Thanks for hanging around in my long absence. Busy holidays, side effects, recovering – you know the drill.

Today’s newsletter is a mish mash of things that have been floating around in my head and heart. I guess that they could be gathered under the umbrella of coping mechanisms.

Life has been challenging lately. There is the state of this country, and of the world that bring outrage, fear and the struggle for hope. I’m having medical challenges that I’m not ready to write about fully yet. I will say that there has not been a lot of good news lately; the best I can do is “it could be worse.”

So … coping mechanisms whose common theme is offering comfort.

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When I am holding an image of my body and sending love to its broken parts, I have started to think about Kintsugi, the Japanese art of mending broken pottery with gold. “There is beauty in the broken.” I imagine my bones which are riddled with cancer mended with gold, the thin places, the small fractures, all strengthened. This image gives me comfort.

Insomnia has been a recurring issue for me these days. I wake at 2 or 3 am to go to the bathroom and more often than not, I don’t sleep again. I’d gotten pretty good for a while at just lying quietly in the dark night, letting thoughts come and go. I quickly learned that scrolling in the night spaces was a bad idea that invited neither sleep nor rest. I tried listening to EMDR soundtracks, and while they were relaxing, they didn’t help me sleep. Recently I tried listening to books on tape in those waking hours, especially children’s literature. Inspired by this year’s Christmas gift from my daughter of hand-knitted characters from The Wind in the Willows, I started there. I’m not sure that I’d read it before, and the story of Mole and Rat, Toad and Badger delighted me and quieted my busy mind.

It brought me back to days of reading stories to my young children, and listening to stories read to young me. Those times are some of my favorite memories.

Being read to during my night watch hours is comforting. My mind is at ease, and I may drift in and out of sleep. I feel no pressure to go back to catch up on what I missed, just the pleasure of being held by story.

I continued with The Secret Garden, remembering the illustrations in my childhood copy of the book, and now I’ve started The Birch Bark House series by Louise Erdrich. In between I listened to The Comfort of Crows by Margaret Renkl.

Margaret Renkl writes week by week through a year in her garden. She describes the return of the frogs each year, and her efforts to create a frog pond. She builds a pond with a trough, adding water plants and algae. She slips in some tadpoles and waits for the frogs to emerge.

I was transported back to my grandma’s back yard and the memory of the annual return of spring toads when I was young. Her suburban house backed up to a concrete lined drainage ditch abutting a strip mall. A few doors down, an alley connected her street to the strip mall parking lot. In the spring, the ditch had some standing water, and some algae, not much of an ecosystem, but enough to support the return of the toads.

We hunted the toad’s eggs and then the tadpoles. But the miracle came when that ditch became host to hundreds of baby toads. Somehow the tiny toads climbed the steep wall of the ditch and made their way into Grandma’s backyard. No bigger that a nickel, the yard became alive with baby toads. My brother and I easily caught the babies and examined the thin skin that showed the pulsing of their tiny toad hearts, their bulging eyes and thin lips. There were so many that we always released them. The knot of toads became the main event for a few weeks. As they grew, their numbers thinned, and by the end of the season there would be a few grown toads hiding in damp places in grandma’s garden.

The comfort of being read to, of children’s stories, of childhood memories is a good place to rest and restore.

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Introducing the newest member of the family, Cali the cat. We adopted her and are all getting to know each other. She has made herself very comfortable. She is 6 years old and still has the energy and agility of a young cat, her spicy side. We are happy to have pet antics in the house again.

Music always contributes to coping for me, as does community whether that’s around a table, or at a No Kings march, or connecting with friends. I have a playlist in progress on Spotify for Resistance in 2026.

I appreciate all of you who subscribe to these musings, especially as I have been very inconsistent lately. I want to remind you that all the content is available free with an unpaid subscription. If that works better for you, I invite you to change your subscription to the free version.

Tomorrow I’m heading into the next stage of treatment which is daunting and honestly a little scary. I appreciate your kind thoughts and prayers for navigating this path. I’ll update as things become clearer.

I will leave you with some wisdom from Julian of Norwich, a Christian mystic born in 1343. Her writings are the earliest surviving works in English written by a woman, Julian of Norwich was no stranger to suffering having contracted and survived the bubonic plague.

She wrote :
All shall be well, .
and all shall be well .
and all manner of things shall be well.

I repeat this lately as a mantra for myself and for this hurting world. It brings comfort and helps me cope. And in spite of everything, I actually believe this to be true.

How are you coping? Be well my friend.

Lots of love,

Maija

Song for this issue: How I Long for Peace, Rhiannon Giddens, Resistance Revival Chorus, Crys Matthews. It’s on the Resistance Playlist but I will add it to our Healing Happens playlist too.

The complete Healing Happens playlist is available at Spotify and Apple Music.

Healing Happens on Spotify

Healing Happens on Apple Music

Dear Lovely Souls,

It is Thanksgiving morning, and I am slowly emerging into the day. Our celebration today is simple because I just had my chemo infusion yesterday and so I welcome simple.

I used the last of my third week energy before infusion to get some things done, and to do the one bit of Thanksgiving prep that I cling to every year. I baked a pie, vegan sweet potato pie this year. I paced myself as I do these days: pie dough on Monday, roast sweet potatoes and butternut squash on Tuesday, and used the post-infusion steroid buzz to put the pie together and bake it yesterday.

Soon I will indulge in another family tradition of pie for breakfast. In years past, I’ve always done this on the morning after Thanksgiving, but this year I say why wait?

I wrote a longer piece about pie making on my old website in December 2022. I include it here.

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I made an apple pie for Thanksgiving, which in most years would be an entirely unremarkable act for me. I’ve been the designated Thanksgiving pie baker for over 30 years, and the year-round pie baker too. My Thanksgiving bake is reflective and healing as I remember so many pies shared around so many tables, the gifts of the matriarchs through the generations.

Pie baking started with my mom teaching me the art of pie crust making when I was a child. If you can make a good crust, the rest is simple. For every crust a cup of flour, a teaspoon of salt and a third cup of Crisco. Use 2 table knives to cut in the shortening, holding one in each hand and drawing them away from each other. Add ice water a tablespoon at a time and use a fork to mix until it starts to clump together into a soft dough. Wrap it up, press it into a thick disc, and refrigerate. Roll it out with the wooden rolling pin with painted yellow handles, using a pastry cloth for the counter and a sleeve like a cut off sock for the rolling pin. Flour the cloth, flour the sleeve, roll from the center out to form a thin, but not too thin crust. Fold the rolled-out dough in half and slip the stainless-steel pie pan under it. For double crust, repeat.

The implements changed over the years. First a rolling pin scavenged from unclaimed items in student housing, then a heavy marble edition received as a wedding gift. Fancy, but it didn’t work well. Finally, I purchased a simple wooden model with tapered ends and no handles – really it’s just a piece of wood which pleases me. I no longer use the cloth or sleeve, just waxed paper on the counter and a good dusting of flour on the pin. The stainless pie tins are long gone, and I’ve settled on Pyrex deep dish pans as my preferred pie plate. (Updated to say that I’ve gone back to metal pie plates and no more soggy bottoms!)

The recipe has evolved too. Increased first to fill the deeper pan, then I got fancier with an all-butter crust before settling on Dorie Greenspan’s recipe with butter and shortening which is mixed in a food processor. Becoming vegan necessitated a new round of experiments and I’ve settled on using Earth Balance as my fat. Flour, salt and ice water have been steady through the years.

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My daughter has taken on the mantle of pie baker in her circle and lucky are they. She has expanded her repertoire into beautiful tarts, both Instagram worthy and delicious. It feels right to have passed this skill through the hands of the generations.

Baking has been a lifelong pleasure for me. I love the act of creating something delicious that will bring a moment of joy to the one who eats it. I’ve always been frustrated with recipe fails, whether from a bad recipe or user error. I’ve grown better at identifying good recipes through the years. I have some standards, but I still like to explore. Vegan baking has been a whole new journey. Lots of experiments, and LOTS of failures. It has been humbling to be a new baker all over again after about 45 years of experience.

A year ago, baking had become physically difficult. My body had become quite weakened by cancer that was not yet diagnosed. I baked through holidays by breaking the process into steps of short duration so that I could rest in between. I kept a chair in the kitchen to sit while I cooked whenever possible. It was a true labor of love, but not the act of a martyr. I baked to connect to the loved ones who came before, and the loved ones who are here now.

By February I no longer had the strength to bake. The cancer was discovered, chemotherapy began, and I only baked vicariously through reruns of the Great British Baking Show.

This Thanksgiving I baked a single apple pie. Flour, salt, fat, ice water. The tapered rolling pin. Pippin and Sierra Beauty apples this year. White and brown sugar, lemon and cornstarch, cinnamon and a little ginger. I stood and baked from start to finish. As I bent over to pull the finished pie out of the oven, I paused to remember that just a couple of months ago, I couldn’t stand for this long, I didn’t have the balance to bend over, my arms were too weak to trust myself lifting a hot pie out of the oven.

Gratitude washed over me: for modern medicine that shrinks tumors and gives back possibility; for my amazing body that keeps on going, that can start over from such weakness to strengthen again bit by bit; for this tradition and practice of baking for another holiday season; for my place in it all.

This year I’ll add that this ritual of pie baking is an experience where healing happens for me, a connection to ancestors and sweet memories and the seeds sown for future pies baked be other loving hands. I am grateful.

I’m grateful for you and for the connections made here in this little community. I hope you find yourself with people you love this Thanksgiving. And I hope you have a really good piece of pie.

Lots of love,

Maija

Song of the Day: Thank You for Being a Friend by Andrew Gold.

At the top of my gratitude list are my family, chosen family, and friends. This song seems to fit. Besides, it was the theme song for the iconic Golden Girls.

The complete Healing Happens Playlist is available on Spotify and Apple Music.

Healing Happens on Spotify

Healing Happens on Apple Music

It’s a beautiful Fall morning here. The leaves are turning, and the angle of the sun makes them glow. It’s been a while, again.

On the cancer front I had some good news recently. My tumor marker that is monitored has now dropped to its lowest measurement since I was diagnosed, even making it into the range of normal. I hold this news loosely, celebrating that it appears that the cancer is quieting its growth right now, while knowing that everything is impermanent. I still have cancer, it will always be Stage 4, I will always be in treatment, but at the moment I have some more good time. My current treatment is in 3-week cycles. Week 1 is rough, Week 2 starts to improve, and Week 3 is good. Today is a week 3 day and I try to make the most of them.

Inspired by some good energy weeks this summer and by the Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning (both the book and the streaming series), I have been tackling and purging my stuff.

