Virtual Tour: Keeping Your Balance When the Earth Shakes

I wrote the following guest post for the blog Leadership Garden Coach, as part of the virtual tour for my memoir. It's called "Keeping Your Balance When the Earth Shakes":

Sometimes it takes a tsunami – serious illness, bereavement and grief, or another disaster – to bring us face to face with our own imperfection. And sometimes recognizing our limitations and reaching out to others for help can ultimately empower us.

We’re all familiar with the myth of Superwoman – the belief that women nowadays should be able to do it all, balancing the demands of workplace and family without batting a well-groomed eyelash. In the early nineties, many people called me “Superwoman,” and I admit that I too tended to think of myself that way. I was working full-time-plus as a lawyer, and my husband Daniel was working almost full-time as an engineer. Together, we were parenting seven children. We had a fairly stable balance worked out; whichever of us was free would do whatever needed doing at home, with some help from the older children. Life seemed manageable.

Then an earthquake struck when our fourth daughter, Timora, was diagnosed with leukemia right after her twelfth birthday. Suddenly, one of us needed to be with her in the hospital, physically and emotionally, all day every day. Someone had to take care of the other children, physically and emotionally. And both of us had our work to keep up.

I’ve written a memoir, entitled And Twice the Marrow of Her Bones, about the six-plus of Timora’s illness, and about my emotional, philosophical, and spiritual journey after my world collapsed when she died in 2001. In it, I describe (among many other subjects and themes) how we managed to keep our lives together while Timora was in treatment. It certainly helped that both our workplaces demonstrated great flexibility regarding our work hours. Our older daughters were amazing, staying with Timora in the hospital when they could, often sleeping at her bedside. Our friends and community pitched in as well; we didn’t have to cook at all for the first year, and there were always volunteers whenever we needed errands done.

But no one but Daniel and I could do the most important things for Timora, or for our other children. These overwhelming responsibilities exposed each of our own particular strengths and weaknesses, and I found myself unable, for the first time, to handle certain aspects of my job as a parent. As I write in Twice the Marrow:

“As willing as I was to run around the hospital, the city, or even the country if required to meet Timora’s needs, and to sit by her bedside for long, boring days, there were some parts of the new routine that I wasn’t at all good at. I identified so strongly with her pain or her low mood that I was often unable to keep my perspective. Sometimes, when she felt she couldn’t take it anymore, she’d refuse to take her medications, to allow the nurses to take blood, or otherwise to cooperate in her treatment. At those times, my sympathy for her paralyzed me. Daniel, in contrast, was able to separate himself enough from his empathy to do what had to be done.”

(Daniel discovered some of his limitations, too, as I found it easier than he did to deal with the other children and their increased emotional neediness.)

Almost unbelievably, our family has proved resilient; Daniel and I made it through the inferno of Timora’s illness and death with our marriage strengthened and our relationships with our surviving children closer than ever. What’s more, in the past few years I’ve studied for and embarked on a new career as a psychotherapist, which I find much more satisfying than law.

I’m quite sure that for me, at least, much of this resilience has to do with having learned that I really can’t do everything, and that I can and should count on those around me to do what I can’t do as well. No one is superhuman, after all.

Twice the Marrow and Pastoral Care

Rabbi Miriam Berkowitz, co-Director of Kashouvot, and organization dedicated to Pastoral Care, has written some very kind words about my memoir:

In And Twice the Marrow of Her Bones, Susan (Sara) Petersen Avitzour offers us the gift of her soul.

For even the best intentioned physical, spiritual or mental health provider, there is always a barrier of privacy, silence and distance between the experience of the people and families they try to help/ serve. Sara gives us a peek into the experience of one family's loss of a precious daughter and simultaneously shares with us Timora's talents, wisdom and zest for life.

She chronicles in minute detail the experiences of seeking medical care, grappling with illness and navigating the medical system.

In parallel she uncovers her spiritual journey through journaling, poetry, theological reflections and ambivalent return to daily life.

No topic is too private and all are related: food, holidays, parenting, support groups, community, travel, music, career, apathy and depression.

Her labor of love is useful to many different audiences:

-Families of children grappling with serious illness can open their eyes and process their own unique experiences with more lenses and on a variety of levels, without self judgment but with the benefit of time and experience.

-Psychologists and social workers can see the benefit of relating to siblings and the whole family dynamic.

-Pastoral caregivers will find deep insights into prayers, synagogue experiences and Torah text that can help universalize or open up the experience of their patients.

