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Only Grieving Can Heal Grief; The Passage Of Time Will Lessen The Acuteness, But Time Alone, Without The Direct Experience Of Grief, Will Not Heal It.

-Anne Lamott

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Only Grieving Can Heal

Anne Lamott

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Only Grieving Can Heal Grief; The Passage Of Time Will Lessen The Acuteness, But Time Alone, Without The Direct Experience Of Grief, Will Not Heal It.

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My Father Really Taught Me That You Really Develop The Habit Of Writing And You Sit Down At The Same Time Every Day, You Don't Wait For Inspiration.

Pay Attention To The Beauty Surrounding You.

No One Can Appropriate God, Goodness, The Bible Or Jesus. It Just Seems That Way.

No" Is A Complete Sentence.

And You Try To Quiet Your Mind So You Can Hear.

I Think That Is Why We Stay Close To Our Families, No Matter How Neurotic The Members, How Deeply Annoying Or Dull- Because When People Have Seen You At Your Worst, You Don’t Have To Put On The Mask As Much.

I'm Drawn To Almost Any Piece Of Writing With The Words 'divine Love' And 'impeachment' In The First Sentence. But I Know The Word 'divine' Makes Many Progressive People Run Screaming For Their Cute Little Lives, And So One Hesitates To Use It.

The Society To Which We Belong Seems To Be Dying Or Is Already Dead. I Don't Mean To Sound Dramatic, But Clearly The Dark Side Is Rising. Things Could Not Have Been More Odd And Frightening In The Middle Ages. But The Tradition Of Artists Will Continue No Matter What Form The Society Takes. And This Is Another Reason To Write: People Need Us, To Mirror For Them And For Each Other Without Distortion-not To Look Around And Say, 'look At Yourselves, You Idiots!,' But To Say, 'this Is Who We Are.

I'm Not Going To Change The Way People Think About Me, But I Can Say You Know What? I'm Not Going To Carry That In My Backpack.

My Coming To Faith Did Not Start With A Leap But Rather A Series Of Staggers From What Seemed Like One Safe Place To Another. Like Lily Pads, Round And Green, These Places Summoned And Then Held Me Up While I Grew. Each Prepared Me For The Next Leaf On Which I Would Land, And In This Way I Moved Across The Swamp Of Doubt And Fear.

Evangelical Christians And I Can Sit Down And Talk One On One About How Much We Love Jesus, And Yet I'm Not Carried In Christian Bookstores.

Close Friendships Are One Of Life's Miracles - That A Few People Get To Know You Deeply, All Your Messy Or Shadowy Stuff Along With The Beauty And Sweetness, And They Still Love You. Not Only Still Love You, But Love You More And More Deeply. I Would Do Anything For My Closest Friends, And They Would Do Almost Anything For Me, And That Is About As Spiritual A Truth As You Can Get.

If We Can Believe In The Gnostic Gospel Of Thomas, Old Uncle Jesus Said, "if You Bring Forth What Is Inside You, What You Bring Forth Will Save You. If You Don't Bring Forth What Is Inside You, What You Bring Forth Can Destroy You.

This Is Our Goal As Writers, I Think; To Help Others Have This Sense Of--please Forgive Me--wonder, Of Seeing Things Anew, Things That Can Catch Us Off Guard, That Break In On Our Small, Bordered Worlds.

Most Humbling Of All Is To Comprehend The Lifesaving Gift That Your Pit Crew Of People Has Been For You, And All The Experiences You Have Shared, The Journeys Together, The Collaborations, Births And Deaths, Divorces, Rehab, And Vacations, The Solidarity You Have Shown One Another. Every So Often You Realize That Without All Of Them, Your Life Would Be Barren And Pathetic. It Would Be Death Of A Salesman, Though With E-mail And Texting.

You Don't Want To Spend Your Time Around People Who Make You Hold Your Breath. You Can't Fill Up When You're Holding Your Breath. And Writing Is About Filling Up, Filling Up When You Are Empty, Letting Images And Ideas And Smells Run Down Like Water - Just As Writing Is Also About Dealing With The Emptiness.

One Thing I Know For Sure About Raising Children Is That Every Single Day A Kid Needs Discipline.... But Also Every Single Day A Kid Needs A Break.

A Priest Friend Of Mine Has Cautioned Me Away From The Standard God Of Our Childhoods, Who Loves You And Guides You And Then, If You Are Bad, Roasts You: God As A High School Principal In A Gray Suit Who Never Remembered Your Name But Is Always Leafing Unhappily Through Your Files.

But Easy's Like, Who Cares? Easy's Like, How Much Is Easy Going To Get You?

But You Can’t Get To Any Of These Truths By Sitting In A Field Smiling Beatifically, Avoiding Your Anger And Damage And Grief. Your Anger And Damage And Grief Are The Way To The Truth. We Don’t Have Much Truth To Express Unless We Have Gone Into Those Rooms And Closets And Woods And Abysses That We Were Told Not Go In To. When We Have Gone In And Looked Around For A Long While, Just Breathing And Finally Taking It In – Then We Will Be Able To Speak In Our Own Voice And To Stay In The Present Moment. And That Moment Is Home.

