Authenticity

One would think in a world where we allow so much to be “out there” thanks to the internet and social media, that people would be more authentic than they are. However, the digital world has instead created a questionable atmosphere because people think they have found it easier to pretend to be what they aren't.

I strongly believe in being as authentic as possible which is the harder road to travel because our society seems to praise those who pretend they are something they aren’t, or to praise those who follow rather than lead.

To be authentic, one must travel the road less taken, usually a road that doesn’t exist. I have often found myself on the outside of many circles because I wanted to take my road rather than one someone else had paved. It has also meant that along the way people haven’t helped me because for whatever reason I haven’t been good enough, interesting enough, or whatever-else enough.

But it always has been more important to me to be true to myself and if someone wasn’t going to help me on the paved road, then I’ve chosen to create my own, even when it’s been a more challenging journey.

There are occasional days when I question myself, but I know that in the end I will look back and be glad that I was my authentic self. After all, why would I want to pretend to be someone other than me?

Where the Past Remains as Inspiration

My Grandma Zurawski didn’t get to go to college. As I remember it, she had to help pay for her brothers to attend college, one of whom became a lawyer. She used to say how much she loved numbers and I’m sure there always was a sadness that she didn’t get to do more with that. She worked for the Nickel Plate Railroad in accounting and even golfed in the mornings before work.

But when she married my grandfather, who was a doctor, she devoted the rest of her life to her family.

Early in my college experience (before I went to Ball State University where I would get my BS from), I lived with her for about ten weeks. We would continue to write and call after I moved onto Ball State until she died two-and-a-half years later, just seven months after my sister’s suicide.

Always always always, she would say to me, “Don’t get into a relationship until you get your degree.”

Those words have always echoed in my head, words that I didn’t always heed, but ultimately listened to. At the time, I had no idea there would be two graduate degrees (both from the University of New Mexico), each one icing on the cake after the bachelor’s degree.

I think of her often and I have started to wear her locket. My mom had it and I believe it’s from the 1970s– the photo of my grandparents was taken in their living room– with her initials.

I wasn’t as close to my grandfather but I think of him often as well because I’m doing some volunteer work at the University of New Mexico hospital. I took this photo from the parking garage overlooking the medical school campus where I had been to record a video introduction for something coming soon.

I grew up hearing about the hospital where he worked and my house is filled with objects that I remember from their house. While my life forges forward, I don’t forget the past– where I came from and where I always wanted to go. And what I know what she especially wanted for me.

What Makes a Good Day?

I love to have parties, especially dinner parties. To me, there is nothing better than setting a table, making food, bringing people together. But the sort of dichotomy about me is that on holidays there usually aren’t any sort of gatherings at my house.

I grew up that holidays were meant for family and we spent all of them with extended family. After my grandparents died, it was more about immediate family, but we all gathered in some form or fashion.

Now that I live away from the little family I have left, holidays are more about doing other things. I gather people on days that aren’t holidays, on weekends that don’t have anything else marked on the calendar to represent the dates.

But in the earlier times of my family, Holy Saturday was the bigger of the two days for us. We went to my maternal grandparents’ house where we gathered with the rest of the aunts, uncles, and cousins, walking a basket of food to the church for the food blessing service, and then having a big meal afterward.

Easter Sunday was more low key especially after my paternal grandfather died and my grandmother went to a nursing home.

That means I don’t make big plans for Easter.

Greg and I went to the 8:00 am mass and were honored to be asked to carry up the gifts for communion. Afterward, we made a stop at the University of New Mexico campus where we took some photos of my new dress with Peep. The photo above isn’t one of the best for posting, but it’s one I really like– it shows a look between a look, the flowers blooming, and Zimmerman Library behind me. It’s a happy photo, one that makes me smile when I see it.

We still had house cleaning, laundry, a meal to prepare, and dogs to bathe the rest of the day. But after my first swim of the year in the pool, dinner in the oven, and the dogs drying from their baths, I rested on a lounge chair and looked around me.

It was a 70-something degree day. The sky was mostly clear. We had a nice day.

And that was all that mattered.

Making Change Even After Lent Ends

It’s hard to believe that Lent is almost over, that we have entered Holy Week, that Easter is less than a week away.