-Rabbis and synagogue staff will become sensitized to the volatile and intense effect holiday times have on memory, pain and alienation of grieving families.

-People of faith may grow from hearing the story of a faith retained yet burnished with more doubt and nuance.

For your mind, your heart and your spirit, get this book and open the first page. You will not put it down, and you will be transformed.

Virtual Tour: Healing and Spirituality

This is a guest post that I wrote for the blog All Things That Matter, as part of my virtual tour:

My daughter, Timora, was diagnosed with leukemia just after her twelfth birthday, and left this world shortly after her eighteenth. Those years took her on a remarkable spiritual journey, which I’d like to share with you today.

Timora’s spirituality combined a relationship with the God she’d been brought up to believe in with a more universal connection to the divine cosmic energy that sustains all life. The memoir I’ve written, And Twice the Marrow of Her Bones, tells how she came to me one day with a thoughtful look:

“‘You know, Eema,’ she said, ‘I used to be really angry with God. I couldn’t understand why He seemed to be ignoring my prayers.’

I put down the book I’d been reading, and moved a little closer.

‘Last year, on [the Jewish holiday of] Shavuot, I got so mad that I started screaming at Him. I said that He was stingy and mean, that He wasn’t helping me even though He could.’

I remembered that time well. She’d been weak and depressed, hurting all over. Sores burned her mouth every time she tried to eat, and made every bite taste revolting. She was sleeping even worse than usual, and was haunted by bizarre, obsessive dreams.

I put my hand on hers. What could I say?

‘... You know what happened then?’

I shook my head, still mute.

‘I lay down, and suddenly I started to feel a wave of new strength filling me, flowing into my blood. I told God I’d make a deal with Him. He’d go easier on me, and I’d stop being so angry at Him. That night I was able to get out of bed and say to myself, I won’t sink into this cesspool. I can be strong, I do have someone to give me the strength to live like a person. And I will, and that’s that.’”

Timora later discovered Reiki, a Japanese healing art that teaches its practitioners to become vessels through which spiritual energy flows into people who are suffering. It helped her so much that she eventually became a practitioner herself, laying hands both on herself and on other people, whose discomfort she delighted in alleviating.

Timora departed this world much as she had dwelled in it, in deep connection with the spiritual forces that animate it. As I relate in my memoir, her Reiki teacher visited her in the hospital a few days before she died.

“As Edna touched Timora and the energy flowed between them, Edna felt, through her fingertips and deep inside herself, that part of Timora’s soul was already on the way to the next world. Another part of her spirit was lingering behind – hesitating to leave us because she was worried about us, not wanting to cause us pain – but at the same time longing to be released.

As the energy between them intensified, Edna experienced herself as being together with Timora, in a corridor suffused with light unlike any she’d ever seen or sensed. The corridor led toward an even stronger, more beautiful light, which could not then – and cannot now – be depicted in words, but seemed to be the source, expression and richness of everything that is Good.

When Edna removed her hands and said her last farewell to Timora’s earthly form, she was left with a feeling she can only describe as a kind of completeness, a fullness. This feeling, she says, has not entirely left her to this day. Timora gave her an incomparable gift: Having experienced those few minutes of light together with Timora’s spirit, Edna now knows in the deepest sense possible that she has nothing to fear from the other side.

After her release (Edna tells me) Timora’s spirit did not stay away for long, and soon returned to become a kind of spiritual guide and teacher. Every so often, she comes to Edna during Reiki sessions, and Edna sometimes asks her for help and guidance. When she comes, she adds her own spiritual energy to the currents of Reiki moving through Edna’s hands, making them that much more powerful as agents of healing.”

I believe that God provides us with a well of strength that we can draw upon to go on, even to help others, despite life’s – and death’s – trials and tragedies. We may draw from this well through prayer, or receive it in the form of the energy that Reiki teaches us to harness or, doubtless, in other ways I don’t know of. This strength, this continually replenished energy, is none other than God’s healing presence in our hearts.

Virtual Tour: Nikki Leigh Interviews Me About My Writing

In my latest stop on the virtual tour I'm now on to promote my memoir, Nikki Leigh interviews me on her blog, Your One Stop for Free Information. Here's the interview:

I would like to introduce you to Susan Avitzour, she is the author of And Twice the Marrow. It is a memoir where she shares the very personal story about her daughter and her family after her daughter’s cancer diagnosis. It is a daughter’s struggle and a mother’s struggle as she works to help her daughter navigate a journey no mother and child want to face. Through the pages of this book she shares their personal story and shows others how they can face illness, disappointment, loss and find resilience in their lives despite trials and hardships.