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I couldn’t remember what was in the large box shoved in the back of the loft shelf in the shed. Purge mode had begun and so down it came for me to unpack. I dug through layers of crumpled packing paper, and then I saw the socks and knew exactly what I’d found. I think it was my grandmother who used old socks to carefully wrap and protect these crystal goblets. I remembered unpacking and repacking these for holiday meals growing up, and the box eventually came to live with me. I sighed as I wondered what to do with these beautiful glasses in our very casual lifestyle in our small house with little storage. A friend who was helping me said why don’t you use them? My first thought: they are for special occasions. This thought is what had relegated them to a carefully packed box for the last 30 years. Why not use them? So I wrapped up my IKEA wine glasses and gave them away, and put the goblets in the kitchen cabinet.

This was the summer of the purge, and it is spreading into fall purge too. Several friends were in purge mode with me. Maybe once we are solidly middle-aged it’s time to re-evaluate our stuff. In my case we have a shed full of bins of stuff, some of which hadn’t been opened since my last move 10 years ago.

The shed plan had always been for my wife to set up a woodshop in there, but it was overflowing and cluttered with stuff. Another friend who loves to sort stuff and is entirely unsentimental came one weekend to get the ball rolling. Having someone objective on your team is invaluable! No judgement, but do you really want to keep that?

I have always been a saver for “just in case.” Over time I have realized that “just in case” rarely comes, and if it does, I can usually get what I need. “Just in case” and her cousins “I could find a use for that”, “let’s save those for a special occasion,” “this belonged to my beloved dead family member” create the justification for holding on to stuff. There are also all the lifestyle aspirations that keep me holding onto more stuff for when I might pursue that aspiration.

But stuff becomes clutter, energy becomes stagnant, and it all begins to feel suffocating.

The cluttered shed was not my only motivation. Given my diagnosis I wanted to sort and pare down what I will leave behind. I don’t want to burden my loved ones with all this stuff that frankly they don’t want. My kids are minimalists and don’t want the collections of family mementos I have housed.

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Swedish death cleaning invites us to reevaluate our stuff, to not pass this task to our loved ones after we die, but also to have our spaces and stuff be a reflection of our lives now. I loved camping at one time and have many fond memories of camping through the years. In my current body, I will not be tent camping any more. My wife and I had collected a comprehensive set of camping gear which we have barely used in recent years. Same with bicycling. I used to love puttering around on my bike, but again it is not safe for me to do so anymore. We gave the camping gear to camping friends and young families just starting their camping adventures, and the bikes to a shop that tunes them up and provides them at low cost to people who need transportation. Big spaces, both physical and mental opened up, and I could breathe easier.

Buy Nothing (a neighborhood giving group based on social media) has been my friend, helping me to pass things to new people who actually want them. Teacups for a tea party, jewelry to use for a collage, an antique chair for someone’s bedroom. I have a friend who is giving her special pieces of clothing to young people who will wear and enjoy them.

Dealing with sentimental items is the most difficult. Giving things to actual people, as opposed to thrift stores, makes it easier for me to part with these items. Sometimes I have needed to take some time to be ready to part with something. During that time, I’d consider all the stories and memories that the thing evoked and would realize I could keep those stories and memories while letting the thing itself go. Sometimes even telling the story to someone helped me release it. My rule of thumb became either use it or pass it on, with a limited number of very selective cases where I would pack it away again, and in those cases tried to leave notes with the story or memory. And I will give explicit permission for my loved ones to choose to keep what is left, or to give it away guilt-free.

The purge continues. There is still too much stuff, but I am mostly enjoying revisiting the bins of stuff and finding new homes for it.

If you’ve been here awhile, you’ve heard me extol Andrea Gibson who passed away in July. Come See Me in the Good Light, the documentary about their life with their wife, poet Megan Falley, will begin streaming on November 14 on Apple TV. It is a beautiful, poignant and funny portrait of living and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Wishing that you find grounding in these troubled times. Thank you for being here.

Sending you love and strength in these days,

Maija

Today’s song is Human by Brandi Carlile. The complete Healing Happens playlist is available on Spotify and Apple Music.

Healing Happens on Spotify

Healing Happens on Apple Music

It’s been a minute. When I last wrote I was heading into new treatment and had been inspired by Andrea Gibson to try softer. Shortly after that, on July 14, Andrea Gibson died. At the time I wrote:

How lucky are we to have lived in the time of Andrea Gibson. Their words and way of being have been such a profound companion to me as I’ve been walking the path of cancer. I’ve always felt like they were a few steps ahead of me on the path, showing me that joy and healing and beauty still surround me, even when there is no cure. Today I have few words but will trust that they are truly more here than they ever were before. Rest in love beautiful soul.

Andrea’s death was a gut-punch, but I quickly learned how widespread their influence was and the varieties of communities and people they touched as tributes poured in. Their presence became luminous and comforting.

Andrea’s wife, poet Megan Falley has continued to write on Andrea’s Substack, Things That Don’t Suck. I recommend it. She writes generously about her grief and the ongoing presence of Andrea. This too is comforting as I think about my own crossing over and those I will leave behind. Another poignant conversation about Andrea’s death was on an episode of the Handsome podcast. Tig Notaro, who was a close friend of Andrea’s, talks about being part of the community surrounding Andrea in her last days and witnessing what sounds like a remarkably beautiful death. All of this helps me understand a little more how we live on, how we remain connected even in death.

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Perhaps that was the right context to dip my toes in the water of feeling grief. I’ve been aware for a while of a big dark lump of grief that lurks in the corners of my life. Most writing about grief is directed at those who have lost someone or something precious. It has taken me some months recently to accept my experience of cancer as its own sort of grief.

One of these days, I will not be the one left behind to grapple with the grief of loss, but I will be the one leaving. And my leaving will be, for me, the loss of everyone I love, a thought too painful to truly hold. But I’ve realized that by trying to keep this grieving at arm’s length, it cuts me off from joy. As with any feeling, by allowing myself to feel the grief, it can move through. Trying to build a wall to keep it away is suffocating. Allowing it to move lets me breathe. This harkens back to “try softer.”

In The Wild Edge of Sorrow, Francis Weller writes “When we extend our cupped hands and offer a bottom to our grief, we can hear the story that lies there, needing our touch and affection.” The safety of this container we create offers a place to find compassion for ourselves. Rather than exile grief, I can feel my way to having compassion for myself. Grief can become a companion in its way, and rather than making me wallow, it sets me free. As with so many things, this is not a goal to be arrived at, one and done, but a practice. As I practice making space for grief, I also allow space to explore the ways we remain. In Love Letter from the Afterlife, Andrea Gibson wrote to her beloved: “Dying is the opposite of leaving. I want to echo it through the corridor of your temples; I am more with you than I ever was before.”

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My own path continues with a new chemo treatment to adjust to. I have a lot of nausea and fatigue for about 2 out of 3 weeks of each cycle. I am hoping for a dose reduction that might make things easier. In weeks 3 of 3, I actually feel pretty good. Today is day 21 of the cycle, so tomorrow morning is a fresh dose.

My hair is doing weird things as it grows back in unevenly after radiation last winter. It stands straight up and I’ve decided I am in my Christopher Walken era. I may just shave it off again. It is the least of my worries, but good for some humor. I was lucky to attend 2 weddings this summer and got a wig so as to not be singled out as the cancer patient. I named her Ingrid, and she comes out for special occasions while I’m rocking CW’s hair.

Thank you for being part of this community. Your presence makes a difference in my life. Please share this with people who might be interested.

Wishing you safe spaces to feel and breathe.

Lots of love,

Maija

Songs of the Month:

Since it’s been a while, I’m including 3 songs.

We Belong, Ingrid Michaelson

Everything that we need is everything we got

How Deep, Eliza Gilkyson

Most of all, how deep did I love?

Butterfly, Jon Batiste

I mean, I’ve never seen
Something so damn beautiful, child
It’s a butterfly flying home.

Also recommended on grief: All There Is with Anderson Cooper podcast, especially the episodes with Andrew Garfield and Ashley Judd

The complete Healing Happens playlist is available on Spotify and Apple Music.

Healing Happens on Spotify
Healing Happens on Apple Music

“I know most people try hard to do good and find out too late that they should have tried softer.” Andrea Gibson

Shoulder to shoulder with about 90 people, we sit in camping chairs in a backyard ready for live music. In this favorite venue, the Bootleg Café and Tiki Lounge, our generous host has invited some local/regional musicians, Duo Quartet, whom we have seen several times before. I’m ready for some beautiful harmonies in this lovely community.

My wife leans over to me and whispers that “we” had just bombed Iran. A gut punch. Again. I feel my heart sink and that low-level panic we all live with these days start to take over. And then I heard those words echoing in me: “try softer.”

So I didn’t check my phone to learn more about the bombing. I decided I was going to just be present to where I was and be surrounded by music. I doubt that the musicians even knew the news yet. We started out singing along to Get Together:

C’mon people now, smile on each other, everybody get together, try to love one another right now.

We keep singing.

When you look to a king who has feet of clay, can’t stop hoping for a brand new day. We got hope (hope), faith (I believe), love, love, love is what we need.

I’m gonna lay down my sword and shield down by the riverside, ain’t gonna study war no more.

Singing is resistance.

Sing hallelujah one more time.

Love is the opening door. Love is what we came here for.

We sing, dance, and soak in the music. In my ideal world, I would have a good soak in live music every week, a sort of weekly baptism. We fill ourselves up.

Tomorrow there will be time to learn the ugly details of our latest cruel, stupid action. As it turns out, trying softer was such a relief that I didn’t dive down a rabbit hole of news the next day––enough to be aware of what is going on, but I didn’t immerse myself.

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I own the privilege of being able to compartmentalize this for today. I’ve run in activist circles long enough to know the pressure to always be on and fighting. I also know that real change is only possible when we work sustainably. This is long haul work. Sometimes we need to remember what we are fighting FOR, rather than what we are fighting AGAINST. I think about the No Kings protest the Saturday before. Joining with millions to say hell no to the litany of cruel human rights abuses was energizing and important.

Also, try softer. We donned our rainbow overalls and watched the Pride Parade on Sunday, celebrating the joy and freedom that is possible in our community. And everyone knows that “the gays” know how to throw the best parades! In our safe spaces, the LGBTQIA community is an engine for creativity. Rainbows, dancers, singers, drag queens, more rainbows, sequins, swag, floats, pets, flags and still more rainbows. Pride is a protest. Pride is a celebration.

I am between treatments and have enjoyed have a couple of weeks of respite with more energy, more appetite, more fun. Next week I start a new chemotherapy which will likely be rough for a while. Every time you change treatment, it’s a whole new game of learning how your body will respond, mitigating your side effects, and dosage adjustments. There is no predicting, you just submit to the new protocol and see what happens. I don’t like this part.