I wrote at the start of Lent how we can use this walk through the desert as a time to make change in our lives. When we make a sacrifice, it’s usually about making some sort of change (like giving up a type of food to lose weight) or vowing to exercise more. I often have used Lent as a time write more, reflect more, and to work on the always challenging, letting go.

Now that we’re less than a week from Lent ending, the question is– how do we sustain that change even after Easter has ended?

Now, I’m not talking about giving up pizza for the rest of your life. I’m from Chicago, I would never advocate for that! But I do believe there is a place for cutting back, for making things we love more of a treat, mostly to make us healthier and our bodies happier.

My Lent this year was about working toward letting go of certain worries that plague me. And in my house, while we eat fairly well, we’re trying to eat better and eat less (getting ready for those warmer months when we aren’t hiding behind our clothes).

Usually, I’m thinking of Easter as the end of this sacrifice to make change, but not this year. Easter feels like a checkpoint, a rest stop, a time to reflect and rejuvenate before starting the walk again. The walk might not be so desolate and dry as the desert walk of Lent was, but it hopefully still includes more time for the conversations with God that have increased during Lent.

Lent is a time to grow closer to God and you wouldn’t want that stop at Easter, would you?

Nine years...how can it be?

It was nine years ago Friday that Mom died.

I still can’t believe that nine years have gone by– it feels like she was just here and yet I know she wasn’t because so much has changed. I had four different dogs nine years ago (I have three now– I know that statement might confuse someone and think I have four). Greg and I weren’t married yet. Chelle Summer had yet to be created.

We were in San Diego Friday and it was a good day. We hit five estate sales and I found some great stuff at two. I’d like to think that it was Mom guiding me to the items or placing them in my path. And despite the many washed out beaches, we did get some beach time (on a rocky beach, no less) with a clear sky filled with sunshine. And we spent dinner with Mom’s cousin Pat and her husband Lee, eating Italian Beef sandwiches which Mom would have approved of.

Death anniversaries can be complicated, especially in the first years or the significant anniversary ones– five, ten, fifteen, etc. I never know how I’ll feel for them, but with Denise being gone thirty years this year, I was wrapped up in that and didn’t really dwell on the nine Mom is gone that hit the next week.

Maybe next year will be different when it’s ten, but I am grateful for a good day. While I was too busy to think much about her, it really is about the days she had with us, not how or when she left us. Still when I reflect back on Friday, it feels like she was part of the day, a day she would have enjoyed. Or perhaps she was enjoying it right along with us.

Telling the Story

I always knew I would write books. It was my dream from the time I was six years old. I just never dreamed my first book would be about not just surviving, but finding hope and thriving again, after my younger sister Denise’s suicide.

As I’m coming up the 30th anniversary of her death at the end of this week, the muscle memory is taking me back to the days leading up to her death (mostly memories of the NCAA Tournament, where I was when she died) and what would become memories of a different life, a life when she was still alive.

The book didn’t come right away after death. Honestly, it shouldn’t for anyone. We should be consumed with coping with the loss, finding our way through grief, and weaving it all together into what is a changed life. While Mom had said in days after Denise’s death that we should share her story, that maybe we could help someone else, it was several years before I understood what my sharing would be.

I had to travel a grief road I didn’t understand, especially as a 21-year-old college junior who just wanted to be writer. My path changed and I thought writing had slipped off my plate when I decided to become a high school teacher and coach.

But the writing never left me and I understand now that it was because I had to experience enough of my grief, of the reweaving, so I would have a story to tell.

I read as much as I could about suicide and grief. There was no internet as we know it (and no social media) in those days so my connections to other siblings survivors were mostly confined to my own brother and sister. I read about sibling loss, seeing how often it was downplayed even though they are the longest relationships we have in our lives.

The reading and research didn’t seem to end. There was so much to not just include, but to digest and find a way to use it to help others like me. The publishers weren’t interested; all the talking we do about so many things now didn’t exist twenty-some years ago.

But Jack Bolton understood. It was his wife Iris’s book that they had published when they couldn’t find a publisher about the death of their son Mitch. And that’s how Do They Have Bad Days in Heaven? Surviving the Suicide Loss of a Sibling became a book in July 2001.

