Apologies, I’ve been an awful blogger of late. It’s been, well, months. Not much in the way of excuses, except for a lot of traveling and concentrating on my two WIPs, GIRLS GUIDE TO THE SHADOW SIDE and DIVING FOR AIR. Plus some magazine articles. Anyway, I can’t resist posting a little about Jung’s The Red Book, which is ever-so-close to reaching my library. Only a few more weeks to go…here is a teaser for those who are interested. I can’t wait, as Jung’s visions have influenced a lot of my writing for GGSS, and am sure TRB will inform even more of GGSS as I continue to pen the first draft…
Here are some pictures from TRB: click on them to enlarge…
-
- The Red Book
And this is an excerpt of an excellent piece by Sara Corbett writing in the New York Times magazine.
“The Holy Grail of the Unconscious”
“This is a story about a nearly 100-year-old book, bound in red leather, which has spent the last quarter century secreted away in a bank vault in Switzerland. The book is big and heavy and its spine is etched with gold letters that say “Liber Novus,” which is Latin for “New Book.” Its pages are made from thick cream-colored parchment and filled with paintings of otherworldly creatures and handwritten dialogues with gods and devils. If you didn’t know the book’s vintage, you might confuse it for a lost medieval tome.
And yet between the book’s heavy covers, a very modern story unfolds. It goes as follows: Man skids into midlife and loses his soul. Man goes looking for soul. After a lot of instructive hardship and adventure — taking place entirely in his head — he finds it again.
Some people feel that nobody should read the book, and some feel that everybody should read it. The truth is, nobody really knows. Most of what has been said about the book — what it is, what it means — is the product of guesswork, because from the time it was begun in 1914 in a smallish town in Switzerland, it seems that only about two dozen people have managed to read or even have much of a look at it.
Of those who did see it, at least one person, an educated Englishwoman who was allowed to read some of the book in the 1920s, thought it held infinite wisdom — “There are people in my country who would read it from cover to cover without stopping to breathe scarcely,” she wrote — while another, a well-known literary type who glimpsed it shortly after, deemed it both fascinating and worrisome, concluding that it was the work of a psychotic.
So for the better part of the past century, despite the fact that it is thought to be the pivotal work of one of the era’s great thinkers, the book has existed mostly just as a rumor, cosseted behind the skeins of its own legend — revered and puzzled over only from a great distance.
Which is why one rainy November night in 2007, I boarded a flight in Boston and rode the clouds until I woke up in Zurich, pulling up to the airport gate at about the same hour that the main branch of the Union Bank of Switzerland, located on the city’s swanky Bahnhofstrasse, across from Tommy Hilfiger and close to Cartier, was opening its doors for the day. A change was under way: the book, which had spent the past 23 years locked inside a safe deposit box in one of the bank’s underground vaults, was just then being wrapped in black cloth and loaded into a discreet-looking padded suitcase on wheels. It was then rolled past the guards, out into the sunlight and clear, cold air, where it was loaded into a waiting car and whisked away.
THIS COULD SOUND, I realize, like the start of a spy novel or a Hollywood bank caper, but it is rather a story about genius and madness, as well as possession and obsession, with one object — this old, unusual book — skating among those things. Also, there are a lot of Jungians involved, a species of thinkers who subscribe to the theories of Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist and author of the big red leather book. And Jungians, almost by definition, tend to get enthused anytime something previously hidden reveals itself, when whatever’s been underground finally makes it to the surface.
Carl Jung founded the field of analytical psychology and, along with Sigmund Freud, was responsible for popularizing the idea that a person’s interior life merited not just attention but dedicated exploration — a notion that has since propelled tens of millions of people into psychotherapy. Freud, who started as Jung’s mentor and later became his rival, generally viewed the unconscious mind as a warehouse for repressed desires, which could then be codified and pathologized and treated. Jung, over time, came to see the psyche as an inherently more spiritual and fluid place, an ocean that could be fished for enlightenment and healing.
Whether or not he would have wanted it this way, Jung — who regarded himself as a scientist — is today remembered more as a countercultural icon, a proponent of spirituality outside religion and the ultimate champion of dreamers and seekers everywhere, which has earned him both posthumous respect and posthumous ridicule. Jung’s ideas laid the foundation for the widely used Myers-Briggs personality test and influenced the creation of Alcoholics Anonymous. His central tenets — the existence of a collective unconscious and the power of archetypes — have seeped into the larger domain of New Age thinking while remaining more at the fringes of mainstream psychology.