I glance at the title of this newsletter: Healing Happens. While my chemo will be trying harder to do it’s job, I will try to remember to try softer to do mine, to keep exploring what it means to heal when there is no cure.

When I try harder, I’m harder. When I try softer, I’m softer. Consider where there might by room in your life to try softer.

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Thank you for being here. I appreciate you. Please always feel free to share by hitting the share button or forwarding this email. All of the content is available with a free subscription.

Stay gentle,

Maija

Songs of the Day:

Hallelujah One More Time, Paul Kamm and Eleanore MacDonald (only available on Apple Music)

Get Together, Keb’ Mo’

I’ve included Elton John’s Love Song before, but this is a different version.

The complete Healing Happens Playlist is available on Spotify and Apple Music.

Healing Happens on Spotify

Healing Happens on Apple Music

Thanks for still being here in spite of my inconsistent postings.

I have had a dam-sized writer’s block! What is a writing clogbuster? Turns out sometimes it is simply starting to write something, anything. It can be writing that sucks, but it might lead you into what you actually want to say.

I’ve been thinking about the juxtaposition of grief and joy. We live in a time of such grief for a world that is becoming crueler by the day, led by people who are eager to sell their souls, though sometimes I wonder if they actually have souls.

“It’s not just burnout. It’s grief. Grief for a world that forgot how to care. For truth that keeps slipping. For a moral center that no longer holds.” Dr. Zelana Montminy

I struggle with my personal grief of living in the shadow of cancer. I’m making my way back from my scary experience with brain metastases, but I wasn’t sure whether or not I would be able to fight back for a while. Now there is slow improvement, thankfully, but my tank has been empty.

I have to make some treatment decisions. There is one that might be quite effective, but it can also have difficult side effects. I hold the possible efficacy in one hand and the possible side effects in the other, weighing the options. More good time in this beautiful life with my beloveds is my prayer.

And then the Universe graciously throws me a life line, some soul food calling me back to life. Human kindness. Music. Poetry. Joy. Laughter. Shared stories. Connection.

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I wanted to see Allison Russell perform live one more time so several months ago I bought tickets for a performance this month in Seattle. I hadn’t reserved accessible seats at the time because I was more able-bodied then. When I inquired about accessible seats in this mostly standing venue a couple of months ago, they were sold out. We decided to go anyway and see what we could figure out. Kindness intervened and a friend reached out to a connection at the venue the day of the show and they said no worries, we will take care of you. We arrived and were seated at, I kid you not, the best seats in the house at a table in the VIP section. Kindness makes me cry, so some tears were shed. Shout out to the fabulous Showbox staff who were so gracious. And Allison Russell was fantastic. She just gets better and better. She channels some incredible energy and you can feel the presence of the ancestors at her shows. Soul Food.

If you’ve been reading this newsletter for a while, you will know of my love for Andrea Gibson and their poetry. There is a new documentary, Come See Me in the Good Light, about Andrea and their spouse, Megan Falley, both poets, documenting their life and love as they have navigated Andrea’s stage 4 cancer. It has been my heartfelt wish that I be able to see this film which tells a story that is so close to home. It is playing the festival circuit now. I’d tried unsuccessfully to get tickets to see it in San Francisco, but lo and behold it happened to be playing at the Seattle International Film Festival the weekend that we were in Seattle, the day after Allison Russell’s concert. And so my wife and best friend and I laughed and cried as we watched. I had my hand on my heart the whole time and I could feel myself filling up again.

I highly recommend the film, and if you don’t have an opportunity to see it at a film festival, Apple TV has picked it up and it will show in the fall. You might think a film about poets and incurable cancer would be a downer, but you would be wrong. Poignant, yes, but also full of life and joy and laughter. Soul food.

“Imagine, when a human dies, the soul misses the body, actually grieves the loss of its hands and all they could hold.” Andrea Gibson

Tincture from Lord of the Butterflies by Andrea Gibson

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If I let grief swallow me, I miss all the joy, the love, the wonder, the beauty that is this life too. So I dig my stubborn heels into the mud, and hoist myself out of the pool of grief to accept the offering of soul food. I lay in the sun on the grass and let healing come. I feel the heaviness lift, and take a deep breath.

Don’t underestimate the power of human kindness and connection, of stories shared, of music and art, of beauty, of truth telling, to call us back from the brink. We’re in this together.

Wishing you your own flavor of soul food. Thank you for being here.

Love you,

Maija

Song for the Day:

Michael Franti and Spearhead, I Hope I Come Back as a Song

The complete Healing Happens playlist is available on Spotify and Apple Music.

Healing Happens on Spotify

Healing Happens on Apple Music

I’m all over the map lately. Today’s entry reflects that for sure. We had to let go of our beloved cat Cleo a few weeks ago. And I am, perhaps as you are too, trying to find my footing amidst the cruelty and deceit that we are surrounded by. We go from beloved pets to making it through the times we are living in, without any obvious through line. Come with me, if you wish.

Cleopatra reigned supreme over her domain for 16 years. She was adopted when she was one, after having been returned to the shelter 3 times. She was not a bad cat; she just didn’t like any other animals. Humans were okay, sometimes even interesting. She did not give her heart to just anyone, and access to her was always on her terms. Towards the end of her life, she let a few people into her inner circle which she would announce by climbing into their lap. Don’t pick her up though– she must come to you. If she felt comfortable with you, she would coyly offer her belly up for a rub.

She was insistent on having her needs met and her persistence led to her success. She was quietly bossy. She kept the schedule of the house, waiting nearby in the evening, a sentry ready to escort us to bed. Once we were both in bed, she would push her way in, purring, to lie down between or on top of us. We took to calling her “Asunder” because she would quietly push her way up until her head was lying between ours. Kind of ridiculous. When she was satisfied with our sleep, she would leave to attend to her many patrol duties.

Cleo loved to perch on her cat tree in the sunny window facing the street. From there she could survey the neighborhood, bask in the warmthon a clear day, and keep track of cats who might enter her territory. It helped that this window was in my office, especially when I was still working at the desk regularly. She would herd me into the office after breakfast. There was a schedule to keep.

As is often the case with beloved pets, I’m pretty sure Cleo knew I had cancer before I did. In the months before my diagnosis, she became very attentive and she would lie on my chest as I rested in bed. We eventually got a recliner chair, and she spent countless hours for the past 3 years lying in my lap as I rested in the chair. We always said that my cancer was the best thing that ever happened to Cleo because it provided her with regular access to my lap.

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A few weeks ago, we woke up and she was in distress. It was quickly clear that she was very sick, with signs that the end was near. We called the vet, who came and euthanized her as we held her.

Her passing was abrupt and unexpected and it has left a big empty space in our lives. I think I see her waiting in the hallway to shepherd us to bed. Or expect to see her when we come home. I miss her pesty insistence on sleeping between us and her devotion to my lap (even though it was a bit much at times). I miss her need to always be able to locate my eyes when I was sleeping. I sat under a very soft blanket recently and stroked the softness and thought for a moment that it was Cleo.

I am so grateful for her loyal companionship, especially through these cancer years. I’ve been lucky to have beloved pets over my lifetime, and now for the first time in over 20 years, I do not have an animal companion. It has made me reflective on the many animal friends I have known: Flopsy, Butterscotch and Black Eye, Midnight, Sunshine, Courtney, Zoey, Watson, Lucy, Moses, Scout and Cleo.

As we are living in a time of such cruelty, our animal friends bring us solace and joy.

Solace and joy are something I desperately need these days. It is so easy to get swept up in the relentless horrifying news of the destruction of American democracy, and the betrayal of the values that ancestors and many of us have fought for.

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When I was thinking of a “song of the day,” the song that kept insisting was American Tune by Paul Simon. While this song has nothing to do with our animal friends, it is a song for our times. Paul Simon wrote and recorded the original in 1973, in the middle of the unfolding Watergate Scandal, the continuing involvement of the US in the Vietnam War and the struggle for civil rights. And here we are again, over 50 years late,r reflecting on the same sobering themes, and trying to find hope and inspiration to carry on. I like this song because I think it tells the truth, and truth telling is the beginning of any reconciliation or healing.

The Indigo Girls used to sing an acapella version of this song as their final encore at concerts. Their harmonies on this song always gave me goosebumps. The only recording I could find on streaming services is from 1989.

My new favorite version is Rhiannon Giddens singing with Paul Simon at the Grammy tribute to him in 2023. She hasn’t recorded it, but I will link the video of her singing (her part starts at 1:50). I also appreciate that she updated a line in the song that has not aged well. The original version is:

We come on the ship they call The Mayflower
We come on the ship that sailed the moon

Rhiannon Gidden’s new version is:

We didn’t come here on the Mayflower
We came on a ship in a blood red moon

For me, this song makes space for hope. It is honest about our battered souls, unease and shattered dreams. But it also offers possibility of our souls rising and smiling reassuringly.

We are at the height of Spring where I live. I lean into bird song, spring green, garden planting, and joyful bursts of spring color. I lift my head from the weight of the world and cancer and find connection in community, grateful that I feel healthy enough to be out in the world more. I treasure time spent with family at the ocean. I feed off the energy of resistance. I appreciate my body getting stronger. I return to music that soothes me and sing my way through the Peter, Paul and Mary song list that I listened to as a child. I marvel at an interaction with an octopus at the Monterey Bay Aquarium where we had connection with this most amazing being. I savor the weeks when my stomach is willing for me to eat more interesting food.

Tell me about your animal friends, or music, or wherever you are finding solace and joy in these days. We need each other to walk through the times we are living in. Thank you for walking with me. I appreciate you.

Love and hope to you,

Maija

Song of the Day: American Tune by Paul Simon

The complete Healing Happens playlist is available on Spotify and Apple Music.

Healing Happens on Spotify

Healing Happens on Apple Music

Last time I wrote (in October!) I mentioned that I had moved into a harder phase of cancer. And then it went off the rails. I have developed Leptomeningeal Disease, a rare condition where cancer cells move into the cerebrospinal fluid, in the lining of the brain and spinal column. When we learned of the diagnosis, I could hear the panic in my oncologist’s voice.

For me, it came on abruptly and I was completely overcome with symptoms in November. I was hospitalized twice and suffered excruciating head pain, nausea, confusion, weakness, double-vision, cognitive issues, shaking and a general feeling of not being in my body. Once it was confirmed that it was LMD, I had 10 days of whole brain radiation in December which, thankfully, controlled the symptoms. I went daily and got snapped into my mask like a space suit for the treatment. Treatment itself was a painless short session. My biggest challenge was the constant nausea.