There is much more I could say– it’s almost like what came after the book is a book, a journey, in itself. I sent order forms to support groups all around the country (I don’t think we were able to have direct ordering on the web site at that time although there was a web site that at least offered information and a message board).

Slowly, I began telling my story not just in Albuquerque as I had been while I was writing the book, but around the country. And then around the world. I earned a doctorate; I wrote more books on suicide grief. I began to expand into how the family as a unit grieved.

And I experienced more losses in my own life– my dad in 2005, a divorce (following my first husband’s head injury from a drunk driver in 2003) in 2011, and the death of my mom in 2014.

My sibling grief journey evolved, the book was updated to reflect that in 2021, and I now stand in a different place. It’s not about how Denise died thirty years later. It’s about the short time we shared together, the colors and prints of our childhood, of sharing those in unique ways as Chelle Summer.

It’s about finding hope even when everything seems dark as it did for her.

Learning to Lean on God

While when I reflect on my grief journey following my sister’s death– now just two weeks from happening thirty years ago– it can easily look like that also was the start of my spiritual journey. But by looking further back in the review mirror, I see that the groundwork was already in place when she died.

I will be the first to admit that my relationship with God was never a close one. Mom tried to introduce us to God, as he was important to her, and church, lighting candles, all those things. But I couldn’t relate to it.

It wasn’t until after my first big relationship break up that I needed somewhere “to go” so I went to church. That much Mom had put into place– teaching us that we could lean on God when we needed help even when we were interested accepting her suggestion. Just three years after that break up, Denise died and there was the God thing again.

Many people find themselves angry at God after the death of a loved one. While I understand this, it wasn’t something I ever questioned. Denise had made a choice to end her life. The hardest part for me was figuring out how to find a way forward, knowing I would have to go a long way without her. My view of the world was shattered and I had to recreate it, without that sense of safety from bad things happening to me.

On my first trip to Australia, I was in Sydney with several hours and nothing to do before I was due at the ABC broadcasting building for an interview so I went for a walk. I stumbled on the cathedral and I joke that that was my first pilgrimage. After that trip, each time I left the country, I made it a point (if possible) to attend mass or at least find a Catholic church and light a candle.

In Hong Kong, the spiritual part of my trip was slightly different. My friend Tony (pictured above), from Australia, and I took two trains and a long walk up a hill to visit a Buddhist temple. We had no clue what to do with the incense– wanting to be culturally appropriate– but we also couldn’t find anyone who spoke English so tried to act like we knew what we were doing.

While these are “big” experiences that happened, the crux of a spiritual journey is what happens in our day-to-day life when life isn’t going the way we hoped or planned it would. Grief is much the same, it’s really about those small moments, some people might say they are comments of grace, when we discover something new about ourselves or find joy again in the world.

Learning to lean on God isn’t something that happens overnight; that’s why they call it a spiritual journey. It’s a lot of steps each day, building on each one, and looking out around us with a new perspective.

Evolving Through Lent

I didn’t fully understand the meaning of giving up meat (and something else) during Lent until we traveled to Morocco (this photo was taken in Fez). We happened to be there during Ramadan and I became very aware of the sacrifice that Muslims make during that time of not eating all day. And what it means to their spiritual life.

I had stopped giving up anything for Lent the year after my sister died when I was sitting with the priest at Ball State, where I was a senior, and I made a comment that I needed to figure out what I was giving up for Lent. Fr. Dave said, “You’ve lost enough. Do something nice for yourself.:”

I kept Fr. Dave’s words in the back of my mind since then and in the past ten or so years ago, I changed it to do things that help me evolve as a person which in turn helps me grow closer to God. I often have this sense that I am closest to God when I’m writing and many of the Lenten goals I’ve set have been related to writing. Usually these include spending more time writing and trying to finish manuscripts. In some way, it’s prayer time for me because in the early morning darkness when I run Lilly, I ask God to bring me my writing for the day.

On Friday, I was visiting Fr. Gene, the Norbertine priest with whom I do my spiritual direction, and we were talking about this. “Lent is about change,” he said.

No matter what we choose to do for these forty days and nights we’re traversing the desert with Jesus– after all, there are many paths to God– it should be something that helps us evolve, to be better people, to make life more meaningful.

