The Brave In-Between

 

The Brave In-Between: Notes from the Last Room by Amy Low

Nonfiction - Memoir

2024

Finished on November 13, 2024

Rating: 4/5 (Very Good)

Publisher's Blurb:

Lessons and advice on navigating uncertainty while battling stage four cancer after divorce in midlife.

Amy Low resides in a room that is her last. Her medical team is clear-eyed with her: there is no cure for Stage IV metastatic colon cancer, and the odds of long-term survival are scant. Miraculously, she’s lived four years with her diagnosis, and that life between life has changed her.

Through the swirl of prolonged trauma and unbearable grief, a vantage point emerged—a window that showed her the way to relish life and be kinder to herself and others while living through the inevitable loss and heartbreak that crosses everyone’s paths. Instead of viewing joy and sorrow as opposites, she saw how both exist in harmony, full of mystery and surprise. Instead of seeing days as succeeding or failing, and physical selves as healthy or unwell, she’s learned to carry both achievements and afflictions in stride. And instead of bitterness and betrayal, forgiveness—toward her body, toward others, toward herself—became her wisest light.

Mapping her experiences to the words that St. Paul wrote in his own last room, The Brave In-Between is a sacred invitation to explore that space between triumph and tragedy. We all have a heart to marvel at miracles, a lightness to spot the absurdity, and an imagination to pause and extend empathy for others—even when tragedy strikes. Sometimes we just need a guide.

"Lessons and advice on navigating uncertainty while battling stage four cancer after divorce in midlife." Gee. Sounds like an entertaining book, doesn't it? I'm not sure why I'm drawn to stories about people battling diseases, but as I glance at my "memoir" shelf on Goodreads, there are a few. (Coincidentally, I was listening to another book, while reading this one, in which the author is dealing with the loss of her husband and leukemia.)

As with my previous read, You Could Make This a Beautiful Place, Amy Low's memoir resonates on many levels: divorce and co-parenting with an ex-spouse, Covid lockdown and Zoom, the upsetting election of 2016, etc. It's not simply a cancer story.

On hope:

Growing up in San Diego and rooting for the Padres, my brother and sister and I knew a little something about hope. We'd earned PhDs in hope. Most years, the Padres were out of contention by Mother's Day, but still we scrambled to get to games, pinning all of our dreams on Tony Gwynn* and remembering that miracles had a way of showing up despite it all. With a stirring in our hearts, we'd sit in the cheap seats, so high I thought we were closer to touching the moon than the field. What might happen?

Cancer is everywhere. I have friends and relatives currently battling this awful disease. I also know survivors. My younger brother was diagnosed with colon cancer at the age of 40. He is now 60 and cancer-free. So, to jump on my soap box--get your screenings, especially colonoscopies and mammograms. Cancer treatments have advanced, along with new technologies such as immunotherapy and target drugs. Early detection is critical!

Part medical narrative, part spirituality and philosophy, The Brave In-Between is both heartbreaking and uplifting. Recommend.

You can follow Amy Low on Instagram and Substack (Postcards from the Mountain).

*Sadly, Tony Gwynn died from complications of cancer of the salivary gland at the age of 54. 

You Could Make This a Beautiful Place

You Could Make This a Beautiful Place by Maggie Smith

Nonfiction - Memoir

2023

Finished on November 10, 2024

Rating: 5/5 (Outstanding)

It's easy to see the beginning of things, and harder to see the ends. ~Joan Didion

Publisher's Blurb:

In her memoir You Could Make This Place Beautiful, poet Maggie Smith explores the disintegration of her marriage and her renewed commitment to herself in lyrical vignettes that shine, hard and clear as jewels. The book begins with one woman’s personal, particular heartbreak, but its circles widen into a reckoning with contemporary womanhood, traditional gender roles, and the power dynamics that persist even in many progressive homes. With the spirit of self-inquiry and empathy she’s known for, Smith interweaves snapshots of a life with meditations on secrets, anger, forgiveness, and narrative itself. The power of these pieces is cumulative: page after page, they build into a larger interrogation of family, work, and patriarchy.

You Could Make This Place Beautiful, like the work of Deborah Levy, Rachel Cusk, and Gina Frangello, is an unflinching look at what it means to live and write our own lives. It is a story about a mother’s fierce and constant love for her children, and a woman’s love and regard for herself. Above all, this memoir is an argument for possibility. With a poet’s attention to language and an innovative approach to the genre, Smith reveals how, in the aftermath of loss, we can discover our power and make something new. Something beautiful.

I am out with lanterns, looking for myself. ~Emily Dickinson

I loved this book. However, it's brutally honest, and as Smith reveals the demise of her marriage, those who have faced similar scenarios may find it a difficult read. And yet, this new-to-me poet writes beautiful passages (and poems) centered on marriage, loss, motherhood, friendship and life without falling into a stereotypical navel-gazing rant. Some pages hold a single sentence or quote, others a brief paragraph, and a few need two to three pages to convey Smith's thoughts. It's this sort of layout that begs for "just one more page." It could have been twice as long, and it still wouldn't have been enough for this reader. 