A big man with wire-rimmed glasses, a booming laugh and a penchant for the experimental, Jung was interested in the psychological aspects of séances, of astrology, of witchcraft. He could be jocular and also impatient. He was a dynamic speaker, an empathic listener. He had a famously magnetic appeal with women. Working at Zurich’s Burghölzli psychiatric hospital, Jung listened intently to the ravings of schizophrenics, believing they held clues to both personal and universal truths. At home, in his spare time, he pored over Dante, Goethe, Swedenborg and Nietzsche. He began to study mythology and world cultures, applying what he learned to the live feed from the unconscious — claiming that dreams offered a rich and symbolic narrative coming from the depths of the psyche. Somewhere along the way, he started to view the human soul — not just the mind and the body — as requiring specific care and development, an idea that pushed him into a province long occupied by poets and priests but not so much by medical doctors and empirical scientists.
Jung soon found himself in opposition not just to Freud but also to most of his field, the psychiatrists who constituted the dominant culture at the time, speaking the clinical language of symptom and diagnosis behind the deadbolts of asylum wards. Separation was not easy. As his convictions began to crystallize, Jung, who was at that point an outwardly successful and ambitious man with a young family, a thriving private practice and a big, elegant house on the shores of Lake Zurich, felt his own psyche starting to teeter and slide, until finally he was dumped into what would become a life-altering crisis.
What happened next to Carl Jung has become, among Jungians and other scholars, the topic of enduring legend and controversy. It has been characterized variously as a creative illness, a descent into the underworld, a bout with insanity, a narcissistic self-deification, a transcendence, a midlife breakdown and an inner disturbance mirroring the upheaval of World War I. Whatever the case, in 1913, Jung, who was then 38, got lost in the soup of his own psyche. He was haunted by troubling visions and heard inner voices. Grappling with the horror of some of what he saw, he worried in moments that he was, in his own words, “menaced by a psychosis” or “doing a schizophrenia.”
He later would compare this period of his life — this “confrontation with the unconscious,” as he called it — to a mescaline experiment. He described his visions as coming in an “incessant stream.” He likened them to rocks falling on his head, to thunderstorms, to molten lava. “I often had to cling to the table,” he recalled, “so as not to fall apart.”
Had he been a psychiatric patient, Jung might well have been told he had a nervous disorder and encouraged to ignore the circus going on in his head. But as a psychiatrist, and one with a decidedly maverick streak, he tried instead to tear down the wall between his rational self and his psyche. For about six years, Jung worked to prevent his conscious mind from blocking out what his unconscious mind wanted to show him. Between appointments with patients, after dinner with his wife and children, whenever there was a spare hour or two, Jung sat in a book-lined office on the second floor of his home and actually induced hallucinations — what he called “active imaginations.” “In order to grasp the fantasies which were stirring in me ‘underground,’ ” Jung wrote later in his book “Memories, Dreams, Reflections,” “I knew that I had to let myself plummet down into them.” He found himself in a liminal place, as full of creative abundance as it was of potential ruin, believing it to be the same borderlands traveled by both lunatics and great artists.
Jung recorded it all. First taking notes in a series of small, black journals, he then expounded upon and analyzed his fantasies, writing in a regal, prophetic tone in the big red-leather book. The book detailed an unabashedly psychedelic voyage through his own mind, a vaguely Homeric progression of encounters with strange people taking place in a curious, shifting dreamscape. Writing in German, he filled 205 oversize pages with elaborate calligraphy and with richly hued, staggeringly detailed paintings.
What he wrote did not belong to his previous canon of dispassionate, academic essays on psychiatry. Nor was it a straightforward diary. It did not mention his wife, or his children, or his colleagues, nor for that matter did it use any psychiatric language at all. Instead, the book was a kind of phantasmagoric morality play, driven by Jung’s own wish not just to chart a course out of the mangrove swamp of his inner world but also to take some of its riches with him. It was this last part — the idea that a person might move beneficially between the poles of the rational and irrational, the light and the dark, the conscious and the unconscious — that provided the germ for his later work and for what analytical psychology would become.