Your Name: Susan Petersen Avitzour -

Nikki Leigh - Where you are from and where are you now?

Susan Petersen Avitzour - I’m originally from Coney Island. I’ve lived in various places including Connecticut, Berkeley California, and Paris, but for the past thirty-plus years I’ve lived in Israel – Jerusalem, to be exact.

Nikki Leigh - How did you get started writing?

Susan Petersen Avitzour - I’ve been writing since I was a child. I wrote my first story in second grade, and have been doing creative writing – both fiction and nonfiction – on and off ever since then.

Nikki Leigh - What do you do when you are not writing?

Susan Petersen Avitzour - I’m a clinical social worker, and work as a psychotherapist both in a public hospital clinic and in private practice. Besides that I love to read, sing, dance, hike, and (most important) spend quality time with family and friends.

Nikki Leigh - What would readers like to know about you?

Susan Petersen Avitzour - I raised seven children – six girls and a boy. I’m now on my fourth career, having been a lawyer, a mediator, and a translator/commercial writer before going back to school to get my MSW.

Nikki Leigh - What inspired your first book?

Susan Petersen Avitzour - My fourth daughter, Timora, died of leukemia in 2001. I knew early on that I wanted very much to capture my experience both as the mother of a child with cancer, and as a mother who lost her child to cancer, in a way that may help and possibly even inspire others who have or are experiencing hardship – or are interested in how others overcome life’s challenges.

Nikki Leigh - What are the titles of your books and what genres are they?

Susan Petersen Avitzour - And Twice the Marrow of Her Bones – Memoir

Nikki Leigh - Why are you specially qualified to write about this topic?

Susan Petersen Avitzour - I happen to be a person who has always both felt my experiences keenly and reflected on their meaning for me; this is exactly what I do in my book.

Nikki Leigh - How do you manage to keep yourself focused and on track when you’re writing a book?

Susan Petersen Avitzour - Because of its special nature, the book I wrote was on my mind all the time anyway. But even when I’m writing stories that have nothing to do with the loss of my daughter, once I’ve started them they kind of take me over, so that I don’t really have any trouble staying focused.

Nikki Leigh - Do you write to make money, for the love of writing or both?

Susan Petersen Avitzour - For the moment, for the love of writing, but also in order to reach out to my readers – kind of start a conversation with them. I wouldn’t object to making money, though I intend to donate any profits from my memoir to charity.

Nikki Leigh - Where can people order your books?

Susan Petersen Avitzour - On Amazon – http://www.amazon.com/Twice-Marrow-Her-Bones/dp/9659146426

Nikki Leigh - What format are your books – e-book, print, audio etc?

Susan Petersen Avitzour - Print, though I do intend to publish to Kindle as well.

Nikki Leigh - What do you have in the works now?

Susan Petersen Avitzour - A collection of mixed-genre stories that I’ve tentatively entitled Scenes from My Life and Other Stories.

Nikki Leigh - What does the future hold for you and your books?

Susan Petersen Avitzour - If only I knew! I hope very much that my memoir will reach as many people as possible who may benefit from it.

Nikki Leigh - What was the most successful thing you did to promote your books?

Susan Petersen Avitzour - I spoke about the book in several public forums.

Nikki Leigh - What makes this book special to you?

Susan Petersen Avitzour - The book is a memorial to my wonderful daughter; and the culmination of an intensely creative and therapeutic process in which I revisited and explored my own tragedy and its personal and philosophical implications in a way that can help other people deal with their own difficulties – all rolled into one.

Nikki Leigh - What sort of comments have you gotten about the content of the book?

Susan Petersen Avitzour - All the comments I’ve gotten have been very positive, and very intense. A great many people have told me they couldn’t put it down – and many of those stayed up all night reading it. Some have told me they found it uplifting or inspiring; others have thanked me for writing it and told me that it’s helped them deal with difficulties they are facing in their own lives, even if these difficulties are very different from those I describe in the memoir. No one has said anything noncommittal or polite, such as “it was interesting.” Everyone has used expressions such as “beautifully written,” “powerful,” and “extremely moving.”

Nikki Leigh - What makes this a book that other people MUST read and WHY?

Susan Petersen Avitzour - Life is trauma. All of us, at one time or another, must confront the loss of someone who is precious to us, or some aspect of our lives with which we find it difficult to part. Many of us must also deal with the disruption of normal life that serious illness or disability brings with it. My book both shows others that they are not alone in the emotional, physical, and family stress that inevitably accompanies these tragedies, and depicts how I personally have dealt with it.