Wouldn’t those be the same things that would draw us closer to God, too?

The Oval Lessons

After my first book, Do They Have Bad Days in Heaven? Surviving the Suicide Loss of a Sibling, was published, a fellow sibling survivor told me she didn’t like all my track/running references because she couldn’t relate to them. She was the only person who said that, but it made me stop and think how many times I talked about how life felt like a series of hurdles in front of me.

But it also sparked thoughts about how much running cross country and track had taught me lessons that would serve me well coping with loss and navigating grief experiences.

It wasn’t just about those hurdles, the challenges we face in life, but learning to keep forging forward when we don’t believe we can run another step (aren’t there days that feel like that for all of us, even without a death loss?) I remember during my first cross country season in seventh grade, learning how to run a mile without stopping and then another mile and another mile. We were taught, when we wanted to stop, to look for an object like a mailbox, a tree, a stop sign, to run to. And then keep running by looking for another object. Slowly, we could run a longer distance by training our minds to keep going.

With such an intense grief experience ahead of me, not just the loss of my younger sister (wasn’t I supposed to outlive her?) but a suicide, too, it was like my brain reached into the files of lessons learned in the past and began to use them to keep me from not just stopping and standing still, but to keep forging forward.

As I was planning this blog in my head, I also began to wonder how many other experiences in our lives have helped us, have taught us, how to cope with something ahead, something unknown. But when it happened, the lessons were there and the skills ready to be accessed and put into use.

The Depths of Grief

This is what grief looked like when Denise died by suicide in 1993. This photo was taken by Pamela Joye on the University of New Mexico campus some years ago for me and when I recently saw it, I realized how much it personifies my grief experience. The path is there, yet I couldn’t see it.

There were no thoughts of telling Denise’s story in that time– I’ll explain how that came about in the weeks ahead– it was all about finding a way forward. And that’s what any grief journey should be, about delving into our pain because that’s how we do find our way out of it, our way forward, our way back to finding meaning and everything else that makes life worth living. It’s also how we find love again.

When Denise died in 1993, there was no Google to search for information on what the suicide bereavement journey would look like. The books available were very limited. And there weren’t a whole lot of support groups either. It was much more difficult to connect with people who had similar experiences; we had to rely on each other in our families where each of us told a different story because we had a different relationship with our loved ones who died. And friends who wanted to help us but didn’t know how.

I heard Garth Brooks on the radio not long ago, when I was driving home from my morning swim at the gym pool. It had been a long time since I’d listened to his music and I thought I’d tune up some on a run. For the first time in a long time, I felt myself take a trip back in time to my own initial grief journey after Denise died.

“What She Doing Now” came on and I remembered running through the snow in Muncie, Indiana, where I was a college student at Ball State University when Denise died. It was the next winter, my senior year, and I had to stop. The pain was so great, I just couldn’t move forward anymore in that moment. I don’t know how long I stayed there; somehow I found it inside me to keep going and return home, but that moment sticks out to me of what grief was like. You go forward, the world turns, daybreak comes, sunset comes, it starts all over again. Somehow you keep putting one foot in front of the other.

You don’t stop missing your loved one. You feel guilty laughing for the first time, for experiencing things without them (although you know it makes no sense because they aren’t alive now). Somehow, somewhere, I found that strength. Then sometimes I had to rest, but with rest comes strength again. And with strength comes movement forward, getting stronger each time.

A 30-year journey

Thirty years. In about five more weeks, my sister Denise will have been gone thirty years.

While I had been aware of it on some level, it wasn’t until Friday that it hit me in the head when I attended a luncheon for the local grief center. I had been the keynote speaker for this luncheon twelve or so years ago and I then remembered I had attended one of the first ones they had held, some sixteen years ago. Many of the people I knew who were involved in launching it, then called The Children’s Grief Center, have moved onto other things– as they should– the center has grown and I was reminded of how much work we have done locally and internationally to help people coping with any sort of loss.

It also reminded me of the many things that have happened in that time and all the things I’ve accomplished. But there was an even bigger recognition in my head– this isn’t about Denise’s death now, it’s about my journey since then.

Thirty years seems like such a big number, one of those significant anniversary numbers, one that we like to celebrate happily. Or a birthday of thirty when someone is leaving their twenties and going into a new decade, their thirties.