The book tells the story of Jung trying to face down his own demons as they emerged from the shadows. The results are humiliating, sometimes unsavory. In it, Jung travels the land of the dead, falls in love with a woman he later realizes is his sister, gets squeezed by a giant serpent and, in one terrifying moment, eats the liver of a little child. (“I swallow with desperate efforts — it is impossible — once again and once again — I almost faint — it is done.”) At one point, even the devil criticizes Jung as hateful.
He worked on his red book — and he called it just that, the Red Book — on and off for about 16 years, long after his personal crisis had passed, but he never managed to finish it. He actively fretted over it, wondering whether to have it published and face ridicule from his scientifically oriented peers or to put it in a drawer and forget it. Regarding the significance of what the book contained, however, Jung was unequivocal. “All my works, all my creative activity,” he would recall later, “has come from those initial fantasies and dreams.”
Jung evidently kept the Red Book locked in a cupboard in his house in the Zurich suburb of Küsnacht. When he died in 1961, he left no specific instructions about what to do with it. His son, Franz, an architect and the third of Jung’s five children, took over running the house and chose to leave the book, with its strange musings and elaborate paintings, where it was. Later, in 1984, the family transferred it to the bank, where since then it has fulminated as both an asset and a liability.
Anytime someone did ask to see the Red Book, family members said, without hesitation and sometimes without decorum, no. The book was private, they asserted, an intensely personal work. In 1989, an American analyst named Stephen Martin, who was then the editor of a Jungian journal and now directs a Jungian nonprofit foundation, visited Jung’s son (his other four children were daughters) and inquired about the Red Book. The question was met with a vehemence that surprised him. “Franz Jung, an otherwise genial and gracious man, reacted sharply, nearly with anger,” Martin later wrote in his foundation’s newsletter, saying “in no uncertain terms” that Martin could not “see the Red Book, nor could he ever imagine that it would be published.”
And yet, Carl Jung’s secret Red Book — scanned, translated and footnoted — will be in stores early next month, published by W. W. Norton and billed as the “most influential unpublished work in the history of psychology.” Surely it is a victory for someone, but it is too early yet to say for whom.”
For the full article go HERE
My article in this September’s issue of MARIE CLAIRE: The Abortion Debate: What would you do?
The Abortion Debate: What Would You Do?
Holly Rossiter at the grave of her baby Aubrielle
HOLLY ROSSITER’S STORY, as told to Juliette Dominguez: “My first pregnancy was a breeze. I hung out at the beach near our Orange County home and exercised right up to the birth. My biggest complaint? I was too huge to lie on my stomach. Once the baby was 18 months old, my husband, Mike, and I began to plan for another. He was a law student, rising at dawn and not getting home until dinnertime, and I’d given up my full-time job as a preschool teacher to raise our daughter, Elise, and to work part-time as a nanny. Even though we were living paycheck to paycheck, we wanted to expand our family.
I became pregnant in July 2006, and at 18 weeks, I went for my first ultrasound. Mike had organized a celebratory dinner with family and friends for that night. When the first picture of the baby appeared on the screen, Mike, 3-year-old Elise, and I oohed and aahed over the baby’s fingers and toes.
We waited for the technician to tell us the sex. But she was strangely quiet. Then she said, “I’m not getting the right readings.” I told Mike to take Elise out of the room. “Is it something to do with the heart?” I asked. No, she said, the heart was fine—but something was severely wrong, and my OB/GYN would have to diagnose it. Still, I pressed for details. She said, “Your child is sick. I don’t think it’s going to survive.” I broke into tears. I was 26. I was too young, too fit, too healthy for something like this to happen to me. The thought of abortion came to mind immediately, but along with it came a feeling of walking into the ocean and never coming back.
Mike was waiting outside. I told him we were having a little girl (whom we wanted to name Aubrielle), and that she might not be with us for very long. He hugged me, asked if I was OK, then called everyone to cancel the dinner.
That evening we told Elise. Mike and I were worried about how she would take the news, or whether she could even begin to understand, but she simply leaned over, kissed my belly, and said, “Aubrielle, you’re sick, but you’re going to heaven, and you’ll get better there with Grandpa.”
When I went to the hospital to see my OB/GYN, she diagnosed the baby with trisomy 13, also known as Patau syndrome—a genetic disorder involving multiple abnormalities, many of which are fatal. The disease occurs in about one out of every 10,000 newborns; more than 80 percent of children with it die within the first month. My doctor warned me that Aubrielle could die at any moment during the pregnancy, and certainly wouldn’t live much beyond the birth. She concluded that abortion was the best option.