I Very Rarely Read The Responses To My Salon Pieces, Because (as You May Have Noticed) The Trolls Can Be So Evil. So Violent In Their Hostility To Me And My Work. Ok, Wait, Wait, Wait. That's A Lie. I Do Read The Responses--and Get Mesmerized, Like Cobra Hypnosis. But I Laugh (mostly) At The Trolls, And Think About What Tiny Little Weenies They Must Have. (they Seem To Be Mostly Men.) And Then All These Smart, Funny People Leap To My Defense, Which Is Medicine, And Fills Me With Love And Thankfulness.

There Is Ecstasy In Paying Attention. You Can Get Into A Kind Of Wordsworthian Openness To The World, Where You See In Everything The Essence Of Holiness.

E-books Are Great For Instant Gratification - You See A Review Somewhere Of A Book That Interests You, And You Can Start Reading It Five Minutes Later.

You Want To Give Me Chocolate And Flowers? That Would Be Great. I Love Them Both. I Just Don't Want Them Out Of Guilt, And I Don't Want Them If You're Not Going To Give Them To All The People Who Helped Mother Our Children.

Sometimes I Think That Jesus Watches My Neurotic Struggles, And Shakes His Head And Grips His Forehead And Starts Tossing Back Mojitos.

The Last Song Was So Deep And Raw And Pure That I Could Not Escape. It Was As If The People Were Singing In Between The Notes, Weeping And Joyful At The Same Time, And I Felt Like Their Voices Or Something Was Rocking Me In Its Bosom, Holding Me Like A Scared Kid, And I Opened Up To That Feeling-and It Washed Over Me.

In Fact, Not Forgiving Is Like Drinking Rat Poison And Then Waiting For The Rat To Die.

The Grief And Tears Didn't Wash Me Away. They Gave Me My Life Back! They Cleansed Me, Baptized Me, Hydrated The Earth At My Feet.

After A While The Middle-aged Person Who Lives In Her Head Begins To Talk To Her Soul, The Kid.

He Told Me About His Monster. His Sounded Just Like Mine Without Quite So Much Mascara. When People Shine A Little Light On Their Monster, We Find Out How Similar Most Of Our Monsters Are.

I Believe That Discipline And Self-love Are The Total Secrets To Freedom.

Some People Seem To Understand This - That Life And Change Take Time - But I Am Not One Of Those People.

Life And Change

My Understanding Is That You Get To Choose Which Of Your Thoughts To Go With.

For Me, Being A Writer Is Not An Altered State. It's Very Ponderous, And Very - It's Like Being A Shoemaker.

Jealousy Always Has Been My Cross, The Weakness And Woundedness In Me That Has Most Often Caused Me To Feel Ugly And Unlovable, Like The Bad Seed. I’ve Had Many Years Of Recovery And Therapy, Years Filled With Intimate And Devoted Friendships, Yet I Still Struggle. I Know That When Someone Gets A Big Slice Of Pie, It Doesn’t Mean There’s Less For Me. In Fact, I Know That There Isn’t Even A Pie, That There’s Plenty To Go Around, Enough Food And Love And Air. But I Don’t Believe It For A Second. I Secretly Believe There’s A Pie. I Will Go To My Grave Brandishing My Fork.

I Never Had A Particularly Strong Craving To Procreate, Except For Earlier Fantasies Of Wanting To Be Marmee In Little Women.

Don't Look At Your Feet To See If You Are Doing It Right. Just Dance.

Writing Is How I Communicate My Deepest Beliefs, And What I Hope Are Helpful Observations About Our Dual Citizenship, As Children Of God, As Regular Old Mixed-up, Worried, Flawed, Precious Human Beings.

I Just Try To Love And Serve Everyone, And Bring Everyone Water, And Lend An Ear; That's What Jesus Said To Do.

We Can't Understand When We're Pregnant, Or When Our Siblings Are Expecting, How Profound It Is To Have A Shared History With A Younger Generation: Blood, Genes, Humor. It Means We Were Actually Here, On Earth, For A Time - Like The Egyptians With Their Pyramids, Only With Children.

I've Given Guys Blow Jobs Just Because I've Run Out Of Things To Talk About.' Oh, Rae. Who Hasn't

My Family Tends To Be Pretty Alcoholic And Drug-addicted.

Faith Includes Noticing The Mess, The Emptiness And Discomfort, And Letting It Be There Until Some Light Returns.

Writing Has So Much To Give, So Much To Teach, So Many Surprises.

In Fact, There's Really Only One Thing That Everything's Made Of; It's Energy.

She Felt As If The Mosaic She Had Been Assembling Out Of Life's Little Shards Got Dumped To The Ground, And There Was No Way To Put It Back Together.

So A Moral Position Is Not A Message. A Moral Position Is A Passionate Caring Inside You.

I'm All Over The Place, Up And Down, Scattered, Withdrawing, Trying To Find Some Elusive Sense Of Serenity." The World Can't Give That Serenity. The World Can't Give Us Peace. We Can Only Find It In Our Hearts." I Hate That." I Know. But The Good News Is That By The Same Token, The World Can't Take It Away.

Books Help Us Understand Who We Are And How We Are To Behave. They Show Us What Community And Friendship Mean; They Show Us How To Live And Die.

Good Writing Is About Telling The Truth.

Telling The Truth

There Are Moments When I Am Writing When I Think That If Other People Knew How I Felt Right Now, They’d Burn Me At The Stake For Feeling So Good, So Full, So Much Intense Pleasure.