I especially love her lyrical cadence in this passage:

There are so many windows, the house is lit naturally all day long, and you can follow the sunlight as it moves from the back of the house at sunrise to the front at sunset. There are so many windows, I couldn't bear to hang blinds or full curtain panels. With only cafe curtains covering the lower halves of the windows, my head can be seen floating from room to room at night from the street. There are so many windows, living in this house is like living in a glass display case, especially after dark. There are few places to hide.

She sounds like someone with whom I'd enjoy being friends:

I wonder what I would put in my own dating profile. Poet, writer, single mother of two, Gen Xer, lifelong Ohioan, city mouse, vegetarian. Loves books, live music, travel, dogs not cats, black coffee and black tattoos, dark beer and dark chocolate. Self-employed. Author of several books. Liberal, pro-choice, agnostic, monogamous. Aquarius. Gregarious introvert. Funny as hell. Occasionally melancholic. Good cook. Bed sleeper. Woman who, let's be real, probably won't trust you. Woman who will try.

About memoir:

"A memoir is about 'the art of memory,' and part of the art is in the curation. This isn't the story of a woman who fell in love again and therefore was healed and lived happily ever after. This is a story of a woman coming home to herself."

About poetry:

Poems and songs aren't the same, but they both rely on voice and form, rhythm and sound play, metaphor and image, repetition and surprise.

There were aspects of this book that resonated deeply with me, taking me back to a sad time in my life. But like Smith, I carry that young self inside me with the realization that I have grown from those difficult experiences.

How I picture it: We are all nesting dolls, carrying the earlier iterations of ourselves inside. We carry the past inside us. We take ourselves— all of our selves —wherever we go.

Inside forty-something me is the woman I was in my thirties, the woman I was in my twenties, the teenager I was, the child I was…

I still carry these versions of myself. It’s a kind of reincarnation without death: all these different lives we get to live in this one body, as ourselves.

I look forward to reading more by Maggie Smith. I've added Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change to my TBR list. I also subscribe to her Substack newsletters and follow her on Instagram. 

To read Maggie Smith is to embrace the achingly precious beauty of the present moment. ~TIME 

Golden Golf Club RV Park - Day Three

Disclaimer: I am finally posting about our trip to Canada. Many of these photos were shared on Instagram & Facebook, so they may look familiar to you. Sorry for any confusion!

Canada Road Trip (Summer 2023)

June 25-27, 2023

Celista to Golden, British Columbia

Daily Mileage: 203

Golden Golf Club RV Park

Site: 14

Duration: 3 nights

Cost: $53/night

Weather: Sunny and hot

Cell Coverage: 2-3 bars Verizon & 1 bar TMobile

Day Three

We had a lazy morning, but eventually decided to drive to Emerald Lake, which is located in the Yoho National Park. The parking lot wasn't very big, but I was able to pull in behind a row of RVs (near the bridge to the lodge). As soon as I got out of the RV, there was a rumble of thunder and it began to rain pretty heavily. I snapped a few photos and ran back to the RV. We had heard that the lake is the most beautiful in the Canadian Rockies, and it might well be, but it was difficult to tell due to the weather. 

We drove back the way we came and stopped at the Natural Bridge. The rain had let up, so we were able to walk around a little bit, taking in the views. Heading back to Golden, we decided to stop at Finn Creek and have a picnic lunch. There was plenty of parking and we enjoyed watching the water while we relaxed. 

The day's drive on Trans-Canada Hwy 1 was slow due to construction along Kicking Horse Canyon, which recently had a $451M upgrade for that treacherous stretch of highway in B.C. I found this article fascinating, as it was quite breathtaking (and a little nerve-wracking!) to drive across this section of the highway in an RV!

Emerald Lake

Yoho National Park

Natural Bridge

Finn Creek

Golden Golf Club RV Park - Day Two

Disclaimer: I am finally posting about our trip to Canada. Many of these photos were shared on Instagram & Facebook, so they may look familiar to you. Sorry for any confusion!

Canada Road Trip (Summer 2023)

June 25-27, 2023

Celista to Golden, British Columbia

Daily Mileage: 203

Golden Golf Club RV Park

Site: 14

Duration: 3 nights

Cost: $53/night

Weather: Sunny and hot

Cell Coverage: 2-3 bars Verizon & 1 bar TMobile

Day Two

We had a relaxing day catching up on emails and social media. I went for a walk around the campground and golf course, keeping my eyes peeled for bears. It was pretty hot & humid! We managed to polish off a bottle of the Cuvee from Celista before dinner.

