Stitches: How to Recover

The gift of grief is incalculable, in giving you back to yourself.

^^ Anne LamottI found this book (or this book found me) at a serendipitous time, as I was going through grief and Anne Lamott just happened to be writing about it. Everything here is spot on and timely, for anyone in the volcano --- and probably anyone looking on.

STITCHES: A HANDBOOK ON MEANING, HOPE AND REPAIR by Anne Lamott

The following are excerpts taken from Anne Lamott's Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair. Bold and italics are mine. Everything else is Anne's.

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I don’t know Who—or what—put the question, I don’t know when it was put. I don’t even remember answering. But at some moment I did answer Yes to Someone—or Something—and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life, in self-surrender, had a goal.

^^ Dag Hammarskjold, Markings--Sometimes sorrow is unavoidable, even when your kids are little, when the marvels of your children, and your parental amazement, are all the meaning you need to sustain you, or when you have landed the job and salary for which you’ve always longed, or the mate. And then the phone rings.--

Ultimately we’re all just walking each other home.

• Ram Dass

--What I resist is not the truth but when people put a pretty bow on scary things instead of saying, “This is a nightmare. I hate everything. I’m going to go hide in the garage.”--In the aftermath of loss, we do what we’ve always done, although we are changed, maybe more afraid. We do what we can, as well as we can.My pastor, Veronica, one Sunday told the story of a sparrow lying in the street with its legs straight up in the air, sweating a little under its feathery arms. A warhorse walks up to the bird and asks, “What on earth are you doing?” The sparrow replies, “I heard the sky was falling, and I wanted to help.” The horse laughs a big, loud, sneering horse laugh, and says, “Do you really think you’re going to hold back the sky, with those scrawny little legs?” And the sparrow says, “One does what one can.”So what can I do? Not much. Mother Teresa said that none of us can do great things, but we can do small things with great love.--I showed up to teach Sunday school two days after the Newtown shootings. I didn’t overthink what I would say, because I always end up telling the kids the same things: that they are loved and chosen, that the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it; and to keep trusting God, no matter what things looks like and no matter how long an upswing takes.If something awful has occurred, I ask the kids at Sunday school if they want to talk about what has happened, or if they would rather make art. One hundred percent of the time, they would rather make art.--To search for God is to have found God.--As far as I can recall, none of the adults in my life ever once remembered to say, “Some people have a thick skin and you don’t. Your heart is really open and that is going to cause pain, but that is an appropriate response to this world. The cost is high, but the blessing of being compassionate is beyond your wildest dreams. However, you’re not going to feel that a lot in seventh grade. Just hang on.”--I quit my last real job, as a writer at a magazine, when I was twenty-one. That was the moment when I lost my place of prestige on the fast track, and slowly, millimeter by millimeter, I started to get found, to discover who I had been born to be, instead of the impossibly small package, all tied up tightly in myself, that I had agreed to be.--I’d given talks for years about how when it comes to grieving, the culture lies—you really do not get over the biggest losses, you don’t pass through grief in any organized way, and it takes years and infinitely more tears than people want to allot you.Yet the gift of grief is incalculable, in giving you back to yourself.--This is all that restoration requires most of the time, that one person not give up.For instance, when I was in school, there were a few teachers along the way who must have seen in me a hummingbird of charming achievement, all eyes, bird bones, frizzly hair and a desperation to please and impress. They knew that there was power and beauty deep inside me, but that I was afraid of this and I was in fragments. Men and women alike, old and new at teaching, were like aunties or grandparents in their firm patience with me, in their conviction of my worth. They had a divine curiosity about me—“Hey, who’s in there? Are you willing to talk straight and find who you actually are, if I keep you company? Do you want to make friends with your heart? Here—start with this poem.” This is who I want to be in the world. This is who I think we are supposed to be, people who help call forth human beings from deep inside hopelessness.--I don’t know a lot, but I know this to be true. My brother teaches special education at a local high school. I think he will be seated near the Godiva chocolate fountain on the other side of eternity.--You can buy the book here. :)