We Write To Expose The Unexposed. Most Human Beings Are Dedicated To Keeping That One Door Shut. But The Writer's Job Is To See What's Behind It, To See The Bleak Unspeakable Stuff, And To Turn The Unspeakable Into Words - Not Just Into Any Words But If We Can, Into Rhythm And Blues. You Can't Do This Without Discovering Your Own True Voice, And You Can't Find Your True Voice And Peer Behind The Door And Report Honestly And Clearly To Us If Your Parents Are Reading Over Your Shoulder.

My Experience As A Writer Is That You Really Do Write Seven And Eight Pages To Find The Paragraph You Were After All Along.

For Me And Most Of The Other Writers I Know, Writing Is Not Rapturous. In Fact, The Only Way I Can Get Anything Written At All Is To Write Really, Really Shitty First Drafts.

You Get Your Intuition Back When You Make Space For It, When You Stop The Chattering Of The Rational Mind. The Rational Mind Doesn't Nourish You. You Assume That It Gives You The Truth, Because The Rational Mind Is The Golden Calf That This Culture Worships, But This Is Not True. Rationality Squeezes Out Much That Is Rich And Juicy And Fascinating.

I Am Skittish About Relationships, As Most Of The Marriages I've Seen Up Close Have Been Ruinous For One Or Both Parties.

These Days Cry Out, As Never Before, For Us To Pay Attention, So We Can Move Through Them And Get Our Joy And Pride Back.

The Difference Between A Writer Who Toughs It Out And One Who Doesn't Is That You Push Through The Parts Where You Know That You've Just Written Seven Pages When All You're Looking For Is One Paragraph.

Once An Old Woman At My Church Said The Secret Is That God Loves Us Exactly The Way We Are And That He Loves Us Too Much To Let Us Stay Like This, And I'm Just Trying To Trust That.

You Own Everything That Happened To You. Tell Your Stories. If People Wanted You To Write Warmly About Them, They Should Have Behaved Better.

My Best Teachers Were Mess, Failure, Death, Mistakes, And The People I Hated, Including Myself.

They Believe That If They Do Get Published, A Wonderful New Life Is In Store. It Will Turn Out That Deep Down They Are Really Valuable People And Will Have Lots Of Money From Now On And Really Cool People Like Ethan Hawke Will Be Dropping By All The Time. But It's A Lie. Being A Published Writer Will Make Them Long To Be Only As Mentally Ill As They Are Now. Their Current Level Of Obsession And Doubt And Self-loathing Will Look Like The Good Old Days. Honest.

Becoming A Writer Is About Becoming Conscious. When You're Conscious And Writing From A Place Of Insight And Simplicity And Real Caring About The Truth, You Have The Ability To Throw The Lights On For Your Reader. He Or She Will Recognize His Or Her Life And Truth In What You Say, In The Pictures You Have Painted, And This Decreases The Terrible Sense Of Isolation That We Have All Had Too Much Of.

I Quit My Last Real Job, As A Writer At A Magazine, When I Was Twenty-one. That Was The Moment When I Lost My Place Of Prestige On The Fast Track, And Slowly, Millimeter By Millimeter, I Started To Get Found, To Discover Who I Had Been Born To Be, Instead Of The Impossibly Small Package, All Tied Up Tightly In Myself, That I Had Agreed To Be.

Very Few Writers Really Know What They Are Doing Until They Have Done It.

Perfectionism Means That You Try Not To Leave So Much Mess To Clean Up. But Clutter And Mess Show Us That Life Is Being Lived.

We Want A Sense That An Important Character, Like A Narrator, Is Reliable. We Want To Believe That A Character Is Not Playing Ages Or Being Coy Or Being Manipulative, But Is Telling The Truth To The Best Of His Or Her Ability...we Do Not Wish To Be Crudely Manipulated...we Want To Be Massaged By A Masseur, Not Whapped By A Carpet Beater.

This Business Of Having Been Issued A Body Is Deeply Confusing... Bodies Are So Messy And Disappointing.

All Parents Are An Embarrassment To Their Kids. Often Grandparents Are The Relief. Kids Don't Have To Resist You.

Again And Again I Tell God I Need Help, And God Says, 'well, Isn't That Fabulous? Because I Need Help Too. So You Go Get That Old Woman Over There Some Water, And I'll Figure Out What We're Going To Do About Your Stuff.

...music Is About As Physical As It Gets: Your Essential Rhythm Is Your Heartbeat; Your Essential Sound, The Breath. We're Walking Temples Of Noise, And When You Add Tender Hearts To This Mix, It Somehow Lets Us Meet In Places We Couldn't Get To Any Other Way.

I Do Believe That God Is With Us Even When We're At Our Craziest And That This Goodness Guides, Provides, And Protects.

People Help You Or You Help Them And When We Offer Or Receive Help, We Take In Each Other. And Then We Are Saved.

Most Marriages Are A Mess, And The Children Get Caught Between Two Bitter, Antagonistic Parents. My Parents Stayed Married For 27 Unhappy Years, Till Their Kids Were Grown, And This Was A Catastrophe For Us.

We Write To Expose The Unexposed. If There Is One Door In The Castle You Have Been Told Not To Go Through, You Must. The Writer's Job Is To Turn The Unspeakable Into Words - Not Just Into Any Words, But If We Can, Into Rhythm And Blues.

What Fills Us Is Real, Sweet, Dopey, Funny Life.

When You Pray, You Are Not Starting The Conversation From Scratch, Just Remembering To Plug Back Into A Conversation That's Always In Progress.