This photo was taken in Los Angeles in 2019 on Mulholland Drive. I still remember it clearly, the sun starting to set over Los Angeles and Hollywood. But my journey didn’t look like this when I started. I couldn’t see all that was ahead, above, or below. I could barely see in front of me.

I’ll be sharing some of these lessons learned in these thirty years over the next weeks. There’s a lot to reflect on from that time and I believe it’s important to share what I’ve learned that might help others. After all, if it helped me to move forward or inspired me in some way, then there must be something in there for someone else.

Seeds of hope, but not for everyone

I felt a surge of happiness last week after a trip to Sam’s Club and I saw the swimming pool supplies had arrived. Then I found cherries. On Friday, I picked up our free seeds from the Albuquerque Library. Spring, I thought, spring is coming.

I wrote last week about the challenge I feel during these winter months, but seeing signs of spring made me feel a bit lighter and more hopeful that warmth and green are ahead.

As I felt brighter though, I know many people find the signs of renewal of spring a challenge. That’s why we typically have more suicides in spring, especially March, than other months of the year. While the holiday season can be a struggle because people tend to gather more and be together more, there aren’t as many suicides as in the spring.

This year will mark thirty years since my sister Denise died by suicide age 17. I can still remember the days after her death and through her funeral in the Midwest– the darkness and the brown, very appropriate for our sadness.

But the day after I returned to college at Ball State and in the days that followed, I remember the sun shining and those very signs of spring that bring me hope. I also remember thinking that for her, those were the signs that made it harder to continue moving forward.

I don’t just grasp my signs of hope in spring, I cling to them. Just remember that what brings you hope, might not be the same for someone else. Give them that space for their pain because sometimes that’s all they need– for someone to acknowledge where they are.

January Survival

To say it’s miserable outside (it’s Monday as I write this) is an understatement. The wind was already blowing when I got up, a precursor to colder than usual temperatures coming to us for the rest of this week.

Despite the fact that I get up and run and run the dogs each morning, plus swim outside five mornings a week (in a toasty pool), I don’t like the cold. I really didn’t want to go to the pool this morning, but I knew I really didn’t have a reason not to do it. Just because the wind is blowing isn’t a good enough reason. Nor is the cold. Ice is another story, but there’s no ice today or probably this week either.

I had to be outside.

I don’t like January. Or February. Or March for that matter, but at least it’s usually warming up by then. I don’t like these months because they typically mean we’re bundled up inside. I don’t believe it’s cabin fever I get so much as I need to be outside, to be reminded of what’s bigger than me, to see the stars, the moon, and the planets, that always seem more visible in these months. And to see the changing seasons.

You might say I need that change of scenery and the cold air to remind me that I’m alive.

Obviously, that doesn’t mean I won’t complain about it, but I’ll do it anyway. Life is too short to stay inside. I know if I don’t go I’ll regret staying home, but if I stay home, I’ll regret not going.

How did we end up in this direction?

48,183.

That’s how many people died by suicide in 2021, the latest year for which we have data.

And if that weren’t enough to disgust someone, what irks me the most is knowing that circa 2005 when I was in the early thick of my suicide prevention work, we lost somewhere around 32,000 people to suicide. In New Mexico in those years, the number hovered around 365 because we used to say in workshops that it was approximately one a day. By 2020, that number had swelled to something like 516.

It’s been a sad, steady rise that shouldn’t be happening, especially given all the effort we have put into suicide prevention.

Sunday I did my first talk in quite some time on suicide (in person, too!). Pre-pandemic, most of my work had been focused on grief and I can’t remember too many times where it was solely suicide prevention related. That meant I found myself reflecting on the nearly 30 years (how have so many years gone by?) since my sister Denise died by suicide and the work I have done worldwide in that time.

One could say we’re more open about suicide, about mental health issues, that we do put more funding into help for people and for prevention. Maybe the stigma is less, but that also means people aren’t as afraid to kill themselves because there isn’t such a stigma. They seem to remain afraid to seek help, but perhaps not as afraid to end their lives. They don’t see a stigma for their family now so much as they feel relief that the perceived notion that they are a burden would cease to exist with their death.