Overwhelmed, I just cried. I didn’t feel that terminating the pregnancy was the right option for me. My decision wasn’t just about religion, although our family does go to church weekly; it was about my belief that this baby’s life had meaning. I wanted to honor that.
Mike supported my decision, as did my mom and sisters. Naturally, there were times when I wrestled with my choice, especially when others questioned my sanity. They’d say, “What’s the point of holding on to this baby? Have an abortion. Then you can try again in a few months.” Moms I met in the park were often uneasy and wondered what I was doing. Some parents didn’t want me around their children, because then they’d have to explain that my baby was going to die. And I could certainly understand how they felt.
Yet every time Aubrielle kicked, it was a thrill. I’d hold my belly and read stories to her and Elise. I started to think about what others were going through in life and what problems they had, instead of thinking so much about ours. My marriage gained strength, too: Mike focused, selflessly, on what we needed as a family. One night when I was feeling sad, he held me as I cried till dawn.
Before my due date, my perinatal nurse, Suzanne, paid us several visits, discussing my birth plan and how we wanted Aubrielle’s first few hours documented—we chose photographs and hand- and footprints. I requested a Cesarean so we’d possibly have Aubrielle for a little longer, if she wasn’t stillborn. I also asked for my family to have access to the recovery room. Suzanne helped us prepare Elise by showing her pictures of other babies with trisomy 13, so Elise wouldn’t be shocked by Aubrielle’s cleft lip and palate. Elise touched the pictures, saying the poor babies had “owwees.”
A few nights before the scheduled delivery, my sisters and friends threw me a “relaxation party.” We ate ice cream and listened to music, and they brought presents: picture frames, scrapbooks, toys for Elise, a pink blanket for Aubrielle.
The evening before I was due to deliver, I was taking a shower, and this terrible feeling came over me—that I was going to the hospital to die myself. I fell to the ground, sobbing. What was I doing? Was I crazy to have chosen this? I wondered. I felt such raw pain; I was paralyzed by it. But afterward, exhausted and spent, I felt a sense of peace, and the despair that had gripped me began to evaporate. This was the right choice, not just for us, but for Aubrielle. I would give her everything I could as a mother.
The next day, I went to the hospital, and my OB/GYN said she couldn’t find Aubrielle’s heartbeat. Mike and I looked at each other as if to say, “Well, that’s it, she’s gone.” But then my doctor saw that she was breeched, and we went ahead with the C-section.
The first time I saw Aubrielle, Mike was holding her. I’ll never forget her first cry, so tiny and faint. Mike kept saying, “She’s here! She’s alive!” He handed her to me, and I told her how much I loved her. As if in response, she squeezed my finger. Mike gave the baby to Elise, and as she held Aubrielle, she sang a lullaby, the same one she had sung to my belly during pregnancy.
Aubrielle, who weighed 5 pounds, lived four-and-a-half hours. During that time, our family had a small party with flowers, pink cupcakes with sprinkles, a balloon that said “Happy Birthday Princess,” and bracelets for Elise, the baby, and me. Aubrielle wore a white cotton dress that my mother had made and a bow in her brown hair. But about an hour after the birthday party, back in my private room, Aubrielle was starting to fade. Her chest, face, and hands were turning blue. I’d never lost anyone before. I looked down at my baby and watched her take her last breath. Then she was gone.
The funeral was a few days later. Aubrielle was wearing her special dress, and about 50 close friends and family members came to pay their respects. Both Mike and I gave speeches, as did a few others; then we sang songs and celebrated her life.
I still miss Aubrielle. I have no regrets about what I did, and I’ll always have that extraordinary time I spent with my daughter. We visit her grave every week, where we sit on a picnic blanket and eat cupcakes. Mike and I waited for my body to recover from the C-section before trying again for another baby. Our son Luke was born in January. Now when I look at Elise and Luke playing together, I can’t help but picture Aubrielle with them. She is always with us in our minds and our hearts.”
Holly Rossiter with her daughter Elise and baby Luke.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The other side of the debate, as told to Yael Kohen
Tricia Miller was thrilled to be pregnant. But when doctors found the fetus had a fatal genetic abnormality, she had to decide: Would having the baby mean letting it suffer?