Many people also struggle with their faith in a loving God under these circumstances. My book deals with this question head-on. Although the memoir deals specifically with my relationship with Judaism, and how it affected and was affected by the loss of my daughter, my reflections are relevant to people of all faiths.

Nikki Leigh - What people NEED to read this book and WHY?

Susan Petersen Avitzour - People need to be interested in entering into the book’s intense emotional world, as I pull no punches and describe my experiences and thoughts directly and honestly.

Nikki Leigh - What sparks your creativity? Any tips to help others spark their own creativity?

Susan Petersen Avitzour - I wish I knew! I mostly find that sitting down and actually starting to write is the best spark to creativity, but (of course) it’s no guarantee.

Nikki Leigh - If a potential reader thinks that your book wouldn’t interest them, what would you say to convince them to buy? I’m thinking something better than “Its the greatest book ever.” Give me something more specific

Susan Petersen Avitzour - If you or someone you care for has ever faced extreme difficulty or loss, or if how others confront such difficulty or loss interests you, this book will speak to you. It also both tells my story in an emotionally evocative narrative, and reflects on it in a personal and philosophical journal, so that if you like either genre it has something for you.

Grief and Gratitude: Hot Showers

I’ve just finished taking my pre-Shabbat shower. For this week's post in my Grief and Gratitude series, I’ll write today about how grateful I am for my daily full-body cleansing.

There’s an incredible amount to be thankful for in my experience of showering:

I have access to clean water. Over a billion people in the world lack access to safe drinking water, two and a half billion lack access to adequate sanitation facilities.

My apartment has running water. Only 3.5 billion people in the world have this privilege. And my running water is hot and cold.

My water pressure is not so bad. OK, it’s not great, but it’s not the trickle that the residents of East Jerusalem, for example, have to live with. (See the first episode of Sayed Kashua’s “Arab Labor” to see what I mean.)

My bathroom is clean and safe. My bathtub is long enough for me. I am fully mobile, and can easily get in and out of by bathtub.

I have enough money for Dead Sea products with which to wash my dry skin, and for good shampoo. Several years ago I read a heartbreaking article about teens in Israeli development towns who could not afford even the cheapest kind of soap.

I have a healthy body, including all the parts, to wash. I can let the water run over all my body, and don’t have to watch out for a cast or a catheter.

I’m sure there’s more, but Shabbat is fast approaching.

One of the nicest things about my shower is that it’s usually the last thing I do, so that no matter how frustrating or crazy my day may have been, and no matter how low my mood may be by evening, I can always perk myself up by using my gratitude.

Virtual Tour: Faith in Times of Crisis, or Crisis of Faith?

This is the guest post I wrote for The Book Connection, as part of the virtual tour I'm now on for my memoir:

I am a religiously observant Jew, and have been for thirty-five years. Ten years ago, my faith was challenged in the starkest way possible, when my eighteen-year-old daughter Timora died after a six-year struggle with cancer. Her illness and death brought me up against perhaps the most perplexing of all questions facing all people of faith: How could the loving God in whom I believe have allowed all this to happen? And, conversely, how can I continue to love God even after all that has happened? Indeed, how can a loving God preside over a world in which people – including millions of children – have suffered and died unjustly since the beginning of human time, and how can any thinking person remain faithful to such a Being?

I address this issue (among many others) in a memoir of my journey with my daughter during her illness, then without her after she left this world, entitled And Twice the Marrow of Her Bones. I respond – tentatively and humbly, as one must necessarily answer such questions – with my own concept of a personal God.

Children, and many adults, believe in a simple, one-to-one relationship with God. It’s a kind of bargain: If we lead a good life, evil will not befall us. But I consider my connection with the Divine somewhat differently. I see God as having created the world, set it in motion, and given us the principles by which we may live our lives as spiritual and moral beings. I do not see Him, however, as continuing to directly cause everything that takes place in our present world. Rather, I understand His presence in this era as providing us with a well of strength to draw upon when life presents us with its inevitable trials and tragedies. Perhaps even more importantly, He continually grants us the capacity to love and draw comfort from one other. These gifts empower us to survive our losses, and to build new lives for ourselves when our old ones seem to have fallen apart.