You Can Get The Monkey Off Your Back, But The Circus Never Leaves Town

Here Are The Two Best Prayers I Know: 'help Me, Help Me, Help Me' And 'thank You, Thank You, Thank You.

What An Incredible Drug Fear Is.

Let’s Think Of Reverence As Awe, As Presence In And Openness To The World…try Walking Around With A Child Who’s Going, ‘wow, Wow! Look At That Dirty Dog! Look At That Burned-down House! Look At That Red Sky!’ And The Child Points, And You Look, And You See, And You Start Going, ‘wow! Look At That Huge Crazy Hedge! Look At That Teeny Little Baby! Look At The Scary Dark Cloud!’ I Think This Is How We Are Supposed To Be In The World – Present And In Awe.

To Love Yourself As You Are Is A Miracle, And To Seek Yourself Is To Have Found Yourself For Now. And Now Is All We Have, And Love Is Who We Are.

... One Of The Immutable Laws Of Being Human Is That The People Who Show Up Are The Right People. [p. 65]

The Whistle Is Always Waiting To Be Blown, And In Some Ways, It Gets Me To Do Better Work.

There Is Nothing You Can Buy, Achieve, Own, Or Rent That Can Fill Up That Hunger Inside For A Sense Of Fulfillment And Wonder.

Your Unconscious Can't Work When You Are Breathing Down Its Neck.

I Love Silence. I Seek And Create It At Every Opportunity. I Need It To Work.

I Am All The Ages I've Ever Been.

My Mother Was A Not-too-devoted Atheist. She Went To Episcopal Church On Christmas Eve Every Year, And That Was Mostly It.

The Mix In Our Rooms Is So Touching: The Clutter And The Cracks In The Wall Belie A Bleakness Or Brokenness In Our Lives; While Photos And A Few Rare Objects Show Our Pride, Our Rare Shining Moments ... These Rooms Are Future Ruins

I Wish I Had Thrown Out The Bathroom Scale At Age 16. Weighing Yourself Every Morning Is Like Waking Up And Asking Dick Cheney To Validate Your Sense Of Inner Worth.

Writing Can Be A Pretty Desperate Endeavor, Because It Is About Some Of Our Deepest Needs: Our Need To Be Visible, To Be Heard, Our Need To Make Sense Of Our Lives, To Wake Up And Grow And Belong. It Is No Wonder If We Sometimes Tend To Take Ourselves Perhaps A Bit Too Seriously.

Intelligence, Goodness, Humanity, Excitement, Serenity. Over Time, These Are The Things That Change The Musculature Of Your Face, As Do Laughter, And Animation, And Especially Whatever Peace You Can Broker With The Person Inside. It's Furrow, Pinch, And Judgement That Make Us Look Older - Our Mothers Were Right. They Said That If You Made Certain Faces, They Would Stick, And They Do. But Our Mothers Forgot That Faces Of Kindness And Integrity Stick As Well.

Pastor Veronica Told The Story Of A Sparrow Lying In The Street With Its Legs Straight Up In The Air, Straining. A Warhorse Walks Up To It, And Says, 'what On Earth Are You Doing?' The Sparrow Replies, 'i Heard The Sky Was Falling, And I Wanted To Help.'the Warhorse Sneers-- 'do You Really Think You're Going To Hold Back The Sky, With Those Scrawny Little Legs?' And The Sparrow Says, 'one Does What One Can.'

And She Is Going To Dance, Dance Hungry, Dance Full, Dance Each Cold Astonishing Moment, Now When She Is Young And Again When She Is Old.

We're Like Magic 8-balls. After You Ask Your Question And Shake The 8-ball, You Read The Answer In The Little Window. If You Ever Broke Open A Magic 8-ball With A Hammer, You Discovered That It Contained A Many-sided Plastic Object, With An Answer On Every Facet, Floating In A Cylinder Of Murky Blue Fluid. The Many-sided Core Held The Answer To Your Question. My Theory Is That, As With Our Children, As With Every Surface Of That Geodesic Dome Inside The 8-ball, Every Age We've Ever Been Is Who We Are.

Gratitude Begins In Our Hearts And Then Dovetails Into Behavior. It Almost Always Makes You Willing To Be Of Service, Which Is Where The Joy Resides. It Means That You Are Willing To Stop Being Such A Jerk. When You Are Aware Of All That Has Been Given To You, In Your Lifetime And The Past Few Days, It Is Hard Not To Be Humbled, And Pleased To Give Back.

I Kept Asking God For Help, And After A While I Realized Something -- That Josh Was Not Enjoying This Either. He Was Just Trying To Take Care Of Himself, And I Made The Radical Decision To Let Him Off The Hook.

I Had No Interest In Being A Theologian, Especially Not A Christian, As I Had Been Raised By Progressive Atheists. We Bowed Down Every Morning To The Golden Calf Of The New York Times, Noam Chomsky, Hannah Arendt. I Tried To Get My Parents To Respect And Nourish Me, Let Alone Delight In Me, So Even Though I Secretly Loved And Believed In The Divine Something - Goodness, Good Orderly Direction, Gift Of Desperation, The Cosmic Muffin - I Wasn't Ready Yet To Commit Myself To The Study Of A Higher Power.