TRICIA MILLER’S STORY, as told to Marie Claire’s Yael Kohen: “I’d always dreamed of having four children in a traditional French Quarter home near a streetcar line.
My husband and I had been married for six months when we decided we were ready to have kids. I was 28 and about to finish grad school, and we had just moved into a three-bedroom starter house in the suburbs of New Orleans. It didn’t take long to get pregnant, and I still remember the morning we knew we had conceived, in November of 2006. I had woken up at 5 a.m. and taken a digital pregnancy test. “Pregnant.” My heart stopped—I was overwhelmed with excitement. I ran to the bedroom to show my husband, who smiled from ear to ear. He pulled me down for a hug, and as we lay in bed together, we talked about how, by this time next year, we’d have a baby with us to celebrate the holidays.
I have a mild form of cerebral palsy, and my doctors had warned me that I might not be able to carry the baby to term. And yet, other than morning sickness, the first trimester was going smoothly. When I was about 10 weeks pregnant, I went for my regular OB checkup. There was no prenatal testing, no ultrasound—it was still too early in the pregnancy—but my doctor said the baby’s heartbeat was excellent, that I was measuring well, and that I wouldn’t need to come back until my second trimester examination.
My father-in-law happens to be a perinatologist. His office is right across the street from my doctor, so after my appointment, my husband and I thought we’d stop by to get an ultrasound and take a peek at the baby. It was just for fun. My father-in-law spread the cold, wet jelly on my tummy, and my husband and I were giddy as we pointed to an outline of the baby’s skeleton on the screen; we giggled as we pretended to know whom the baby looked like. But 20 minutes later, I noticed my father-in-law staring at the machine intently, pausing now and again to write something down. He never stopped to point out the baby’s heart or its nose. He would not look at us or speak. When I tried to break the uncomfortable silence, he shushed me.
When my father-in-law pulled us into the patient room, he was very serious—too serious—and I was somewhat offended that he seemed to have gone into doctor mode instead of dad mode. That’s when he said, quite frankly and directly, “There is something wrong.” He never said that the problem might be “something else” or that it could be a mistake—there was something wrong. My husband and I just nodded in silence. My father-in-law said I would need a slightly more invasive test called a CVS to determine what we were dealing with. Then he picked up the phone to make an appointment with his partner for the same week.
Over the next six weeks, I subjected myself to three tests: the CVS, which draws a sample from the placenta; a blood test; and an amnio—each one followed by an agonizing two-week period when my husband and I would have to wait for results; this being right after Katrina, the samples had to be sent out of state. I spent that time in a fog. I barely slept. I had to force myself to eat, even though I should have been famished from the pregnancy.
I was in my last semester of school, but I lost focus. I sat in class practically comatose. I didn’t take notes; I just waited for class to end. I’m usually the kind of person who holds my feelings in, but I was crying all the time—in the car, in between classes, in the bathroom. I prayed to God and asked him, Why me? I closed the door to the nursery, where I’d filled the shelves with my old children’s books such as Where the Wild Things Are and The Giving Tree that my parents had given me. To make things worse, I was starting to show. I began to wear baggier clothes—I didn’t want friends congratulating me when I knew in my heart that I was going to lose the baby.
I was 16 weeks pregnant when the last set of test results came in. My husband and I were at home, and I made him take the 6 p.m. call while I just hid, sobbing in bed under the covers. The doctor told my husband that the baby had trisomy 2, a fatal chromosomal abnormality that occurs in 0.016 of pregnancies.
When we went for our follow-up appointment, the doctor gave us a list of the problems our baby could face: It could be born with congenital heart defects; structural brain abnormalities; lung deformation; or suffer from seizures. The doctor couldn’t even say if the baby would survive the pregnancy, but the best-case scenario was that it would live for two weeks.
Our doctor didn’t talk to us about our options outright. But we knew what they were. The doctor slipped us a piece of paper with the names of two clinics—one was Dr. George Tiller’s in Kansas, the other was in Dallas—and left the room.
That night, I curled up in a ball in the bathtub for two hours, my husband sitting next to me on the cold tile floor. I didn’t let him touch me. I didn’t want to be touched. As we discussed our options, our religious upbringings pressed down on us. Having grown up in the Catholic city of New Orleans and having gone to a Catholic high school, college, and graduate school, I’d always thought of abortion as a decision made by a woman who didn’t want her baby, or by someone who had been raped. I’d always known I would become pregnant purposefully, when I was married. And that’s exactly what I had done. I had no plan for this. In all of the discussions we had in Catholic school about terminating pregnancies, we’d never once addressed reasons such as my own. There was nobody to ask what to do.