Radiation left me more fatigued than I’ve ever been in my life. It also felt like it scrambled my brain. I had wild thoughts, especially at night when I couldn’t sleep. Even though I knew that they were not true, I couldn’t stop them. One of the more amusing ones involved Timothee Chalamet and Greta Gerwig and a new adaptation of Little Women. I was convinced that Chalamet had to help solve my sleeplessness. This is when I began to think about Alice and her trippy adventures and wonder if I was falling down a rabbit hole. I used to look through a copy of the original Alice in Wonderland when I was a girl staying with my grandmother. I felt like Alice in those slightly disturbing illustrations by John Tennial from the1865 edition.

My cognitive function is still S.L.O.W. It has taken several weeks to be able to write something coherent. I’ve raised losing words to new levels. I feel like I have a big empty thought bubble above my head all the time. Fortunately, my menopausal posse of friends keep me company in conversation. What was I saying?

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But radiation was effective and the painful symptoms have resolved! At this point I am doing well all things considered, working on regaining strength and trying to be patient with my cotton head, while I adapt to a new chemotherapy treatment.

After so many weeks of challenges, and what feels like regression, it was hard to know what I could trust when looking toward the future. It’s a constant balance between acknowledging impermanence and trusting the moments as they unfold.

I panicked. It hadn’t helped to hear the panic in my doctor’s voice. Dr. Google was grim and a mistake. Hospice was tossed onto the horizon for the first time. Will I get better, or have I reached a new stage of limitation? Can I make plans and if so, how far out?

Coupled with the grief of the world, this fear could sweep me away.

I remember the advice for surviving a rip-tide. First advice: DON’T PANIC. Go with the flow. Rip tide deaths occur when you fight the tide and exhaust yourself.

Over the last weeks, I have been practicing letting go. I return to the practice of finding beauty, which first requires being willing to look for it, and then to notice and make space for wonder.

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Cole Arthur Riley, author of Black Liturgies writes,

It can feel foolish to pause to marvel at the stars when the world is burning.
Or to find the world beautiful when you've known it to betray you.
But wonder is a liberation practice. A reminder that we contain more than tragedy.
Beauty is our origin and our anchor.

I gather memories of beauty from this time of the rabbit hole.

• My wife who lovingly and patiently cares for me, and who makes me laugh.

• Friends and family who have come to “babysit” me so that my wife can get a break.

• My kids who came to help care for their grandma in December while she convalesced after surgery

• My dad reminding from the Other Side about the beautiful lullaby Suliram sung by Miriam Makeba when I asked for help one hard night. He used to sing and play it for me when I was young, and I found it on Spotify and played it over and over all night long. (We were always connected by lullaby. I wrote about it after he passed.)

• Head rubs. For several weeks, head massage gave the only real headache relief. I joked that if you were going to visit me, you needed to be prepared to rub my head.

• Family and friends who came and plopped themselves on my bed for a visit when I was too tired to sit.

• Gifts of food, flowers, and beanies.

• Shuttles to appointments and field trips.

• Text check-ins

• A Christmas carol sung by neighbors on our porch

• All the lovers gathered round (listen to the song of the week)

I’m still here. Cancer is still here. The weight of the world is still here. But so is beauty, and that is where I choose to live.

If you’re still here reading, I thank you. You are part of the community of lovers who help me rise.

Lots of love,

Maija

Song of the Week is Old Devil Time by Pete Seeger, a song that has lifted me for decades.

I love the image of our lovers (we are all lovers) gathering around and helping us to rise and sing. It is also an apt song for the times we are living in.

No storm nor fire can ever beat us down
No wind that blows but carries us further on
And you who fear, oh lovers gather round
And we will rise to sing it one more time

I ‘ll also include Suliram by Miriam Makeba, the song that got me through a long dark night.

You can find the complete playlist here:

Healing Happens on Spotify

Healing Happens on Apple Music

As is often the case here, I feel like I am telling more than one story at the same time because this is how life works. All of these parts of a life, all happening at the same time, overlapping and interweaving, sometimes competing for attention. Finding balance in between is the challenge.

While I never intended to write about music as much as I do, I guess it is fitting since music is a source of such joy and healing for me, especially live music.

And so I tell you that I had the great privilege of hearing Joni Mitchell at the Hollywood Bowl earlier this month. If you are a Joni fan, you’ve no doubt read about these concerts, the Joni Jam, and every magnificent thing they say is true.

Joni sat front and center surrounded by incredible musicians, headliners themselves ordinarily, who were there to be her band and backup singers. She chose her setlist of 27 songs, including deep cuts and one that I think she said hadn’t been performed live before (The Sire of Sorrow). Dancing with her cane, keeping her unique rhythms, she sang and told stories. And Joni laughed. Between every song, she laughed. What happened on that stage that evening was such a moving and extraordinary act of generosity among the performers.

They spent months learning her songs, musicians learning their parts without a score. And on those two evenings they came together simply as Joni’s band, playing a supporting role so that Joni could shine. And Joni herself went from performing not more than a few songs at recent appearances, to performing twenty seven songs! May we all have the tenacity and joy of Joni Mitchell, and the generosity and humility of her supporting musicians.

I think everyone there knew we were witnessing a historic evening. Even the moon conspired and rose over the Hollywood Hills as Joni sang Both Sides Now.

After the concert, I made a playlist from the setlist for us to listen to on the long drive home. It has been on repeat ever since. I included three versions of Both Sides Now on the playlist. I like to hear the evolution and changing perspective of the song sung when she was at the beginning of her career, again in the middle, and now at the end, her voice deepening through the decades. I think it is particularly poignant when sung while looking back over a whole life.

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But the song that keeps echoing for me is The Sire of Sorrow (Job’s Sad Song), a song I’d never heard before. She opens with:

Let me speak, let me spit out my bitterness,
born of grief and nights without sleep.

In the refrain she sings:

Oh you tireless watcher!
What have I done to you?
That you make everything I dread and everything I fear come true?

I have reached a hard place in cancerland. All the details are not yet clear, and I’m still absorbing it all and not ready to write about it. For really the first time since my diagnosis, I’m angry. I’m pissed. Not just with my story, but with so many cancer stories of people I know. Anger is a part of grief, though I don’t believe that grief comes in linear stages, more like an everchanging, spinning Tilt-O-Whirl.

All this is happening against the background of pink October, a loathsome tradition for many of us. This is a month that focuses on “saving tatas” rather than saving lives. It is a month when corporations profit off of breast cancer with their pink ribbons. (Look up what they actually are giving to breast cancer research.) And it is a month when those of us with Stage 4 remember that only 5% of all breast cancer research money is given to research on metastatic breast cancer. All research is beneficial, but how ironic that research into the only stage of breast cancer that kills you is almost an afterthought. (One organization that gives 100% of their research dollars to researching metastatic breast cancer is Metavivor.)

Cancer is merciless and cruel and fucked up. Cancer is also random, which is why I know that when I ask “why”, I am asking a question with no answer. I could just as easily ask “why not”.  I can ask “how,” as in how do I want to live? I can ask “what,” as in what do I want to do with the life I have? And what is important to me now, what makes a good day? I can ask “who” as in who do I want to be, and who do I want to be with?

Working through tough emotions means actually feeling them, so that they can move through. I let my anger sit with me. It will move through, and I will move on. I will not be overcome by bitterness; I will spit it out. I will find my way back to seeing how “something’s lost, but something’s gained in living every day.” I will remember how Joni, who has overcome so much, laughed.

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Wishing all of us strength and honesty when we are touched by grief and anger and bitterness, and the return of balance and laughter.

Thanks for being here. I appreciate you.

Lots of love,

Maija

Songs of the Week: We have the 2022 recording of Both Sides Now on our playlist already. Today I’ll add the 2000 recording of Both Sides Now, which to me sounds like a deep, beautiful, mid-life musing. And of course, The Sire of Sorrow (Job’s Sad Song).

The entire Healing Happens playlist is available on Spotify and Apple Music:
Healing Happens on Spotify
Healing Happens on Apple Music

My grandmother was a weaver. She had a loom in a tiny room in the house that I knew her in.  The room might have been a mudroom originally, but her loom fit exactly in one corner of the room. There were 3 doors into this tiny room, so not much wall space. The little that remained was filled with books.

I was fascinated by her weavings and sometimes she let me “help.” The warp are the vertical threads that form the structure of the weaving. The weft is threaded horizontally through these to create the weaving, and changing weft colors and fibers is one way to create patterns. After a weft row is threaded through the warp, the weaver pulls the beater bar back to ensure the weft row is tight. It’s more complicated than this, but that is my childhood memory of the basics. There was some magic going on below too with treadles that would raise and lower parts, also to create patterns, but that was beyond my understanding.

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I have a few pieces my grandma wove. My favorites are small weavings she used as placemats. The warp on these was red string, and she tore an old white sheet into strips to use as the weft. Using those magic treadles, she practiced different patterns. I also have a beautiful white table cloth and placemats, flecked with silver, that she wove as a wedding gift for my parents.

Lately life feels like weaving together different strands of weft into the warp structure of this lifetime. Unlike my grandma, I have no idea what pattern I’m weaving, and wait to see it as it emerges.

Terra Cotta (Cancer)

Terra cotta is a nubby yarn, leaving random texture in the pattern. There is a lot of terra cotta in this weaving recently.

I finally have an oncologist again, and she seems great which is a big relief. I feel kind of like a child who is comforted by having a grownup in charge again. We went over my case in detail. It’s unusual she reminded me, in that the origin of the cancer in my breast has never appeared distinctly in imaging, nor can it be felt. But it was/is clearly there because it seeded itself elsewhere. It’s complex in the ways that it has manifested. It is now active again in my bones which means it is time to change treatments. Again. More tests to figure out what treatment is next. The good news is that there are more treatments. New treatments will come with new side effects, and those will reveal themselves in time, an unwanted gift that I can’t refuse.

Grey (Grief)

Grey is a mohair yarn, with wispy and sometimes prickly fibers that poke out of the weaving in unpredictable places. Grey recurs in the pattern, but mostly it does not dominate.

Grief is always with me. At no time am I unaware of life’s brevity, and the feeling of colossal loss is always just beneath the surface. Every failed treatment brings its own grief. Since grief is here to stay, best to acknowledge and feel it and learn to walk hand in hand. Sometimes grief can be a teacher. Sometimes it is just shitty. Most important for me is to remember that grief does not preclude joy.

Golden Brown (Baking)

Golden brown is the color of the apple cider I used to make muffins this week, or of the top of a perfectly baked pie. Patches of golden brown often appear alongside the grey. Baking is often my step away from the heavy feelings back into the everyday beauty of life, rooted in the senses.

Yellow (Inspiration)

Deep yellows pushing towards orange need to recur in this pattern over and over. When the weight of the world is too much (and it is so heavy now), when the weight of life is too much, I need the light of inspiration. 