You Try To Sit Down At Approximately The Same Time Every Day. This Is How You Train Your Unconscious To Kick In For You Creatively. ... You Put A Piece Of Paper In The Typewriter, Or You Turn On Your Computer And Bring Up The Right File. ... You Begin Rocking, Just A Little At First, And Then Like A Huge Autistic Child. ... Then Your Mental Illnesses Arrive At The Desk Like Your Sickest, Most Secretive Relatives. And They Pull Up Chairs In A Semicircle Around The Computer, And They Try To Be Quiet But You Know They Are There With Their Weird Coppery Breath, Leering At You Behind Your Back.

When I Was A Kid, Our Family Used To Watch 'bonanza.' I Really Liked Having A Sunday Night Tv Ritual.

If You Are Writing The Clearest, Truest Words You Can Find And Doing The Best You Can To Understand And Communicate, This Will Shine On Paper Like Its Own Little Lighthouse. Lighthouses Dont Go Running All Over An Island Looking For Boats To Save; They Just Stand There Shining.

The Truth Of My Experience Is That We Are All A Lot More Alike Than We Are Different.

Grace Arrived, Like The Big, Loopy Stitches With Which A Grandmotherly Stranger Might Baste Your Hem Temporarily.

And That Almost Everyone Was Struggling To Wake Up, To Be Loved, And Not Feel So Afraid All The Time. That's What The Cars, Degrees, Booze, And Drugs Were About.

I Am A Terrible And Lazy Christian. I Do Not Believe That The Bible Is The Literal Word Of God. I Just Skip About A Third Of It. I Love The Parts I Love So Much, But I Find A Lot Of It Just Appalling. When A Right-wing Person Quotes A Passage In Order To Attack And Stigmatize Another Person--or Group Of People--i Just Roll My Eyes.

... Everyone Has Come To Understand That Unconditional Love Is A Reality, But With As Shelf Life Of About Eight To Ten Seconds. [p. 110]

Unconditional Love

Dialogue That Is Written In Dialect Is Very Tiring To Read. If You Can Do It Brilliantly, Fine. If Other Writers Read Your Work And Rave About Your Use Of Dialect, Go For It. But Be Positive That You Do It Well, Because Otherwise It Is A Lot Of Work To Read Short Stories Or Novels That Are Written In Dialect. It Makes Our Necks Feel Funny.

If You Always Dreamed Of Writing A Novel Or A Memoir, And You Used To Love To Write, And Were Pretty Good At It, Will It Break Your Heart If It Turns Out You Never Got Around To It? If You Wake Up One Day At Eighty, Will You Feel Nonchalant That Something Always Took Precedence Over A Daily Commitment To Discovering Your Creative Spirit? If Not--if This Very Thought Fills You With Regret--then What Are You Waiting For?

There Is Nothing More Touching To Me Then A Family Picture Where Everyone Is Trying To Look His Or Her Best, But You Can See What A Mess They All Really Are.

I Believe In Listening To The - What Calls You From Your Heart And Your Spirit And If You Do It Badly, Like Learning To Dance, You Do It Badly Or You're Going To Kick Yourself When You Grow Old And You Meant To Do It.

I Still Encourage Anyone Who Feels At All Compelled To Write To Do So. I Just Try To Warn People Who Hope To Get Published That Publication Is Not All It Is Cracked Up To Be. But Writing Is. Writing Has So Much To Give, So Much To Teach, So Many Surprises. That Thing You Had To Force Yourself To Do - The Actual Act Of Writing - Turns Out To Be The Best Part. It's Like Discovering That While You Thought You Needed The Tea Ceremony For The Caffeine, What You Really Needed Was The Tea Ceremony. The Act Of Writing Turns Out To Be Its Own Reward.

When He Sees Little Kids Sitting In The Backseat Of Cars, In Those Little Car Seats That Have Steering Wheels, With Grim Expressions Of Concentration On Their Faces, Clearly Convinced That Their Efforts Are Causing The Car To Do Whatever It Is Doing, He Thinks Of Himself And His Relationship With God: God Who Drives Along Silently, Gently Amused, In The Real Driver's Seat.

I Could Become Like That Dyslexic Agnostic In The Old Joke - The One Who Lies In Bed And Tries To Figure Out If His Dog Exists.

Love Falls To Earth, Rises From The Ground, Pools Around The Afflicted. Love Pulls People Back To Their Feet. Bodies And Souls Are Fed. Bones And Lives Heal. New Blades Of Grass Grow From Charred Soil. The Sun Rises.

Falling In Love

Looking Back On The God My Friend Believed In, He Seems A Little Erratic, Not Entirely Unlike Her Father - God As Borderline Personality.

My Mother's Eyes Were Large And Brown, Like My Son's, But Unlike Sam's, They Were Always Frantic, Like A Hummingbird Who Can't Quite Find The Flower But Keeps Jabbing Around.

Gratitude Begins In Our Hearts And Then Dovetails Into Behavior. It Almost Always Makes You Willing To Be Of Service, Which Is Where The Joy Resides.

I Was Raised By My Parents To Believe That You Had A Moral Obligation To Try And Save The World. You Sent Money To The Red Cross, You Registered People To Vote, You Marched In Rallies, Stood In Vigils, Picked Up Litter.

I Do For Myself Exactly What I Would Do For You - Make A Lovely Cup Of Tea, Or A Hot Bath, Or Go Buy Myself A Fabulous Pair Of Socks. I Believe That You Take The Action, And Then The Insight Follows - I Do Loving Things For Me, Stroke My Own Shoulder, Put Myself Down For A Short Nap, And The Insight Follows: That I Am A Wild Precious Woman, A Human Merely Being, As E E Cummings Put It, Deserving Of Respect, Tenderness, Protection, Delight, And Solidarity. And That Is What Home Looks Like For Me Now.