Our first option was to have the baby. And yet, that seemed implausible. There was already the possibility that I wouldn’t be able to carry a healthy baby to term, let alone one that may not even survive in the womb. But even if I could, I didn’t know how I would tell people who wanted to celebrate with showers and baby gifts that the baby was fatally ill. Most of all, I couldn’t bear the idea of watching my baby suffer once born. I would have to watch it die.
Our second option was to terminate the pregnancy. I’ve never used the word abortion.
When I called my parents, I was mostly scared of what my father would say, since he was the most religious person in my family. My father has never been a man of many words, and while he was upset, he didn’t object. I’ll never know whether his sadness was out of sympathy, or because I’d already made the decision. We never told my mother-in-law, a devout Catholic who has expressed very passionate views on this issue. I knew our decision would hurt her. And I knew she would judge us.
Of the two clinics, my husband and I chose the one in Dallas because it was closer. So one day at 5:30 a.m., we got in the car, drove 10 hours, and checked ourselves into a Hampton Inn.
The next morning, we drove to the clinic. There was a long driveway that led to the building, almost as if they were trying to hide it from view. As we walked from the parking lot to the front door, I remember a protestor holding up a sign, trying to lure us over to discuss adoption. She wanted to help us find someone for our baby, someone who could take care of it, give it a loving home. I was angry. I wanted my baby. I had a loving home for it. I wanted to say something to her, but I didn’t. Instead, I just looked at my feet.
The clinic’s waiting room had 10 dingy couches lined up in rows, facing each other—you had to sit across from someone experiencing the same trauma as you were. Some people were just lounging around, lying on them; others had brought in food, even though patients aren’t supposed to eat before the procedure. There were women who talked about getting their nails done afterward. But there were also mothers with their teenage daughters, and women who were much further along in their pregnancies than I was, sobbing. We sat there for 10 hours, a forced waiting period meant to give us time to change our minds.
We finally met with the doctor at 4 p.m. In cold, clinical terms, he explained there would be two procedures—one to dilate the cervix, a second to remove the fetus—and that I’d have to pay an extra few hundred dollars for a general anesthesia if I wanted more than the local, which would leave me awake. I paid the extra money. I didn’t want any memory of what was happening.
When I went into an examination room, they inserted sticks called laminaria that slowly dilate the cervix. When I woke up, they gave me a bottle of Advil and sent me back to the hotel. That night, my mother-in-law called. She wanted us to turn on channel 4 so that I could see my cousin, who is an actor, on television. As far as she knew, there was nothing out of the ordinary going on. She didn’t even know we were out of town. That’s when the burden of having this secret really hit me. To have to hide our pain and sorrow made it feel like punishment.
The next morning, I went in for the second procedure. When I woke up, I was in a room with about six recliners lined up in a row. When I looked down at myself, at the pad beneath me, I saw that I was sitting in a pool of my own blood. A woman came by to help me clean up. Once I was dressed, she walked me to the back door.
OVER THE NEXT TWO months, my hormones were raging. At school, I would start bawling in the middle of the dining hall. One time, it was so uncontrollable, a counselor who worked for the campus ministry asked me if I wanted to talk in her office. (I declined.) If people asked about the pregnancy, I just told them I’d lost the baby. Luckily, most people just assumed I had miscarried—I saw that as a blessing and left it at that. Eventually, with finals coming up, I went to talk to the dean. I told her that my baby had died, and she arranged it with my professors for me to work at my own pace.
Back in May, I cried when I saw the news of Dr. Tiller’s murder and had to listen to all the rhetoric on television vilifying women like me.
Looking back, I know I made the right decision—I wanted to prevent my child from a painful death. But because of my religion, I feel I will never be forgiven for making the choice I made. I no longer feel I can even be called Catholic, another loss altogether.
About a month after I terminated my first pregnancy, my husband and I started trying again. I naively believed that having a healthy child would heal all wounds. But you never forget. Now I have an 18-month-old girl and another baby on the way. And while my daughter didn’t erase what happened, she did make it easier to feel hopeful about life.”