This week it came through attending the Revolutionary Love Tour with Valarie Kaur and hearing sacred Sikh stories and music. She says, “Revolutionary Love is the call of our times. It is to look upon the face of anyone and say: You are a part of me I do not yet know.” Acts of love can change everything, even and especially in times as fractured as ours. Her guest at this stop was Kevin John Fong who told a beautiful story of the wisdom his grandmother poured into the soups she made daily. His question for all of us was “What is your gift?” The gift of who you are in the world, not so much what you do, or a skill you are good at. And further he asked, what if we were to see each other, every one, as gifted?

Last night we watched Will and Harper on Netflix which was such a beautiful, funny and poignant portrait of the relationship between two friends as one steps into her life after transitioning.

In times such as these, I need to seek out inspiration.

Blue (Stillness)

Blue is the softest yarn in the pattern –– even the hue is soft. The pattern is incomplete without this color, and I must always remember to weave in this blue.

I love to be still, to be quiet. This week I went to a very gentle yoga class, in which I was even more gentle with this body. It was good to be on the mat again in the body I live in now, which is so different from the body I used to practice in. The best was to be still, to be quiet with intention together with other people. It’s not an experience I have that often these days, and it made me realize how much I miss it. It also reminded me that shaping my stillness or quiet with intention deepens it in wonderful ways.

Green (Gratitude)

Green is a variegated yarn with so many shades of green, just like the garden. It is full of life.

I am so grateful this week for my wife on our anniversary. When we got married during COVID four years ago, we had no idea that the pandemic was only the tip of our iceberg. In sickness and in health wasn’t supposed to become so relevant, so soon.

And through it all, she is my rock, my safe harbor, my love. I am so lucky.

The pattern is not yet clear to this weaver. I weave with what I am given. I think we all do. But we can seek out strands of colors to add to our weaving. I’ll be looking to add some oranges of fun along with turquoise and magentas of creativity. And there is always room for sparkling threads of joy.

And so fellow weavers, keep weaving. And maybe consider Kevin Fong’s question: What is your gift? I think mine is a grounded presence. I’d love to hear what your gifts are.

Thank you for being here. It’s such a gift to have you on the other end of this. Sharing is always welcome.

Lots of love,

Maija

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Song of the Week: Because life truly is extraordinary: Extraordinary by Michael Franti. Because some days we make it through breath by breath:  Just Breathe, this version from Willie Nelson and Lukas Nelson.

Healing Happens on Spotify

Healing Happens on Apple Music

After a summer of fun and busy times, I’m looking forward to a much quieter fall.

I’ve been thinking again lately about healing. What makes an experience, a place, a space healing? We all have places that need to be healed: younger versions of ourselves, painful memories, wounds we carry.

I’m coming down to earth after a weekend of live music, the source of so much healing for me. Well-timed after uncertain scans. As you know, I live with metastatic cancer and ponder often the role of healing in my life, even when there is no cure. Sometimes I find healing by seeking it; other times, it finds me. I think my weekend of music was a little bit of both.

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Red Rocks Amphitheater near Denver is breathtakingly beautiful, a natural wonder, and a deeply spiritual setting for music if you’re into that. Which I am. It was on my bucket list to hear a concert there, but I don’t think I’m ready to cross it off the list.

Ahead of the concerts, local fans provided all of us newbies with lots of guidance about the venue. Describing the shape of the amphitheater, one woman called it a uterus. What an apt description for a place that felt like a holy womb.

Cradled there in the rocks, in community for two nights and wedged between my son and my wife, I thought it doesn’t get much better than this, except if my daughter was also there with us. I was mesmerized by beauty.

We listened to two nights of exquisite music from Brandi Carlile with the Colorado Symphony. She played songs that are rarely on setlists these days, thrilling the many of us who have followed her for the last nearly 20 years. We sang with abandon with 9000+ other folks, finishing lines when we were invited, and often even when we weren’t. On one special song, we sang in 9,000-person harmony, our voices sounding through those rocks. We danced, we made a well-orchestrated rainbow, we allowed ourselves to hope for change coming soon. I did not hesitate and gave into joy (Mary Oliver would approve).

I had a moment when I closed my eyes and felt surrounded by the energy of the rocks, the night sky, the spirit of the original people of this place, the symphony, the singers, my beloveds and the audience all collectively opening a portal to something much bigger. Healing.

On the plane I started reading the book Faith, Hope and Carnage, an interview between Sean O’Hagan and musician Nick Cave. Among many other things, they speak of grief after the death of Cave’s son, what it means to have faith, and the power of music to heal. I had never listened to Nick Cave’s music – I was just interested in his story. But I listened to Ghosteen, the album in which Cave grieves his son, and also is led by and connected to him. I was transfixed by this potent, intimate, haunting portrait of one who grieves the beloved while being carried and healed in the arms of a great Love. The veil between worlds seems beautifully thin in this music.

In our travels, I visited a dear friend who told me about a gathering space created for another friend of hers who is living with advanced Parkinson’s disease. She said she could feel the healing energy in that circle of friends. I don’t know if her friend will be cured, but I’m sure he will be healed.

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I don’t think it’s possible to parse exactly what creates the space for healing. Perhaps it is an alchemy of connection, joy, beauty, music, art, and the earth, set within loving community and enlivened by spirit. Whatever it is, I’m grateful.

I hope that you find your way to healing moments, and that they find their way to you. If you care to share some sources of healing for you, either hit reply or leave a comment on this post.

Thanks for being here. I appreciate you.

Lots of love,

Maija

Songs of the Week:

These are not about healing per se, but I think they relate. Besides, I just like them.

Hold On (Change is Coming) by Sounds of Blackness

Lesson by Joy Clark

And I already shared Stay Gentle by Brandi Carlile earlier in the year, but it fits this week too.

The complete Healing Happens playlist is available on Spotify and Apple Music. Healing Happens on Spotify and Healing Happens on Apple Music

Following a period of reflection, writing often flows from my fingertips, nearly fully formed as it comes. Other times, like right now, every word is laboriously chiseled from some stone where it has been trapped. My thoughts are a thousand cats that won’t be herded. But this is what I’ve got today.

In responding to my last post here, a couple of friends mentioned the television show The Bear and its theme of “Every Second Counts.” I went back and rewatched a favorite episode of The Bear, “Forks,” Season 2, episode 7, which shows the origin of this phrase in a restaurant kitchen.

In the show, “Every Second Counts” is a motto of a high paced kitchen, and it is interpreted differently by different characters. (There is a great essay exploring this in the Los Angeles Review of Books here.) On the one hand, time is limited and “every second counts” reflects the scarcity of time, the pressure and necessity to use every second wisely. On the other hand, “every second counts” recognizes the abundance of time – in any time period there are abundant seconds and opportunities to inhabit them. Time is always renewing itself.

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Both interpretations are true, and I have cycled between them. I have often felt the tyranny of the scarcity of time and the pressure to make every second count. What has been surprising to me is that since I was diagnosed with a cancer that will almost certainly shorten my life, I have felt a certain liberation from this scarcity. Ironically, my understanding that my time is more limited than I’d expected makes the seconds feel abundant.

Why? I think it is because I inhabit my life in a different way post-diagnosis. I am learning to sink into seconds, into moments, not just because they are limited, but because they are beautiful.

The tenor of these times can quickly lead us towards a frantic understanding of time. We live at an urgent moment, when the future of humanity writ large, and of our individual humanity is imperiled. I don’t think I need to list all the ways that this is true, for you to feel the weight of this moment. We all need to engage with the work of transformation in the ways that are right for us. There are many ways to participate in revolutionary love. And, at least for me, the source of that revolutionary love is not found in scarcity, but in abundance.

What is the well of abundance for me? It has become my very ordinary life.

In a recent interview, Suleika Jaouad was asked, how one lives with an everyday, every-hour awareness of a time-limited future. She responded, “For me, it means building a home in my life right now.”

By building a home in my life now, by inhabiting the moments, I find the source of healing.

Recently my wife and I vacationed along the coast of New England in beautiful places with beautiful people. I connected with friends of nearly 40 years (who I haven’t seen in 30) and we traced the lines of our lives since we last saw each other. I grounded myself with lifelong friends who I see every year, who have walked me through life, who remind me of who I am. I visited with family who I haven’t seen in too long and we told stories of memories and shared interests.

We walked and floated, waded in a tidal river and in the ocean. We picked blueberries and watched cardinals and robins do the same, while rabbits came through to glean dropped fruit on soft humid mornings. We drank countless cups of coffee and tea, glasses of rosé and sparkling water, donning caftans a la Golden Girls. We had my birthday dinner followed by a walk home giggling through a thunder and lightning storm and arrived drenched and happy.  We laughed til we cried and our sides ached. We ate a shared birthday cake with my uncle. We walked and traveled along the rocky jagged coast on lots of beautiful days and enjoyed the rainy ones too. We wandered through Boston neighborhoods, catching up with each other as we walked, and even found really good vegan ice cream and a great vegan breakfast (a particular rarity for vegans).

At home, it is very much the same without the beautiful coastline and the humidity.  Time with old and new friends, with family, fresh peaches and heirloom tomatoes, watching birds and tending the garden, playing with color at the painting table, and yes, zoom calls for election organizing.

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This well of life is full of thousands of moments, of seconds to be savored, of healing. As a bonus, when I am healed, I am more able to engage in acts of healing, of revolutionary love.

I am building a home in my life. Right now. And it is a wonderful place to dwell. I hope that you, too, are building a home in your life, full of an abundance of moments.

Thanks for being here. Please share this with folks who would be interested.

Lots of love to you,

Maija

Two songs this week:

The first is Echoes by Dar Williams celebrating the ways our ordinary lives are connected.

The second is The Poetry of Earth (Geophony) a new piece by Max Richter which I think could be a general song or record for Healing Happens. It is from his new record In a Landscape which releases on September 5. “It is a record about reconciling polarities, bringing together the electronic and the acoustic, the human and the natural world, the big questions of life and the quiet pleasures of living…” (from Spotify, emphasis mine) This seems like just what we are trying to explore here: the big questions and the quiet pleasures of living.

The complete Healing Happens playlist is available on Spotify and Apple Music.

Healing Happens on Spotify

Healing Happens on Apple Music

Suddenly it’s the end of June! I have a handful of reflections from the past month, which won’t get tied up with a bow at the end. These are just snapshots, scattered with a few neon signs. Such is life.

One
I was knocked out by some side effects this past week. While I lay around feeling miserable, I was reminded how quickly things can change. There are some items on my list of things I want to do while I’m still feeling healthy. They haven’t seemed too urgent since I have so many good days. Being suddenly and completely non-functional for a few days was the neon sign I needed to start on some of that list now that I feel better and stop waiting for the right moment. The right moment is now.

