Blog to Book: Carry On, Warrior

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I finished this beauty of a book a week ago, and have not been able to write since.  I am afraid to write about this book,  because I know what I will say will pale in comparison to the essays of the incomparable Glennon Doyle Melton of the blog, Momastery.  I don't want to detract from the Truth, Redemption, Humor, and Pathos that are found within these pages, which has occupied my mind and heart since I finished reading.  I also know this feeling would make my new friend Glennon* sad and despondent (as described in Building a Life) .  So, in order to find some inspiration, (and to procrastinate by joyfully rolling around in her words even more), I dove in headlong and found this gentle, grace-filled, kick in the pants:

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 Which, thanks to my new friend Glennon, is an oft heard refrain in my house.

Here's the thing.  I am intimidated and awed and humbled by the insight, honesty, and theology housed in these essays, and am simultaneously paralyzed by the TRUTH she tells, the beauty of her writing, and the feeling that my paltry attempts at composition are NOTHING compared to what real writers can do.  To what she did.  Because she has kind of said everything that I could. And then said some more.  All while doing the things that I do all day, like raising children, tending a marriage, teaching, and messily attempting to live out my faith.

When reading some of these pieces, like I feel like girlfriend stole my brain.  How did she know what I have been thinking all of these years?  How did this stranger new friend get in my head?   And damn her for writing it all down before I could!  Reading is my inhale.  Writing is my exhale.  YES!  Yes Glennon!  How did you know?

Thanks to her courage and radical truth-telling, she has given voice to some Truths that I have always known, but hadn't found the words to express.

You Can Do Hard Things

We Belong To Each Other

Love Wins

Be confident because you are a child of God.

Be humble because everyone else is too.

And just when my inadequacy is about to take me, and this post, down, I read these words:

If, anywhere in your soul, you feel the desire to write, please write.  Write as a gift to yourself and others.  Everyone has a story to tell.  Writing is not about creating tidy paragraphs that sound lovely or choosing the "right" words.  It's about noticing who you are and noticing life and sharing what you notice. When you write your truth, it is a love offering to the world because it helps us feel braver and less alone.  And if you're a really, really bad writer, then it might be most important for you to write because your writing might free other really, really bad writers to have a go at it anyway.  

If you feel something calling you to dance or write or paint or sing, please refuse to worry about whether you're good enough.  Just do it.  Be generous.  Offer a gift to the world that no one  else can offer:  yourself.

So, I will write.  Hopefully often.  Certainly badly.   Because as Brene Brown says, unused creativity is not benign.  And I do have stories to tell.  Even if my stories are revealed through the stories of others.

Thank you, my new friend and writing mentor, for sharing your stories.  The world is bigger and bolder for it.  Carry On, Warrior.

*Her work is so honest and REAL.  She feels like my new friend.  And in a way, she is.

She Matters

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Susan approached me cautiously at first.  She was a brand new mother, finding her boundaries and striving for balance.  She was brave and bold and confident.  Wicked smart and self-possessed.  In contrast, I was an eager puppy, lonely for female friendship in a new town, craving and seeking an exemplar of womanhood that I could emulate.  I was newly married, newly graduated, newly employed, and in complete awe of her intuitive way with children, cosmopolitan experiences, easy way with creativity and innate understanding of the natural world.  I thought she was everything I was not.   And in many ways, she was.  And is.

Slowly we discovered each other.  We told our stories.  Then we told them again, with more color, shading, and nuance.  And then we told them again, analyzing our actions, then the actions of others.  Connecting our stories.  Finding the parallels.  Synthesizing our experiences and linking them to universal themes... from the mundane to the sublime. Through much laughter and some tears, we experienced epiphany after epiphany over years of lunches, hers made by her mother in law, mine, by the lunch ladies. (We are both still suckers for a school lunch tray heaped with turkey noodles, mashed potatoes, and gravy).

Soon, we became two.  The NPR ladies.  The organized one and the creative one.  Aliens/Pack.  Sometimes, we were one word. Pett/Loughrin.  Susan/Jen.

Books infused our stories.  We traded books and discussed them constantly, furtively. We found ourselves in constant, running conversations that picked up immediately where they left off.  Sometimes my private thinking even felt like a conversation between us, with me predicting her responses to my queries.  The conversations were grounded by thematic archetypes and sprinkled with leitmotifs.  We were continually surprised and astounded by how our current reading life and our "real" lives were so interconnected.  We read voraciously, often noting and thinking about how the other would respond to a plot point, theme, character, or a particular turn of a phrase.

Our husbands became friends.  We became friends with each other's husbands.  My husband and I adored her son, a wise-eyed old soul.  They sang for us.  We cooked for them.  We were all so happy to have each other.

But then, it was time for me to go.  I was heartbroken to leave.  She was afraid and guarded. . .that she let herself be vulnerable and now I was off and away.  I reassured her repeatedly. . . I am good at this part.  I am good at keeping bonds close.

Fast forward sixteen years.

She now has two teenage sons.  I have four young sons, one of whom is named after her eldest.

We are still good at this.

The conversation continues.  The book sharing continues.  The talking and thinking, listening and laughing, analyzing and distilling.  It all continues.

So when she told me to read She Matters:  A Life in Friendship, by Susanna Sonnenberg, I did. I savored the stories of friendship dissected, of intimacies, misunderstandings, and betrayals.  I reveled in Sonnenberg's honesty and fearlessness.  I have so many, many things to talk with Susan about after finishing this unique memoir chronicling a lifetime of women's friendships.

Everytime she recommends a book, I read it.   Because what she reads matters.   And she matters.  She matters very much.