ALL PHOTOGRAPHS BY MELISSA ANN PINNEY
Am still somewhat on hiatus here, as I’m deep in the outlining process of GIRLS’ GUIDE TO THE SHADOW SIDE, and all that entails (including searching through cemeteries for character name inspiration) but I came across this gem (via the excellent blog BROOKLYN ARDEN of children’s book editor Cheryl Klein) from the blog of author Francisco X. Stork: who wrote the acclaimed MARCELO IN THE REAL WORLD and I thought it was wonderful. I’m reposting it here in its entirety. Enjoy, and be inspired. Thank you, Francisco! 
Mahayana Buddhism posits six “paramitas” or “perfections” for enlightenment. These paramitas are “perfections” in the sense of guides or principles one should attempt to perfect as much as possible in this life. These are: giving (or generosity), patience, ethical discipline, enthusiastic (or joyful) effort, concentration and wisdom. It occurred to me that these six perfections, with a little twisting and turning, could be applied to writing (just as writing with a little twisting and turning can be seen as a spiritual path). There are as many motivations for writing and explanations as to why people write as there are writers. These six work well for me.
Giving or Generosity. What can you say about this one? Why write if not to give and to give your best? The thing about writing from a spirit of generosity that is not so obvious is that if the spirit of giving is not in your writing, your writing will not be as good as it could be. It will be superficial and you will not give the reader what he or she most desires. And the reader will not give the work his or her full devotion. There is a connection between “why” you write and “how” you write. If giving is the reason why you write you will reach a depth in your writing that will not be reached if you are motivated by anything else other than the desire to give. Writing that is born out of a desire to give is the writing that lasts.
Patience. Patience is typically associated with not getting angry or frustrated or giving up when things are not going your way. So it is with writing. When the words are not coming, wait. When the plot has reached an unsolvable spot, wait. If after a while there is no resolution, you may need to start again. Patience is knowing the day you start a novel that the first draft is a year away and the finished product maybe two years. It means being okay and kind to yourself when after four hours of work you have maybe one more or less salvageable paragraph.
Ethical Discipline. Everyone knows the connection between plain old discipline and writing, but ethical discipline? It’s clear to me that an alcoholic or a drug addict is not going to produce his best work. These addictions take too much time, for one thing. But maybe it is not so clear that honesty or kindness on the part of the author is necessary for good writing. I think that the writer’s integrity is something that is conveyed to the reader in subtle ways. When we read, we ask ourselves explicitly or implicitly, is this author someone I can trust? Is he or she for life or against life? Integrity, which results when our actions reflect our thoughts, seeps into our writing, it informs our work.
Enthusiastic Effort. We don’t get this type of enthusiasm when we write all the time. Some times we need to start writing with just a plain old sense of duty. But sooner or later, enthusiasm comes and when it comes, you better put up your sail. Enthusiastic effort is not a feeling necessarily, it is a conviction that the expression of your talent is something that you need to do for your sake and others. When the wind is not there, we row. Nevertheless, you need to do what you can to row where the wind currents are most likely to be. For me, enthusiasm and joy in writing always come when I stop being so serious and I look at what I am doing as play, when I become child-like again.
Concentration. Concentration happens when you start having fun with your writing the way it happens when a child plays. You realize you have been concentrating not during but later when you look back and realize three hours have just gone by without you realizing it. This absorption is the most enjoyable aspect of writing. Flannery O’Connor says that the writer loses himself or herself for the sake of the work. She means that the writer puts his or her ego aside and puts the characters and the story first so that, for example, brilliant writing that doesn’t add anything to character or story will need to be tossed. When we truly concentrate, our attention is fully directed at the work, we put the work first, we become the characters we are writing about and there is no room for me.
Wisdom. I see wisdom closely associated with the function of the editor. The editor can be an inner editor or another person, a real editor, if we’re lucky enough to have one we trust. Wisdom has to do with decisions about the work, both logical and intuitive. There are places in the work where we can choose to go in different ways. How do we choose? We can use reason, experience, knowledge and good-taste to make our decisions. Sometimes, however, all we have is an intuitive sense that one way is better than another. This is the part of writing that, paradoxically, is both solitary and communal. You need to dig deep initially to see what your heart tells you and then listen carefully to that person who understands your work and whose judgment you respect and trust.”
and so just ‘tweeting’ for now…but back in the saddle soon…I promise!