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Two
I got a letter from my oncologist’s office saying that she is leaving. She has been such a great doctor for me, and this is a huge loss, maybe akin to losing a beloved therapist. I’ll see her one last time this week and hope and beg to be referred to someone good. You can bet I’ve been down the research rabbit hole of possible providers!

Three
We went to a Celebration of Life this month for a friend who is in hospice care. This was the first time I’d been to such a gathering where the one being celebrated was present. It was beautiful and poignant and such a reminder to say all the things. How you’ve touched my life. How you’ve made me laugh. How you’ve made me feel. Neon sign. This friend is clearly so deeply and widely beloved. It was an honor to celebrate his life so fully lived.

Four
As Tanya Tucker sings, bring the flowers now, while we’re living.

Five
I spent a lot of time working my way through a series of online classes to practice painting flowers this month. Practice. I learned that I much prefer a bigger paper or canvas on which to paint. Small feels tight and restrictive. It also underscored the importance of the underlayer, the “chaos layer,” that ends up guiding the painting even while most of it is not visible in the end. Chaos can become beauty. What lies beneath is important in painting, as in life.

Six
As we finish the celebration of Pride month, the rights of the LGBTQIA community in this country are absolutely under attack, and our trans family are especially cruelly targeted. And still I feel how the tide has shifted, and the hateful are losing. (I believe this is one reason for the extreme backlash, in addition to diverting attention from real issues.) Two things can be true at the same time. One of the lessons of Pride is that we celebrate even amid adversity.

Seven
We marched in our local Pride parade this month which was fun and joyous and thankfully not too hot. We got to march behind the local corgi club and who doesn’t love a corgi decked out for Pride. What struck me most were all the kids and young people both in the parade and lining the route.  They were there with queer families, straight families, in groups. They were awash in rainbows and sequins and t-shirts proudly stating identities, taking up space, celebrating our muchness. Neon sign.

Eight
I was both shocked and thrilled to see young people from the high school that my kids graduated from marching with a banner they made claiming Pride for themselves at this school. My kids graduated from high school 12 and 9 years ago, and this simply NEVER would have happened at that school even that recently. I hear there are even out queer teachers there now. Sea changes, driven by these young people.

Nine
This month I watched the new documentary It’s Only Life Afterall on the Indigo Girls, Amy Ray and Emily Saliers. I’ve followed them closely for most of their careers and have seen them in concert numerous times. It is a fantastic documentary of these women who were so far ahead of their time in so many ways. They blazed the trail for queer artists and paid a big price for being out. They have walked their talk with their continuous activism, which they learned to let local impacted communities lead a lot earlier than many of us. It is streaming now, and I highly recommend it.

Ten
I am amazed and overjoyed by the numerous young queer musical artists in all genres these days. They sing about loving who they love, about heartbreak, about grappling with faith in the face of hateful religious institutions, about mental health, about family, about having fun, about pushing boundaries. There is something tremendously healing for my inner youth about hearing this music become almost unremarkable. And witness the mainstream explosion of Chappell Roan! We’ve come a long way baby. We have a long way to go. Two things can be true at the same time. The list of younger queer artists is deep and long. A few that are on repeat for me these days are Joy Oladokun, Katie Pruitt, Fancy Hagood, and Corook.

Eleven
I guess June has reminded me of the precarity of life in a motivating rather than overwhelming way, of the long game, and of the need to celebrate who we are and those we love, those who touch our lives, those who’ve paved the way, and those who will carry us into the future. Sometimes I just need a neon sign.

As always, thanks for being here. I appreciate you.

Love on your people. Here’s some love from me.

Maija

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Songs of the Week: Through by Fancy Hagood. Great for when you need a little pep in your step to keep going.

This is for the lost and the broken-hearted,
let yourself feel, get the healing started
Learn to let go, let the spirit move
No way out only way is through

And Bring My Flowers Now by Tanya Tucker

The complete Healing Happens playlist is available on Spotify and Apple Music.

Healing Happens on Spotify

Healing Happens on Apple Music

Last weekend, I was in Denver to visit longtime friends, and to hear and see Andrea Gibson perform. Some reflections.

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My friend texts, how was it? I don’t really have words. The show was really special and profound, I text back.

On Friday night, I sat among a thousand some odd people between my wife and my friend of 40+ years as Andrea Gibson spoke their poetry. I’ve memorized 75 minutes of poetry but after 3 years of chemo, I may forget some things, they announce.

Oh, how I relate as I notice more and more the gap between the workings of my mind and finding the words, like the connection is dropping. My once speedy brain has slowed. This is probably one reason I like to write – I can slow down and take the time I need to fill in those gaps.

And Andrea does forget at one point, twice in one poem, and the audience responds by speaking the next lines of their poem back to them, leading them back to their own words. It is a beautiful moment of connection and reciprocity between performer and audience.

I listen with my heart swelling and my eyes filling as they describe the beauty of their life, and the veils that were lifted after their cancer diagnosis, the ways they have fallen more deeply in love with these days.

The dominant metaphors for living with cancer are about fighting, battling, and being a warrior. When I was first diagnosed, I was given a book full of instructions for girding myself for battle. My heart sunk. I knew that I did not want to spend the rest of my life fighting. I understand how this metaphor works for many people –– but it just doesn’t work for me.

The clarity that cancer offered instead made me embrace this life and the people I love for all the rest of my days. The what ifs of the future pale in comparison to the beauty of now. More than bucket lists of fantastic adventures, I seek moments of connection, of beauty, of simple joys.

Yes, I can still be petty, but I like to think I don’t dwell there. And when I do, there is this insistent Love that pulls me back into life, into paying attention, into amazement.

Soon after I was diagnosed, another Stage 4 sister said to me “I am living your worst nightmare,” and I could see that her life was rich and full. Which was, of course, her point. My life is not tragic. My life is good, even when it is hard. I am lucky. So, so lucky.

In 1993, pregnant with my first child, I was driving to the JC Penney at Hilltop Mall in Richmond to pick up a crib we had ordered and listening to Fresh Air on the radio. Anne Lamott was the guest, talking about her new book, Operating Instructions. I remember where I was on I-80, when she told the story of her best friend (with Stage 4 cancer) who, in response to Anne’s query as to whether a dress made her butt look big said “Annie, you don’t have that kind of time.” Those words have echoed through my life ever since, leading me back over and over to the present. All we have is now, and mortality is the one thing that every single one of us has in common.

Thirty-one years later, I sat in the Paramount Theater in Denver listening to Andrea Gibson’s words which bring me home again, and guide me through these days:

But I did not meet this life until I met its brevity. 
Did not meet my voice until I knew every word 
could be my last. I did not know what prayer was 
until I started praying for what I already have. 

When Andrea spoke these words on Friday night, everything in me shouted yes, Yes, YES! To be in their presence as they so eloquently confirmed that this precious life is so sweet, that every day offers an invitation to awe, that love holds us all was soul food. Like that moment on I-80, this is a night I will not forget.

Gathered there, we all knew that this evening was special. Andrea may or may not be able to perform again. Each of us there may or may not be able to hear them in person again. This night was our benediction.

I spent the days that followed framed by beautiful mountains with my beloved, savored sweet moments of connection with old friends, and laid my body on a flat boulder beside a rushing creek and rested in awe

On that rock, I thought of one more poem that guides me these days – Late Fragment by Raymond Carter.

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.

Blessed by benediction and beloved. What more could I ask for?

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So how about you. How do you live within the brevity and beauty of this life?

May you be blessed with the benediction you need.

Thank you for walking alongside me. Please share this with folks who might be interested.

With great love,

Maija

Song of the Week is a song I think of as a benediction, Stay Gentle by Brandi Carlile.

And a bonus, Andrea Gibson reading their powerful, beautiful poem,  MAGA Hat in the Chemo Room.

The complete playlist of Healing Happens songs of the week is available on Spotify and Apple Music.

Healing Happens on Spotify

Healing Happens on Apple Music

I am grateful to report from cancerland that my scans were good and my latest treatment is working! More good time is such sweetness.

For today’s entry I was inspired by Kim Richey’s new album, in particular the song Chapel Avenue where she remembers her childhood and “the gold of yesterday.”

And all the gold of yesterday
Is a debt I can’t repay
I owe it all to you
Chapel Avenue

If songs had a color, this one would be sepia toned and full of warmth. It took me on my own trip through my childhood memories surrounded by the memories of other generations, sifting through our gold.

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Once again, I am caught up in the way time and space collapse as I can see a cinematic fade from one generation to the next, as if we are part of a cosmic screenplay.

I trace the legacy of play and backyard memories through the generations, just as I could trace the love of music, the curiosity about how things work, the appreciation of good food and how to cook it, the commitment to being about something bigger than ourselves.

FADE IN
EXT. 1940’s HOUSE (YARD WITH TREE) – DAY

My dad and his brothers play fighter pilot in the tree in the yard, acting as lookouts, and taking turns being bombardier. Military personnel board in their home during World War II fueling the boys’ imagination.

His mom, my grandma, cooks a roast on the weekend and then makes sandwiches for the week for family and boarders, slices of roast beef so thin they were nearly transparent. One slice between bread with mayo makes a sandwich.

The cross-country road trip, with bickering brothers being tossed out of the car to walk a mile to the top of the next rise. Memories of these days sharp to the end, even recounting this trip on the 78^th anniversary to the day of the trip, shortly before he died.

I could feel his comfort in these memories.

FADE OUT

FADE IN
EXT. RANCH STYLE HOUSE 1970’s (YARD WITH OLIVE TREES) - DAY

There were 8 olive trees in the yards of my childhood house in a subdivision built in an old olive orchard. Today with specialty olive oils and such, this sounds much more idyllic than it was. The trees provided ammunition for my brother and I and the neighbor kids to pelt each other in boys vs. girls battles. They also had pollen in the spring that my grandma was so allergic to that she could not come to our house for weeks.

They grew heavy with green olives, which we never picked or cured or turned into oil. Instead, they ripened to soft purple fruits that fell all over the yard, and our bare feet were stained purple all summer from stepping on overripe olives. Fallen olive leaves pricked our feet with their sharp ends.

My dad built a two-story treehouse into one of these olive trees. This might have been the only thing he ever built, a labor of love and I’m sure some frustration. Here we staged our battles some days, and other days we mixed potions.

On summer nights, the attic fan pulled cooler air through the house along with the scent of jasmine. One summer my parents got a new mattress and decided to put their old mattress on an old frame in the backyard under the trees.  After the intense heat of the day, I remember the comfort of sleeping outside in the soft summer night air.

A flowered cloth suitcase became a briefcase for my brother and I to play secret agents Maxwell Smart and Agent 99. Other times we reenacted an episode we had seen on the Wonderful World of Disney about a brother and sister, orphaned, lost and on the run.

