Resend of last week’s newsletter

Personal post that went out to paid subscribers

Life will break you.

Nobody can protect you from that,

and living alone won't either,

for solitude will also break you

with its yearning.

You have to love.

You have to feel.

It is the reason you are here on earth.

You are here to risk your heart.

You are here to be swallowed up.

And when it happens that you are broken,

or betrayed, or left, or hurt,

or death brushes near,

let yourself sit by an apple tree

and listen to the apples

falling all around you in heaps,

wasting their sweetness.

Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”

~ Louise Erdrich

Has life ever broken you? Yeah. Me, too. The truth is, this poem speaks to me because I am broken open right now…

After 21 years in a loving but often difficult relationship, I am going through a divorce. We separated at the end of July. In North Carolina, you have to live in 2 separate places for a year. So far, it has been six months. Right now, it is just me and my sweet dog, in a one bedroom apartment in Asheville, where at times, ‘solitude threatens to break me with its yearning.’ But it has been a deep healing time, too.

Emotionally, the process for me these last six months has been like trying to untangle myself from barbed wire with the least amount of wounding. It's been rough. It broke me for awhile.

I am usually deeply creative, but when I am hurting or grieving, I find it impossible to write or make art. I must heal some first.

This is why I started a Substack newsletter. At least it gets me writing short bits and bobs. I started writing a longer book last spring, developing a character named Granny Seeker. I keep trying to return to it and get back into the story, but then the barbed wire starts cutting into me again and I stop to bandage my wounds. Granny will have to wait.

Fortunately, I have lived my life long enough to know that ‘this, too, shall pass,’ and my energy will return, and I’ll have something deeper to offer the world. Sorrow brings humility. A deeper compassion. Grace.

Of course I hate experiencing such heartbreak—I would hate it for you, too—but it is part of being human, isn’t it? The only people not feeling sorrow are the people not truly living. Not truly loving. Not tasting as much of life as they can.

Folks don’t usually talk about their brokenness. In the South, we call it not-wanting-to-burden people. We say we're fine, and then sit in our dark living rooms watching Netflix and eating chips or ice cream to try to fill our emptiness.

But don't feel sad for me. The worst part is over. And I am starting to get glimpses of what is to come. Glimpses that make me almost giddy with the possibilities of contentment and peacefulness.

Freedom calls me, and I am almost there.

Thank you for reading! And thank you so much for being paid subscribers. It truly is helping me to keep going.

Love you!

S.