We All Often Feel Like We Are Pulling Teeth, Even Those Writers Whose Prose Ends Up Being The Most Natural And Fluid. The Right Words And Sentences Just Do Not Come Pouring Out Like Ticker Tape Most Of The Time.

The Very First Thing I Tell My New Students On The First Day Of A Workshop Is That Good Writing Is About Telling The Truth. We Are A Species That Needs And Wants To Understand Who We Are. Sheep Lice Do Not Seem To Share This Longing, Which Is One Reason They Write So Very Little. But We Do. We Have So Much We Want To Say And Figure Out.

I Know Some Very Great Writers, Writers You Love Who Write Beautifully And Have Made A Great Deal Of Money, And Not One Of Them Sits Down Routinely Feeling Wildly Enthusiastic And Confident. Not One Of Them Writes Elegant First Drafts. All Right, One Of Them Does, But We Do Not Like Her Very Much. We Do Not Think That She Has A Rich Inner Life Or That God Likes Her Or Can Even Stand Her. (although When I Mentioned This To My Priest Friend Tom, He Said That You Can Safely Assume You’ve Created God In Your Own Image When It Turns Out That God Hates All The Same People You Do.)

You've Got To Learn To Let Go And Let Your Children Fall, And Fail. If You Try To Protect Them From Hurt, And Always Rush To Their Side With Band-aids, They Won't Learn About Life, And What Is True, What Works, What Helps, And What Are Real Consequences Of Certain Kinds Of Behavior. When They Do Get Hurt, Which They Will, They Won't Know How To Take Care Of Their Grown Selves. They Won't Even Know Where The Aspirin Is Kept.

I'd Wanted To Be A Writer My Whole Life. But When I Finally Made It, I Felt Like A Greyhound Catching The Mechanical Rabbit She'd Been Chasing For So Long--discovering It Was Merely Metal, Wrapped In Cloth. It Wasn't Alive; It Had No Spirit. It Was Fake.

Now. Maybe You Think It Is Arrogant Or Self Centered, Or Ridiculous For Me To Believe That God Bothered To Wiggle A Cheap Bolt Out Of My New Used Car Because He Or She Needed To Keep Me Away For A Few Days Until Just The Moment When My Old Friend Most Needed Me To Help Her Mother Move Into Whatever Comes Next. Maybe Nothing Conscious Helped To Stall Me So That I Would Be There When I Could Be Most Useful. Or Maybe It Did. I’ll Never Know For Sure. And Anyway, It Doesn’t Really Matter.

The World Is Always Going To Be Dangerous, And People Get Badly Banged Up, But How Can There Be More Meaning Than Helping One Another Stand Up In A Wind And Stay Warm?

The Problem With God - Or At Any Rate, One Of The Top Five Most Annoying Things About God - Is That He Or She Rarely Answers Right Away.

Get To Know Your Characters As Well As You Can Let There Be Something At Stake, And Then Let The Chips Fall Where They May.

If I Have A Huge Audience, I'd Like A Bigger Audience; Maybe Slightly A Slightly More Illustrious Audience.

Clutter And Mess Show Us That Life Is Being Lived.

This Is What Separates Artists From Ordinary People: The Belief, Deep In Our Hearts, That If We Build Our Castles Well Enough, Somehow The Ocean Won't Wash Them Away. I Think This Is A Wonderful Kind Of Person To Be.

I Don't Want Something Special. I Want Something Beautifully Plain.

Laughter Is The Key That Grace Has Arrived.

I Can Tell You That What You're Looking For Is Already Inside You.

I'm Kind Of A Gossip Hound, But Watching The Media Whip The Small Fires Into Giant Forest Fires So That They Can Cover The Result Is Infuriating.

We Cheated, You And Me, And Someone Noticed. I Noticed You; Someone Else Noticed Me. It Hurts Us. That's Not So Bad. So Many People Cheat. Everywhere On Every Level. Everyone's Cheated. I'm Just Saying That You Don't Need To See Yourself As A Cheater. Because That's Not Who You Are. You're Someone Who Cheated. There's A Difference, And You Should Try To Get That Difference, Or That's Who You'll Grow Up To Be.

Try Looking At Your Mind As A Wayward Puppy That You Are Trying To Paper Train. You Don't Drop-kick A Puppy Into The Neighbor's Yard Every Time It Piddles On The Floor. You Just Keep Bringing It Back To The Newspaper.

My Father Was A Writer, So I Grew Up Writing And Reading And I Was Really Encouraged By Him.

It Is A Violation Of Trust To Use Your Kids As Caulking For The Cracks In You.

Reading Poetry And Reading The Great Works Of The Canon That We Were Reading In The '60s And The '70s And '80s Was Mind Altering.

The Worst Time In Any Writer's Life Is The Two Months Before Publication. All Writers Become Mental And Pathetic, Even Those Of Devout Faith, Who Have Some Psychological Healing To Lean Up Against, And Gorgeous Lives. All Writers Think That This Time, The Jig Is Up, And They Will Be Exposed As Frauds.

Just Don't Pretend You Know More About Your Characters Than They Do, Because You Don't. Stay Open To Them. It's Teatime And All The Dolls Are At The Table. Listen. It's That Simple.

For Some Of Us, Good Books And Beautiful Writing Are Our Ultimate Solace, Even More Comforting Than Exquisite Food.