On my own, I became Harriet the Spy, having checked out and read the book over and over. I had my mini top-edge spiral bound notebook and a pencil, and I would stand on the water pipe outside my brother’s window to spy on him and his friend and note down their rather unremarkable activities.

I spent a lot of time imagining myself in stories I read: The Little House Books, Professor Diggins’ Dragons, Where the Lilies Bloom.

We ran with a pack of neighbors in the summer and one year we put together a play that we staged for our parents in a backyard. I remember no details other than that the pursuit occupied us for days and we were quite proud of ourselves. I believe it was an original script.

My mom taught us to make piecrust and bake cookies and knead bread, and when we were sick, she smoothed our bed sheets and made juice from frozen concentrate with lots of ice in a thermos with a straw.

At night, I would be tucked into my lower bunk under the hot pink ribbed bedspread with nighttime lullabies, Suliram and All through the Night.

FADE OUT

FADE IN
EXT. CITY NEIGHBORHOOD HOUSE 1990’s (YARD WITH TALL REDWOOD TREE) - DAY

What stories will they tell?

Summers in the blow-up pool, in the sandbox with the hose. Rose petals, and gardens growing over time. A tiny peach tree that grew with them. Digging a hole to make a mud puddle to sit in. Their favorite mandarins on our own tree. Climbing up the inside of the tall redwood, up the closely spaced branches like a ladder. Playing knights and Robin Hood and the whole imagined world of Sarah Strawberry. Razzle Dazzle Wisdom School in the closet, stuffed animals lined up for learning. Legos and trains and baking brownies. Biking up and down the block. Chalked hopscotch on the sidewalk, and the basketball scores of the driveway match of Bibby vs. Bobby played in their jerseys. Wednesday mornings at the farmer’s market and library followed by reading the new pile of books on the couch. Bedtime stories and a nighttime prayer grown so familiar it became a call and response:

Guardian angels            whom we love
Shine on us                        from up above
In the morning                 when I wake
Show me the path        of love to take

FADE OUT

FADE IN
EXT. SOMEWHERE IN THE FUTURE

A new generation playing in another yard, hearing, creating and reenacting stories, being tucked in safe and loved at night. The wheel of time turns, collapsing time and space again. We are bound with an unbreakable cord of love.

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I hope that you can trace some gold from your yesterdays and carry it to the future.

Thanks for being here. I appreciate you.

Lots of love,

Maija

Song of the Week: Chapel Avenue by Kim Richey and just because it’s beautiful, a video of Miriam Makeba singing Suliram.

The Whole Playlist of Songs of the Week:

Healing Happens on Spotify

Healing Happens on Apple Music

I hope you are well in these days.  I initially wrote this about 10 days ago, so the timeline is a bit off. I refer to pieces that you can find at Andrea Gibson’s Substack, Things that Don’t Suck and Elizabeth Gilbert’s Substack, Letters from Love. I highly recommend both of these, along with Suleika Jouad’s The Isolation Journals.

In cancerland, I am back in the scancycle.  I have scans tomorrow which will show whether or not my new treatment regimen is working. Fingers and toes crossed! In any case, I’m grateful to my body for keeping on keeping on. Of her, I can surely say, nevertheless, she persisted. Might become another entry here.

In other fun news, we installed The Treat Stop in our front yard, like a Little Library, but with dog treats. It brings me a lot of joy to watch dogs and their people stopping by. You can see some photos of the grand opening here on my Instagram.

It’s been 11 days framed by a poet. First, I learned that I will actually be able to hear them read in May in person which blows my heart right open. Then they dropped two stunning pieces on mortality. How lucky am I that as I dance with cancer and mortality, I live in the time of a guide and companion like Andrea Gibson.

This writing is so rough. Just sketches of thoughts and feelings that feel too big to put on the page. Grabbing at pieces that begin to coalesce and translating them into words.

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On Saturday, I sat weeding Bermuda grass, which is to say I worked on an impossible task since it has the weed world’s most effective mechanism for survival and spread. It spreads above ground and below ground with networks of vine-like stolon and thick rhizome roots. Even a small piece of the rhizome root left behind will generate new growth. It entwines itself in the roots of existing and wanted plants, and hides, ensuring it’s future.

It is a non-native, invasive species that is nearly impossible to eradicate, even with toxic chemicals. Sound familiar? I am struck by the thought that Bermuda grows like the metastases of the weed world.

I was thinking of Miss Rumphius* the other day and of her quest to make the world more beautiful by scattering lupine seeds wherever she went. Long after she was gone, the lupine kept spreading beauty. What seeds of beauty do I sow?

Andrea Gibson wrote in the voice of Love writing to her:

Do you know how gutsy it is to admit how badly you want to live? Yes, we love you for working to build a loving relationship with your mortality. But we also love you for screaming “I don’t want to die!” so loudly in the chemo room, you almost got kicked out. (Ooopsy.)

Me again. Just to be clear, I want to live.

I still want to befriend a crow.
I want a thousand more belly laughs with the people I love.
I want to meet my grandchildren.
I want to celebrate my people’s milestones.
I want to grow old with my beloved.
I want to be here for the next chapters of so many life stories.
I want to read poems that have not yet been written, hear music that has not yet been composed.
I want more walks in forests and beside streams and oceans. I want to see canyon lands and ancient trees and brilliant fall colors.
I want birdsong, and garden harvests, and quiet winters, and warm summer evenings.
I want to feel the strength of my body moving and the satisfaction of a good stretch.

The other day I thought about why I don’t just give up on trying to learn Gaelic and Spanish, and I know it is because it keeps a dream alive. It is good to keep dreaming.

What if we turn cancer upside down and inside out? (Not in an icky making-the-best-of-things way.) What if the way lobular breast cancer strings cells together to spread quietly as a web through the body is a model of the way we could sneak love into forgotten places? What if instead of spreading disease, metastases could spread healing? What if we could metastasize love, breaking off love cells and sending them out into the body, into each other, into the ethers to set up home and multiply?

I know this life is Love School and I just wish I had the words to explain. If I find them, I’ll write them down.

I’ve wandered all over the place in my head and heart these last days. I am trying to listen for the voice of Love.

Befriending mortality, living the hell out of this one life, being here now, staying amazed, metastasizing love. All of it. May it be so.

Go out there and sneak some love and healing into hidden places.

I appreciate you. Thanks for being here. Share this with folks who might resonate with this.

Spreading love,

Maija

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Song of the Week: If Love School had a curricular playlist, Give Yourself to Love by Kate Wolf would be on top. Since I’ve shared that one before, I also include Love Song by Elton John.

I was out recently and spoke to someone who said she always listens to these music recommendations which delighted me. For the handful of you who do, you are indeed my people. I’ve collected all of the songs into a playlist and I’ll keep adding to it as we go. I know it’s eclectic and not really a cohesive playlist, but these are all songs that accompany me, and now they are collecting in one place.

You can find it here:

Healing Happens on Spotify

Healing Happens on Apple Music

* Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney is a beautiful, mostly pictures, book. Highly recommended if you have a younger child in your life. Or even if you don’t.

In my randomly assigned prompt in my writing group this week, I got “coming to our senses.” It took me out into the garden, and later to my painting table

Touch, Taste, Sight, Hearing, Smell. We tend to think of 5 senses, although others identify more.

Coming back to our senses can be a grounding practice, bringing us back to here and now when thoughts spin us out into scary places. Name one thing you can see. Hear. Smell. Touch. Taste.

I’ve thought often in the past 2 years about how to live an embodied life, because unique to this life is the experience of living in a body.  When I learned my time would likely be shorter than I’d imagined, I thought a lot about what is important to me in this life. After being with my people, living in a body seems to be a thing to focus on. And focusing on the body is living a life of the senses. My cancer coach and I used to talk about trying to make sure each of those fab 5 senses are engaged every day, and even more so, taking moments to notice them. 

This reminds me of a favorite verse from Mary Oliver’s poem Sometimes:

Instructions for Living a Life:
Pay attention.
Be Astonished.
Tell about it.

I do best these days with simple reminders: 5 senses; notice; pay attention; find beauty. I want to remember to drink from the sensory well, consciously, grateful for this life in a body.

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Having lost sight(ha!) of this five sense engagement as a conscious practice, it is time for me to reintegrate it. What better time than spring in the garden to practice!

Touching the dirt, the tangled roots of plant starts, the wrinkled orbs of nasturtium seeds, the wire tomato cages, new leaves, soft fronds of yarrow, tiny fruits and flowers.

Tasting the winter garden lettuce gone bitter now. Last of the parsley. Last of the cabbage last night improvised into a recipe from the New York Times.

Seeing color, color, color, color. Spring is fluorescent, nature’s neon sign. All the shades of green, leading into an explosion of other colors as things begin to bloom. It’s kind of mind-blowing really.

Hearing bird song, but not right in the yard these days. I can hear them in the neighbor’s yards where they are nesting. Squawk of the bold and clever blue jays as they sweep through the mingled birdseed to pick out their favorite sunflower seeds. The coos of the clumsy, yet beautiful mourning doves who will come to our yard when they are fledglings. The gobbling tom turkeys who wander by fanning their tails to attract the ladies.

Smell. Dirt. Spring rain. Sage. Lemon thyme. Geranium leaves. Orange blossoms. Manure. Tomato plants promising summer glory.

The color show in the garden leads me to painting. I have been having fun with online painting classes, playing with new ideas. This week, indulging my love of color and inspired by the garden, I practiced painting geraniums and their lovely leaves, peonies, and lupine.  For me, this is another way to pay attention, both to the characteristics of flowers and leaves, and also in the moment to the act of painting. It is another way to notice beauty.

How are your fab 5 senses engaged today? What do you notice when you pay attention? Where do you find beauty?

I’m grateful you are here. Please share this with folks who might be interested. Wishing you a glorious spring!

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Lots of love,

Maija

Song of the Week: An old favorite, All This Beauty, by The Weepies.

I have a favorite card that I’ve purchased a dozen times. It shows a black and white photo of a young baby’s face pressed up to glass, looking out the window at a bird on the window ledge. The card says, “Show me a day when the world wasn’t new.”

The novelty and delight of a new world each day, each moment, comes so naturally to a young child. But it is so much more effortful for me as I’ve aged. Still, it is such a nourishing practice to allow myself to be amazed, astonished by the beauty of a day, a moment, a tiny slice of life right in front of me.

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I was reminded of this again lately when listening to an interview with Suleika Jaoud whom I have mentioned before. She talks about learning to live with the reality that she will be in treatment for her cancer for the rest of her life. (This is also my reality.) She describes how living every day as if it is your last day creates a sense of panic and urgency. Instead, she suggests living every day as if it is your first, which creates the space for wonder.

