.com/january-issue-on-rebirth/#paulgamble
Tan x
Thank you for such generosity in your comments - your encouragement is cherished. We all find our own way to strength - you will do that as you dive deep in the next phase.
All of the T&N students loved that time with you this afternoon. What wisdom you passed on, and what inspiration! 🙏🏼✍️💚
It was the best possible way to mark the end of my book's publication year - being with all of you in deep conversation about how art gets made and sustained. In many ways I am right back at the beginning of that process once again in January. No writing plans, but a yearning to make something of use and beauty. It's lovely to feel we are all working in the same deep gear with shared values.
She was right when she said "You are at the start of your recovery and going feel like a pool of sea water all shaken up . Eventually the murky stuff will settle and things will become clearer".
Subtle yet profound shifts are occurring , inside of me and I notice them and I smile and a glow from within warms me , if but for a moment .
I swim again , but differently this time , authentically , as if all the times before I had jumped in the pool simply too 'out swim ' my big feelings , to keep them down and hidden to ignore my own shame and claim the high seat above all . I remember forcing myself with the might of a bully to get on the yoga mat whilst coyly googling 'yoga for hangovers', where now my body tells me when it wants to stretch.
It has been 2.5 years since I drank alcohol and I am a year into a recovery programme and they were right when they said 'pain is the touch stone of growth ' ,because I have felt pain . The pain of facing something I would have usually have drank on is like pulling a plaster off quickly . The growing pains full of humility and watering eyes when seeing and accepting the segments of myself that are undeveloped and immature and the deep emotional pain that sends you into the darkest parts of yourself when old wounds are scratched that were never properly faced and dealt with until now . Stretching , arching , letting go , a beautiful and natural dance . . 'whole ' of my being is gently turning around , recalibrating , forming new and healthy co ordinates .
Tears reading this beautiful piece from you, Charlotte. It's a privilege to share some of your recovery/rebirth journey and to showcase your writing in the project. Thank you.
here is your link:
https://thecureforsleep.com/january-issue-on-rebirth/#charlottedawson
and I've been working hard this weekend to refresh all the pages in the story archive, to still better honour the work you and others are sharing. I'd love it if you take a look, starting from the new landing page:
https://thecureforsleep.com/beyond-the-book/
Tx
Many Thanks Tanya , your feedback /comments mean so much to me .
Thanks for creating this platform /community , such a kind /loving & giving thing to do .
Thank you Charlotte x
‘I was so overwhelmed, I just handed you back’.
I feel the spark of this statement land somewhere deep, at the core of my sadness. I take in the image of this moment from my birth, and find myself unexpectedly give way to an expansive wave of empathy; for my newly born self and for my newly made mother, much younger than I am now, still raw from the stillbirth she endured only 14 months previously, the grief, the fear.
‘You must have been so scared’.
I can only imagine the next part; how I was inspected, tried to made sense of. What was wrong with me? A question so deeply bound into my sense of self that it may take a lifetime to unravel.
I am in the therapists room, eyes closed, trying to connect back to a time in my body when I sensed myself as whole, before I got the message there was something wrong with me, but however hard I try I’m unable to feel into it.
‘Go back further’
I am in utero, enveloped in the darkness, not yet observed. Suddenly there it is! I feel the free flowing wholeness I am searching for; a primary belonging, the great universal acceptance of my being, myself as a spark of the divine. As perfect.
I am preparing for the birth of my first child, reading about the sacred first hour, ‘The Golden Hour’, of skin to skin, of drinking in. I place a flower at the altar of my shame.
I pull my son up from between my legs and onto my chest; his arms stretched out, our bodies wide open, taking each other in. In our embrace we are born, welcoming each other, as we are, with unconditional loving acceptance, into a whole new world.
Oh my. What can I say? This is such a moving and beautifully complete piece of writing - the depth and dimensions of it: it goes back, and in, and forwards so far. I’m not active on Notes here on Substack this season, but I do hope you will share a link to this piece there if you are so it might find readers beyond this project - it’s a story and perspective that will be speak so strongly to so many I feel. A privilege to have received this. Thank you.
https://thecureforsleep.com/january-issue-on-rebirth/#nicolareade
Txxx
Thank you Tanya, this means so much x
Pleasure x
I deleted trying to edit, fool I! I posted again and apologies for the mess!