As I write in my memoir: “Loving God keeps me from bitterness, cynicism and despair, by opening me to the healing energy that keeps me from paralysis and gives me the strength to go on. Especially, to go on performing acts of loving kindness, and raising my children to do the same, even after our devastating loss. For by engaging in acts of kindness, by forging loving relationships with those around me, I become – so I believe – a vessel for giving, and for receiving, God’s own love….

God has been an enormous source of the strength and resilience that has enabled me to face the suffering I’ve both experienced and seen others experience in this world. And my faith enables me to feel grateful for my life despite that suffering, and to look toward the future with hope.”

Bereavement – even the loss of a child – need not cause a crisis in faith, if we decide to go on living and loving as we were created to do, and trust our Creator to bestow upon us the spiritual gifts that allow us to do so.

Seraphic Secret Reviews Twice the Marrow

It was Robert Avrech, a Hollywood screenwriter, who inspired me to start this blog when he began blogging about the loss of his son Ariel. Robert reviewed my memoir last week in his blog, Seraphic Secret. Here's the review:

And Twice the Marrow of Her Bones is the profoundly touching memoir of a mother who lost her young daughter, Timora, to cancer.

Avitzour lives in Jerusalem with her husband and children. Her memoir is driven by a unique narrative voice. The support of her community and unique synagogue—Kehillat Yedidya, a liberal modern Orthodox congregation—are powerful reminders that sharing joy, sorrow and tragedy is how we endure the vicissitudes of life.

The life and character of Timora are exquisitely rendered. Timora is young, bright, creative and deeply compassionate, even as Leukemia does its terrible work. Through a mother's voice, personal diaries, and Timora's poetry, Seraphic Secret is left with the powerful wish that we would have had the pleasure of knowing Timora when she was a presence on this earth.

Timora's radiant character can be gleaned from one of her unfinished poems:

To live this moment
To breathe this time
Not to think what the future will bring, if at all
Not to remember what hurt, what was missed, what was lost
To enjoy the here and now.

I thank Robert very, very much for his kind words.

Virtual Tour: Healing and Spirituality

As part of my virtual book tour for my memoir, I wrote a guest post last week for the blog "All Things That Matter," about Timora's experience with Reiki, healing, and spirituality. Here's what I wrote:

My daughter, Timora, was diagnosed with leukemia just after her twelfth birthday, and left this world shortly after her eighteenth. Those years took her on a remarkable spiritual journey, which I’d like to share with you today.

Timora’s spirituality combined a relationship with the God she’d been brought up to believe in with a more universal connection to the divine cosmic energy that sustains all life. The memoir I’ve written, And Twice the Marrow of Her Bones, tells how she came to me one day with a thoughtful look:

“‘You know, Eema,’ she said, ‘I used to be really angry with God. I couldn’t understand why He seemed to be ignoring my prayers.’

I put down the book I’d been reading, and moved a little closer.

‘Last year, on [the Jewish holiday of] Shavuot, I got so mad that I started screaming at Him. I said that He was stingy and mean, that He wasn’t helping me even though He could.’

I remembered that time well. She’d been weak and depressed, hurting all over. Sores burned her mouth every time she tried to eat, and made every bite taste revolting. She was sleeping even worse than usual, and was haunted by bizarre, obsessive dreams.

I put my hand on hers. What could I say?

‘... You know what happened then?’

I shook my head, still mute.

‘I lay down, and suddenly I started to feel a wave of new strength filling me, flowing into my blood. I told God I’d make a deal with Him. He’d go easier on me, and I’d stop being so angry at Him. That night I was able to get out of bed and say to myself, I won’t sink into this cesspool. I can be strong, I do have someone to give me the strength to live like a person. And I will, and that’s that.’”

Timora later discovered Reiki, a Japanese healing art that teaches its practitioners to become vessels through which spiritual energy flows into people who are suffering. It helped her so much that she eventually became a practitioner herself, laying hands both on herself and on other people, whose discomfort she delighted in alleviating.

Timora departed this world much as she had dwelled in it, in deep connection with the spiritual forces that animate it. As I relate in my memoir, her Reiki teacher visited her in the hospital a few days before she died.

“As Edna touched Timora and the energy flowed between them, Edna felt, through her fingertips and deep inside herself, that part of Timora’s soul was already on the way to the next world. Another part of her spirit was lingering behind – hesitating to leave us because she was worried about us, not wanting to cause us pain – but at the same time longing to be released.

As the energy between them intensified, Edna experienced herself as being together with Timora, in a corridor suffused with light unlike any she’d ever seen or sensed. The corridor led toward an even stronger, more beautiful light, which could not then – and cannot now – be depicted in words, but seemed to be the source, expression and richness of everything that is Good.