Slowly, After Dozens Of Rejection Slips And Failures And False Starts And Postponed Dreams - What Langston Hughes Called Dreams Deferred - I Stepped Onto The Hallowed Ground Of Being A Published Novelist, And Then 15 Years Later, I Even Started To Make Real Money.

My Mind Is A Neighborhood I Try Not To Go Into Alone.

I’m Probably Just As Good A Mother As The Next Repressed, Obsessive-compulsive Paranoiac.

Obsessive Compulsive

The Real Payoff Is The Writing Itself, That A Day When You Have Gotten Your Work Done Is A Good Day, That Total Dedication Is The Point.

If Something Inside Of You Is Real, We Will Probably Find It Interesting, And It Will Probably Be Universal. So You Must Risk Placing Real Emotion At The Center Of Your Work. Write Straight Into The Emotional Center Of Things. Write Toward Vulnerability. Risk Being Unliked. Tell The Truth As You Understand It. If You’re A Writer You Have A Moral Obligation To Do This. And It Is A Revolutionary Act—truth Is Always Subversive.

I Have A Giant Ego And Terrible Self-esteem, So I Need To Hit The Re-set Button Fairly Regularly - To Get Into Presence, And Humility, And Being Right-sized.

I Accidentally Forgot To Graduate From College.

You Have To Be A Warrior And Say, "maybe It's Everyone Else's System, But It's Not Mine." (from Her Recent Interview Here, On Goodreads)

Rule 1: When All Else Fails, Follow Instructions. And Rule 2: Don't Be An Asshole.

When All Else Fails

Frequently, As So Many Poets And Psalmists And Songwriters Have Said, The Invisible Shift Happens Through The Broken Places.

He Got Me A Cup Of Tea With Honey, Toast With Honey, Yogurt With Honey, Like I Was John The Baptist With The Flu.

...it Really Is Easier To Experience Spiritual Connection When Your Life Is In The Process Of Coming Apart.

I Didn't Need To Understand The Hypostatic Unity Of The Trinity; I Just Needed To Turn My Life Over To Whoever Came Up With Redwood Trees.

One Line Of Dialogue That Rings True Reveals Character In A Way That Pages Of Description Can't.

Everyone Is Flailing Through This Life Without An Owner's Manual, With Whatever Modicum Of Grace And Good Humor We Can Manage.

The Clipping Said Forgiveness Meant That God Is For Giving, And That We Are Here For Giving Too, And That To Withold Love Or Blessings Is To Be Completely Delusional.

Perfectionism Is The Voice Of The Oppressor; The Enemy Of The People. It Will Keep You Insane Your Whole Life.

I Don't Have Very Sophisticated Taste In Music. I Listen To A Lot Of Folk Music. I Like Reggae.

Prayer Is Talking To Something Or Anything With Which We Seek Union, Even If We Are Bitter Or Insane Or Broken. (in Fact, These Are Probably The Best Possible Conditions Under Which To Pray.) Prayer Is Taking A Chance That Against All Odds And Past History, We Are Loved And Chosen, And Do Not Have To Get It Together Before We Show Up.

Pets Are The World To Me. I Think They Are The Most Obvious Manifestations Of Divine Love That We Are Going To See This Side Of Eternity.

Most People's Intuitions Are Drowned Out By Folk Sayings. We Have A Moment Of Real Feeling Or Insight, And Then We Come Up With A Folk Saying That Captures The Insight In A Kind Of Wash. The Intuition May Be Real And Ripe, Fresh With Possibilities, But The Folk Saying Is Guaranteed To Be A Cliche, Stale And Self-contained.

What If We Never 'get Over' Certain Deaths, Or Our Childhoods? What If The Idea That We Should Have By Now, Or Will, Is A Great Palace Lie? What If We're Not Supposed To? What If It Takes A Life Time...?

Honesty Is Not Necessarily Interesting. I Don't Want To Hear About Your Dreams Or Your Acid Trips, Probably Unless You Make Them Really Interesting.

Left To My Own Devices, My First Inclination Is To Mess In Other People's Lives. I Secretly Believe My Whole Family, And Really The Whole World, Is My Responsibility.

I've Always Understood That Meditation Had To Be Part Of - Or Was Part Of The Natural Path And So I've Always Sort Of Dabbled In It.

Almost All Good Writing Begins With Terrible First Efforts. You Need To Start Somewhere. Start By Getting Something—anything—down On Paper. What I’ve Learned To Do When I Sit Down To Work On A Shitty First Draft Is To Quiet The Voices In My Head.

Many Mornings I Check Out The News As Soon As I Wake Up, Because If It Turns Out That The World Is Coming To An End That Day, I Am Going To Eat The Frosting Off An Entire Carrot Cake; Just For A Start. Then I Will Move Onto Vats Of Clam Dip, Pots Of Crime Brûlée, Nachos, M & M's Etc. Then I Will Max Out Both My Credit Cards.

This Is The Easter Message, That Awakening Is Possible, To The Goodness Of God, The Sacredness Of Human Life, The Sisterhood And Brotherhood Of All.

Laughter Is Carbonated Holiness.

Greasy Food Is So Comforting When You Are Hungover.

We Are Not Here To See Through One Another, But To See One Another Through.

I've Written Six Novels And Four Pieces Of Nonfiction, So I Don't Really Have A Genre These Days.