And yet we still don’t have enough hospital beds for people, to give them the time to find the right medication, before being sent back into a world they fear. I have watched countless programs start up here in New Mexico– getting gobs of funding– and doing nothing in the end but fizzling out.

We now have an easy number to remember, 988, to reach out for help, yet how many people know about it?

We need to train people and then inoculate them of sorts so their skills asking a person if they are suicidal don’t diminish. We need to help everyone know where they can reach out to if they are worried about someone.

And in just a few short months we’ll be heading into March, the month where typicalyl the most people end their lives. While most of us find great joy in spring, for a depressed person, new life is hard to swallow.

Aren’t we ever going to learn?

Where do you go to meet God?

Somewhere in my shelves of books is one written by a nun about prayer. I don't remember the specifics, only that in the book she suggests coming up with imagery about where you meet Jesus. It’s a way of strengthening one’s prayer life by adding imagery to it. I remember that she had suggested on the shores of a lake.

While I don’t recall exactly how the conversation came about, it was a priest who had suggested to me that I imagine surfing with Jesus. At the time, I was still able to surf and this became an important part of how I formed my prayer life. I easily saw myself sitting on the beach with Jesus, our boards beside each of us, as we talked, having already been out on the ocean.

But recently I also began to realize how much I associate God with water. I am admittedly not much of a bible reader so I’m not going to count the references, I part of me wonders if there are more references to water than desert in the bible (and if I’m wrong, I don’t care– I like my idea better!).

I meet God in the gym pool five mornings a week where I swim my laps and contemplate my writing for the day. I meet God at the ocean when I’m there and need my inspiration replenished. And I meet God at my own swimming pool when I’m frustrated or irritated by whatever life might be throwing at me.

Something to think about in this new year– where do you go to meet God? Maybe by knowing that, you can find the peace and solace your inner world might be lacking. I know that’s helped me and the more I acknowledge it, the more I use it.

A New Calendar Year

We all know that I’m all about making change and moving forward– not that I always like it or want it, but I try to embrace it and understand it when I feel resistant to it. While I’m not a fan of full-blown new year’s resolutions because most people try to do too much at once, I do believe in making tweaks and changes that are sustainable for our lives (and those with whom we share our lives!).

I believe there is an opportunity when we open a new calendar, coming off the indulgent craziness of the holidays, ready to simplify and bring new organization to our lives. For me, it’s also about how I’m going to survive the next several months of cold torture. The more I can think about doing to keep my mind busy until the weather starts to warm back up again, the better.

January is usually a quiet month, a time not just to reflect (we’ve all had those down moments during the holiday to think about changes we want to make– especially after too many outings and too many cookies). And with the end of the calendar looming, we also tend to look forward to other changes (maybe moving the furniture around) when the holiday decor has been put away).

As I said, change doesn’t have to be big. Often, the smallest changes can ultimately result in the biggest shifts in our lives. What are those small things you can tackle, that feel manageable, but also will give you hope for this new year? Break things down into smaller steps, know that you can do this, that now is as good a time as any. Life is too short to stay where you are.

Holiday Season Thoughts

I have written many times in the past about finding balance in life and I’ve always heard about the importance of keeping our lives balanced during the holiday season (although not said that way, it’s always been about having a less stressful holiday season).

The universe has taught me some hard lessons this holiday season, ones I am aware of with still a week until Christmas itself.

I also have often said that I hear God the loudest during the holiday season, speaking to me through Our Lady of Guadalupe whose feast day is also my birthday.

This year I took a running start into the holidays, prepping Chelle Summer starting in July. But I was quickly disappointed when my first events didn’t go so well. I don’t want to dwell on this other than to say the world keeps changing and what worked last year, didn’t work this year. I have tried to listen to God, believing that maybe he’s been telling me to make some changes in directions and things that I do. I also know that sometimes the message gets sent more than once although we don’t always hear it or act on it so it gets sent again. While I won’t reveal what those messages were now, I got them and I’m working on them!

But there have been messages that have been hard to act on simply because there are only so many hours in the day. I can’t remember ever having such a busy holiday season. Granted, things are always busier than other times of the year between Thanksgiving and Christmas, this one has been an exception.