I think that anyone who had had to reckon with their mortality has felt the pressure to live every day as a possible last day. But so much is gained by flipping the script to live a life of first days. First days are an invitation, are possibility. First days offer timelessness and moments of complete presence to beauty, to wonder, to love.

I’ve mentioned before that I taught young children for several years and I also had children of my own. What teachers of presence they are! If you’ve ever taken a walk with a young child, you quickly learn that it is not about the destination. It’s about all the little moments along the way. One group of 2-year-old children I had in a parent-child group many years ago were fascinated with snails. Snails in a very small corner of the garden became the focus of our outside time. First, we had to find them, looking among the leaves and flowers. Then we waited for them to poke their heads out of their shells. One boy was the snail whisperer. Any snail resting on his flat hand would emerge from its shell. We saw different sizes and speculated about family groups. We found snail trails. We offered leaves that might be food. We sang snail rhymes. We saw snails with first day eyes.

Show me a day when the world wasn’t new.

I recently attended a service at the congregation that we are a part of. It’s an annual service, my favorite one, structured around a famous line from Mary Oliver’s poem The Summer Day: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” At this service, 10 speakers that spanned the decades and ages from under 10 to over 90 years old, spoke to this question.

I always reflect on what my answer would be. This year I thought about a life of first days and space for wonder and beauty. Mary Oliver talks about an encounter with a grasshopper in the poem, and about knowing how to be idle and blessed. The last line of the poem is famous, but the rest of the poem offers an answer to the question. In her poetry, Oliver frequently refers to the act of paying attention as the essential act of living. A life of first days invites attention and presence.

I’ve spent time in our garden lately. The magenta redbud has burst into bloom, heralding spring. Neon orange calendulas spread across the garden. I watch for the tiny figs and persimmons to appear on the trees, and drink in all of that spring green, new life. Although these cycles repeat every year in the garden, it is easy to see them with first day eyes.

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When I’m in search of beauty, I often find it in music. This week I saw and heard a recording of SistaStrings playing a Stradivarius cello and violin at the Library of Congress while they sang Lift Every Voice and Sing. It is breathtakingly beautiful and gives me goosebumps every time I watch it. It was easy to hear this with first day ears.

Whether you are reckoning with your mortality, or with the heavy weight of the world, I offer you first days and space for wonder and beauty. What would it look like to live your life as if every day is your first day?

Show me a day when the world wasn’t new.

May your days be a treasure hunt for wonder, for beauty, for joy.

Thank you for being here. Please share this with folks who might be interested.

Sending love,

Maija

The song of the week, of course, is SistaStrings playing Lift Every Voice and Sing.

Here is Mary Oliver’s full poem.

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

—Mary Oliver

Today I introduce you to a friend, and let her have her say. This one is just for fun, which is big part of healing.

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The Days of My Life

These days I hear them say that I have dementia. That might be true, but there are things I remember. In any case, I’ve earned it –– I’m about 90 years old, the way you count things.

The story is told (and it’s true) that I saved us all. Our mother had left us to fend for ourselves, and we were simply too young. She was fickle like that, always looking for her next adventure and not wanting to be tied down. I poked my head out first to call for help, and a small person bent down and picked me up and squeezed me tight. A group of them gathered around the chicken coop that was above our home. They peered and poked and found my brother and sister. A big person gathered the smalls and took them away, asking the small to release me.

Later, after it was quiet, the big one came back and fetched all three of us. We were carried in a cardboard box to what would be our new home. We were bathed (yuck), defleaed (relief) and best of all hand fed until our bellies were warm and round. We were given names. My brother was Moses, my sister was Lucy, and I am Scout.

The adventures of the three little kittens began. We graduated from the box to the bathroom to the girl’s room. She had a pile of soft stuffed animals that made the most wonderful litterbox. She opened her window so that we could go outside. We learned to hunt and on our most victorious day, we returned with a squirrel’s head as an offering. It was not graciously received.

Moses grew to be the gregarious orange tabby who visited all of the neighbors, and the boy was his person. Moses was a scalawag, but they loved him.

Lucy was a tiny, shy tuxedo and the girl was her person. She stayed close to home after she got locked under the neighbors’ house for two weeks. Everyone loved her because she was sweet, unless you were a bird. In which case she was a menace.

And I was the ordinary, reliable black cat. I am chatty and affectionate to all, giving a little bite to command attention. Not much bothers me, not then, not now. I’m just happy to be here. I am Scout.

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I love cardboard. We were rescued in a box, after all, and our home in the garage was full of boxes, which is to say full of possibility. Boxes were our playground, our beds, our hideouts, our perches. They were our comfort. I love the dusty, papery smell of a good cardboard box, and the way it scratches my neck just so. 

Not so long ago, after Moses and Lucy were gone, I was invited to be a house cat. This is a role I took to immediately. I don’t really care if I ever go outside again.

I live on one side of the house because there is another scary black cat on the other side of the door. Sometimes they lock her up and let me explore. One time I hissed at her for good measure.

These days I am slow and bow-legged. I spend my days sleeping in a comfortable chair, keeping these old bones warm. I sing the songs of my people, sometimes without ceasing. I take great care after using the litter box to scratch every surface in sight, and then I announce that my task has been completed. It’s the little things.

I have perfected a two-syllable call that sounds uncannily like “hello.” I enjoy keeping my people on their toes.

I have developed an elaborate theory and have proven it to be true. Each morning, I get out of bed and climb into a cardboard box. From here I commence my breakfast song. This sets off a chain of events. Eventually, they come and open the door, and only then do I climb out of the box, in order to supervise my breakfast delivery. I need to see them fetch and return the food bowl. Otherwise, it didn’t happen and I won’t eat. My most recent victory has been to refuse all but chicken paté, and they finally removed the offending turkey.

I threatened death at the new year. They had a day of tears and great affection. I changed my mind and I’m still here.  I am Scout.

I hope you have some 4-legged friends keeping you company in your life.  Here’s to having some fun.

Thanks for being here! Share as you see fit.

Lots of love,

Maija

Song of the Week: Choosing a song for Scout was a challenge. Her own songs cannot be transcribed. I settled on Living my Best Life by Ben Rector. While the details of her days are different, this does convey her approach to life.

Today I offer writing about a hole where I have recently been both dwelling and resting. I’ve climbed out of the hole now and am enjoying the sun again. But I think it’s important to acknowledge and even honor the holes in which we find ourselves (as both a location and a process).

I wrote in the format of the 11’s again, a form I was introduced to by Jena Schwartz. It’s a format I turn to when writing is hard. I recommend it. As I was writing, I kept writing whole instead of hole which led me down another path. This can be part of the magic of the process of writing. Although, as you will read, I acknowledge that sometimes I just can’t write, and the process can’t start until it’s ready.

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From Hole to Whole

One

After I reassured all my beloveds about my recent cancer progression, the reality descended like a cold fog and I was flattened. I was angry. I was sad. It is my first bad news since the original bad news (you have metastatic cancer) two years ago. This isn’t going to be pretty.

Two

When I fall into a deep hole, I find it’s best to sit a while and find my bearings. Eventually I will find that there is ground beneath me, and my eyes will adjust to the place in which I find myself.  It’s important to feel and accept the truth of the hole, before attempting to climb out.

Three

During the pandemic, I started learning Irish Gaelic on Duolingo. 1200 some odd days later, I still plug away at this language rooted in a land I’m so drawn to. I’ve finished the available lessons, but I neither really speak it nor understand it spoken. The best I have is some familiarity with the sounds, and a rudimentary ability to read it.

There is nothing intuitive about the language for me, one that frequently strings 3 vowels or 3 or 4 consonants together in a word. The code-cracker in me pushes on.

This week I noticed the contrast of the word dochas (hope) and dorcha (dark) or dorchadas (darkness). Even the raging part of me has to admit that hope can be found in the darkness. The poets know this, but maybe more importantly for me right now, the earth knows this. The dark of winter holds the hope of spring.

Four

Part of me would prefer to just mope in my dark hole, but my pity parties are limited to a one (non-alcoholic) drink maximum.

Five

While I’m in the hole, I can’t write. I have to move this energy somehow, so I turn back to painting. I sign up for an online class for some inspiration to loosen up, play, keep moving. I paint some sunflowers that I kind of like. I paint some silly goats. They look back at me inviting me to whimsy. I don’t really feel whimsical.

But color feels better than words, so I keep going.

Six

(I keep writing whole, instead of hole. Perhaps it is the Whole trying to get my attention.) Hole. Whole. Holy. Wholly.

Seven

Here in the hole/whole, I find music. Joy Oladokun releases a new song, “questions, chaos, and faith.”

Nothing is certain, everything changes,
We’re spirit and bone marching to the grave,
There are no answers,
there are only questions, chaos, and faith.

I listen over and over. When I see these words written, they look morbid, but I actually find this to be a hopeful song. Truth is hopeful.

Eight

If I know one thing about cancer, it is that it is random, it is part of the chaos. This is comforting in its way, like my phone sticker: “Relax, nothing is under control.”

I’m so tired of cancer group posts: “my scans were good. God is good.” What happens to that God when your scans are bad, as they will be one day?

Nine

Sitting in the dark calls for baking. A chocolate cake. A fresh batch of granola. Some sweetness for this season.

Ten

In my exercise class we are doing what the teacher calls “brainwork,” alternating movements in a way that makes you have to think about it. Except when I think about it, I get confused, and I realize it’s better when I just let my body do it without too much thinking. The body gets it.

Eleven

The body. This body. This flesh. These bones. I feel them all and see that we are still here, and we still feel pretty good, despite what grows within.

I climb back out of my hole where the darkness has held me in its grip, but also in its embrace. I bring the colors, the music, the chaos, the sweetness with me and keep going. The Whole beckons.

Holes are hard places to be. Period, full stop. I find that they can also be places of rest, respite and healing, if I can allow the darkness to embrace, rather that restrain or overcome me. Outside of the hole, I remembered another beautiful piece of music, Little Blue by Jacob Collier (featuring Brandi Carlile).

Don't be afraid of the dark
In your heart
You're gonna find a way
To carry the weight of the world
On your shoulders
You're gonna find a way home

If you’ve found yourself in a hole, I send you extra love and I wish that you find its embrace while you’re there. The Whole beckons to all of us.

We are all walking each other home as Ram Dass says. I am grateful to be walking with you. Keep going.

Thanks for being here. I love to hear from you in the comments or by replying to this email. Please share this with folks who might find it useful.

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Lots of love,

Maija

Songs of the Week: questions, chaos and faith by Joy Oladokun. So far, it has only been released on her Instagram. Also Little Blue by Jacob Collier (featuring Brandi Carlile).