Having A Child As A Single Mother Was A Crucible - Maybe This Is True For All Parents. I Got Rid Of So Much Stuff That Didn't Really Matter In The Scheme Of Things-like Throwing Stuff Out Of An Airplane That Kept Me Flying Too Low. What Was Left Was Essential, I.e. Not A Lot Of Extraneous Stuff That Had Kept Me Busy And People-pleasing. I Just Didn't Have The Luxury Of Wasting My Life Force On So Much Stupidity And Distraction. That Made Me Strong.

I Wish Grace And Healing Were More Abracadabra Kind Of Things. Also, That Delicate Silver Bells Would Ring To Announce Grace's Arrival. But No, It's Clog And Slog And Scootch, On The Floor, In The Silence, In The Dark.

Age Has Given Me What I Was Looking For My Entire Life - It Gave Me Me. It Provided The Time And Experience And Failures And Triumphs And Friends Who Helped Me Step Into The Shape That Had Been Waiting For Me All My Life...i Not Only Get Along With Me Most Of The Time Now, I Am Militantly And Maternally On My Own Side.

I Thought Such Awful Thoughts That I Cannot Even Say Them Out Loud Because They Would Make Jesus Want To Drink Gin Straight Out Of The Cat Dish.

It Was Not Facing What Life Dealt That Made You Crazy, But Rather Trying To Set Life Straight Where It Was Unstraightenable.

There Is A Door We All Want To Walk Through And Writing Can Help You Find It And Open It.

When You Make Friends With Fear, It Can’t Rule You.

To Be A Good Writer, You Not Only Have To Write A Great Deal But You Have To Care. You Do Not Have To Have A Complicated Moral Philosophy. But A Writer Always Tries, I Think, To Be A Part Of A Solution, To Understand A Little About Life And To Pass This On.

I Woke Up Full Of Hate And Fear The Day Before The Most Recent Peace March In San Francisco. This Was Disappointing: I'd Hoped To Wake Up Feeling Somewhere Between Virginia Woolf And Wavy Gravy.

Joy Is The Best Makeup. But A Little Lipstick Is A Close Runner-up.

It's Funny: I Always Imagined When I Was A Kid That Adults Had Some Kind Of Inner Toolbox Full Of Shiny Tools: The Saw Of Discernment, The Hammer Of Wisdom, The Sandpaper Of Patience. But Then When I Grew Up I Found That Life Handed You These Rusty Bent Old Tools - Friendships, Prayer, Conscience, Honesty - And Said 'do The Best You Can With These, They Will Have To Do'. And Mostly, Against All Odds, They Do.

Grief, As I Read Somewhere Once, Is A Lazy Susan. One Day It Is Heavy And Underwater, And The Next Day It Spins And Stops At Loud And Rageful, And The Next Day At Wounded Keening, And The Next Day Numbness, Silence.

I Did Not Raise My Son, Sam, To Celebrate Mother's Day. I Didn't Want Him To Feel Some Obligation To Buy Me Pricey Lunches Or Flowers, Some Annual Display Of Gratitude That You Have To Grit Your Teeth And Endure.

Write Regularly, Whether You Feel Like Writing Or Not, And Whether You Think What You're Writing Is Any Good Or Not.

Sam Said To Me The Other Day, "i Love You Like 20 Tyrannosauruses On 20 Mountaintops," And This Is The Exact Same Way In Which I Love Him.

If You Don't Believe In God, It May Help To Remember This Great Line Of Geneen Roth's: That Awareness Is Learning To Keep Yourself Company. And Then Learn To Be More Compassionate Company, As If You Were Somebody You Are Fond Of And Wish To Encourage. I Doubt That You Would Read A Close Friend's Early Efforts And, In His Or Her Presence, Roll Your Eyes And Snicker. I Doubt That You Would Pantomime Sticking Your Finger Down Your Throat. I Think You Might Say Something Along The Lines Of, 'good For You. We Can Work Out Some Of The Problems Later, But For Now, Full Steam Ahead!

I Used To Love To Untangle Chains When I Was A Child. I Had Thin, Busy Fingers, And I Never Gave Up. Perhaps There Was A Psychiatric Component To My Concentration But Like Much Of My Psychic Damage, This Worked To Everyone's Advantage.

Prayer Means That, In Some Unique Way, We Believe We're Invited Into A Relationship With Someone Who Hears Us When We Speak In Silence.

All These People Keep Waxing Sentimental About How Fabulously Well I Am Doing As A Mother, How Competent I Am, But I Feel Inside Like When You're First Learning To Put Nail Polish On Your Right Hand With Your Left. You Can Do It, But It Doesn't Look All That Great Around The Cuticles.

If God Was Giving Me A Ham, I'd Be Crazy Not To Receive It. Maybe It Was The Ham Of God, Who Takes Away The Sins Of The World.

Good Therapy Helps. Good Friends Help. Pretending That We Are Doing Better Than We Are Doesn't. Shame Doesn't. Being Heard Does.

Nothing Can Be Delicious When You Are Holding Your Breath.

Almost All Good Writing Begins With Terrible First Efforts. You Need To Start Somewhere.

I Guess He'll Have To Figure Out Someday That He Is Supposed To Have This Dark Side, That It Is Part Of What It Means To Be Human, To Have The Darkness Just As Much As The Light- That In Fact The Dark Parts Make The Light Visible; Without Them, The Light Would Disappear. But I Guess He Has To Figure Other Stuff Out First, Like How To Keep His Neck From Flopping All Over The Place And How To Sit Up.

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