When Edna removed her hands and said her last farewell to Timora’s earthly form, she was left with a feeling she can only describe as a kind of completeness, a fullness. This feeling, she says, has not entirely left her to this day. Timora gave her an incomparable gift: Having experienced those few minutes of light together with Timora’s spirit, Edna now knows in the deepest sense possible that she has nothing to fear from the other side.

After her release (Edna tells me) Timora’s spirit did not stay away for long, and soon returned to become a kind of spiritual guide and teacher. Every so often, she comes to Edna during Reiki sessions, and Edna sometimes asks her for help and guidance. When she comes, she adds her own spiritual energy to the currents of Reiki moving through Edna’s hands, making them that much more powerful as agents of healing.”

I believe that God provides us with a well of strength that we can draw upon to go on, even to help others, despite life’s – and death’s – trials and tragedies. We may draw from this well through prayer, or receive it in the form of the energy that Reiki teaches us to harness or, doubtless, in other ways I don’t know of. This strength, this continually replenished energy, is none other than God’s healing presence in our hearts.

Virtual Tour: A Peek Inside My Memoir

Today Dianne Ascroft published on her blog an excerpt from my memoir, And Twice the Marrow of Her Bones, as part of my virtual book tour.

The post can be found here.

Virtual Tour: The New Book Review

Today my memoir visits Carolyn Howard's "New Book Review." The post, which focuses on my readers' reactions to the book, can be found here.

Virtual Tour: Touching on What We All Share

As part of the virtual book tour for my memoir, I was invited to write a guest post for The Cuckleburr Times, an online magazine for writers. This is the post I wrote; it's called "Touching on What We All Share." This is how it starts:

I recently published a memoir, And Twice the Marrow of Her Bones, about my daughter Timora’s struggle to lead a normal life while battling leukemia, and about my own journey as a mother while she was ill and as a bereaved parent after she died at the age of eighteen. To my delight and deep gratitude, “compelling,” “moving,” and “inspiring” are just a few of the kind words readers and reviewers have used to describe their reactions; many have said they couldn’t put it down – even stayed up all night reading it. I believe this is so partly because I wrote the book straight from my heart, the way I wanted – needed – to write it, rather than thinking about marketing considerations in mind, or obeying accepted wisdom in the publishing world.

You can read the rest here.

Twice the Marrow Virtual Tour: Review

Today Yocheved Golani's review of my memoir was republished in her blog: It's MY Crisis and I'll Cry if I Need To. The post, which is entitled Death and Dying: Addressing the Hardest Medical Subject with Compassion, starts thus:

"B'SD 28 Nisan 5771 Today this blog is part of a Virtual Tour for the book you see above. I reviewed it months ago and came away deeply impressed."

You can read the entire post here.

Overwhelmed - and Grateful

In this installment of my “Grief and Gratitude” series, I’d like to talk about my thankfulness for something that many may think a strange thing to be grateful for – the fact that I have too much to do.

In my former life, I too would have thought this strange. When I was raising seven children with a full-time-plus career, I always had too much to do, and I was always exhausted and often distressed. I dreamed of a time when every hour of the day wouldn’t be over-booked. A time when I’d be able to read, meet my friends, take a nap…that would be Heaven, I thought.

After Timora died, I found myself with all the time I wished for back then, in my old life – and it was Hell. As I expressed it in my original blog (and described in my memoir), “Not only did I lose [Timora] herself, but I lost a whole world of experience, as the activities on which I’d been spending a great deal of my time suddenly became irrelevant; I literally didn’t know what to do with myself.” Unable to work, unable to concentrate on anything other than what I absolutely had to do, I awakened every day to the prospect of hours upon hours of empty time stretching before me.

Now, ten years later, my life is full again – perhaps too full. I have my work, my marriage, my children and grandchildren, my writing, my improvisational theater group, my book club…I’m sure I’m forgetting something. But after going through that emptiness, I appreciate every single activity I’ve crammed into my overflowing life.

Now, whenever I start to feel overburdened, I think of all the reasons for which I could have too little to do. I, or a significant other, could be ill, or severely disabled. I could be unemployed. I could be poor, and not able to afford drama groups, books, or even train fare to visit my children and grandchildren. I could have no friends to meet. For that matter, I could be in prison…. You get the idea.

Yes, I’m tired, and sometimes feel overwhelmed. But I thank God that the opposite is not the case, and that my life is now filled to (and over) the brim with stimulating, meaningful, and satisfying doing.