Taking all of this into consideration, I realized that there were things I didn’t need to focus on during this time because they were taking away from not just the meaning and enjoyment of the season, but the messages I really wanted to act on during this time.

As we come closer to Christmas Day, I hope that the season has been all that you wanted it to be and more. If it hasn’t been, remember we all have the opportunity to learn how to do more or do it differently. That’s why we have Christmas every year– it’s a reminder of so many things which would be a whole blog by itself.

For me, this year is about how I can do better next year, be more balanced, to not just hear the messages but act on them.

Happy Holidays, everyone! Stay tuned for what’s to come in 2023!

Transcendence

Facebook reminded me that 10 years ago today, my book on finding hope and new life through surfing after my sister's suicide and then my divorce. I sometimes I forget about the stories I have told- I understand now they are a reflection of a point in time where I was at and my hope always is to share authentically so that others might find hope from my journey

Robert Neimeyer, Ph.D., said it best in his quote on the back of the book:

"'Suicide,' writes author Michelle Linn-Gust, doesn't define me.' Instead, as she demonstrates in this slender but substantial volume, her sister's tragic death continues to serve as one motif among many that embroider the fabric of her life, in a 'work that takes (her) behind suicide... (to) circle around hope and living an authentic life.' As fluidly as the images of pools and waves that wash through this memoir, Linn-Gust carries the reader into and through the story of a life marked by trauma, activism, and transcendence, and that continues toward an unspecified horizon of possibility. I recommend it to all those who seek to understand the reconstruction of life stories in the wake of loss, in a way that conserves but is not captured by their darker chapters."

Photo by Pamela Joye– how many photos she took in a the course of a short weekend that carry this thread of water through them.

That Cooking Girl

Chelle Summer aprons were inspired by the aprons Mrs. Rosales made for Megan, the main character of my novel, That Cooking Girl, fictional story that takes place in Albuquerque about a woman who ends up doing a weekly cooking segment on local television to replace someone who was fired. And that’s just half the story! The other half involves an actor named Nate and a rebuilt motel on Route 66.

Back to aprons though– Mrs. Rosales is Megan’s neighbor and she offers to make an apron for Megan to wear while appearing on her weekly cooking segment. I heard once that George Burns said when he and Gracie Allen were doing “The Burns and Allen Show” on television, women were often sending letters and commenting on the aprons she wore so then women started sending new ones that they had made for her to wear on television.

In my story, while Mrs. Rosales had a stash of cottons that she used to make the aprons, Megan always wearing a new one, mine are made from vintage fabrics, usually tablecloths that are longing for new life. I used to worry about the stains on the tablecloths, but one Thanksgiving (long before I was making aprons), I said something about a stain on a vintage tablecloth I was using that day and my neighbor commented that it was part of the story.

The prints, the fabric that has held up often for more than fifty years, and the stains are all part of the story. The story yet to be told is the new apron I’ve created and that I hope someone will create new memories (and food!) while wearing.

Advent: The Anticipation Season of Magic

Every year, I think I say the same thing– while summer is definitely my season, I love Advent. I don’t love the cold that we encounter this time of year (and how the heck was I of all people born right before winter officially begins?!), but I love the magic and warmth that come during Advent.

While it’s a season of anticipation, building up to Jesus’s birthday on December 25, there is so much magic that surrounds this season. More than any other time of year, I sense that the unexpected is to be expected. I also feel closest to God during this time, or at least through Our Lady of Guadalupe whose Feast Day I share with my birthday (or, rather, she shares her day with me).

While I know for many people, it’s a season about gifts, I don’t think it’s ever really been all about that for me unless you include my childhood where I freely admit it was about the Barbie bathtub I really wanted (and did get!). I enjoy the energy and joy that surround the decorations, the music, the possibility of snow, and the traditional foods that we eat.

I also enjoy having people over, feeding them food I have made, food that’s sometimes been a part of my entire life. That’s my big gift to everyone this time of year– good food and the conversation that goes with it. I believe Jesus would like that, too, as he seemed to impart his wisdom at many dinner tables.

There’s more to the Advent season, the holiday season, than meets the eye if we allow the unexpected to rush through our front doors and give us all an energy boost that comes from within. And fulfills us in ways we never could have expected.