We had to go all the way to Canada

 to get blueberries from McMinnville, OR!

Cheers!

Bittersweet

 

Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole by Susan Cain

Nonfiction

2022

Finished on November 3, 2024

Rating: 2/5 (OK)

Publisher's Blurb:

In her new masterpiece, the author of the bestselling phenomenon Quiet reveals the power of a bittersweet outlook on life, and why we’ve been so blind to its value.

With Quiet, Susan Cain urged our society to cultivate space for the undervalued, indispensable introverts among us, thereby revealing an untapped power hidden in plain sight. Now she employs the same mix of research, storytelling, and memoir to explore why we experience sorrow and longing, and the surprising lessons these states of mind teach us about creativity, compassion, leadership, spirituality, mortality, and love.

Bittersweetness is a tendency to states of longing, poignancy, and sorrow; an acute awareness of passing time; and a curiously piercing joy when beholding beauty. It recognizes that light and dark, birth and death—bitter and sweet—are forever paired. A song in a minor key, an elegiac poem, or even a touching television commercial all can bring us to this sublime, even holy, state of mind—and, ultimately, to greater kinship with our fellow humans.

But bittersweetness is not, as we tend to think, just a momentary feeling or event. It’s also a way of being, a storied heritage. Our artistic and spiritual traditions—amplified by recent scientific and management research—teach us its power.

Cain shows how a bittersweet state of mind is the quiet force that helps us transcend our personal and collective pain. If we don’t acknowledge our own sorrows and longings, she says, we can end up inflicting them on others via abuse, domination, or neglect. But if we realize that all humans know—or will know—loss and suffering, we can turn toward each other. And we can learn to transform our own pain into creativity, transcendence, and connection.

At a time of profound discord and personal anxiety, Bittersweet brings us together in deep and unexpected ways.

I listened to the audio version of Susan Cain's popular book, Quiet, last November. I had purchased a copy of Bittersweet while on vacation that year, but held off reading it until I had read Quiet. My book group chose to read and discuss Bittersweet this month, so I'm looking forward to hearing everyone's thoughts about this nonfiction work. 

To be honest, I struggled with the book. It felt dense and dry, and I wound up assigning myself a daily page count in order to finish in time for my book group meeting. Looking back at my review of Quiet, I am reminded that I liked it, but it wasn't one that I thought was outstanding, or even very good. Had I not recommended this new book to my book group, I know it would have been a DNF.

Flipping through the pages, looking for passages that did resonate, I came across this one:

One of the cornerstones of Keltner's research, which he summarized in his book Born to Be Good, is what he calls "the compassionate instinct"--the idea that we humans are wired to respond to each other's troubles with care. Our nervous systems make little distinction between our own pain and the pain of others, it turns out; they react similarly to both. This instinct is as much a part of us as the desire to eat and breath.

The compassionate instinct is also a fundamental aspect of the human success story--and one of the great powers of bittersweetness. The word compassion literally means "to suffer together," and Keltner sees it as one of our best and most redemptive qualities. The sadness from which compassion springs is a pro-social emotion, an agent of connection and love; it's what the musician Nick Cave calls "the universal unifying force." Sorrow and tears are one of the strongest bonding mechanisms we have.

While researching Cain and her book, I came across a few items that I want to share. Click on the links to watch.

The Hidden Power of Sad Songs and Rainy Days (TED talk)

But those dreams of peace he had had, you know, we're all still waiting for those, right? Which is the way it often goes, the beautiful world just out of reach. But while we're waiting, our broken hearts can also help connect us.

Empathy: The Human Connection to Patient Care (Cleveland Clinic) 

Excellent video about empathy.

It will be interesting to see if anyone in my book group enjoyed this book. Sadly, it's not one that I can recommend.

No Words

 

Pub Day!

 

Happy Pub Day to my husband!! Whoohoo!

For more information about his latest book, Ship of Lost Souls, click here.

A Month in Summary - October 2024

Oxbow Bend

Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming

October 2024

How is everyone doing? Are you avoiding the news and headlines? More importantly, did you vote? This is such an anxious time for everyone in our country, and I'm trying to stay positive, trying (but failing) to stay away from the news. It helped to have the World Series as a distraction, but that's over now*, and although November 5th is election day, we may not feel relief for a very long time, no matter who we voted for.

My reading has fallen by the wayside this past week, but I'm hoping to get back to it soon. I have a book group discussion to lead and need to finish the book!

October's reading wasn't too bad, although my audiobook failed to hold my attention. It took me almost two full months to finish, and that was at a speed of 1.5. I did complete one novel that was fantastic (thank you, Stephen King!), one other that was very good (albeit disturbing for someone living on the Cascadia faultline), and another that was good, but easily forgotten. 

We got home from our big adventure to the Tetons in early October, got caught up on appointments and various things around the house for a couple of weeks, and then headed out for a trip down to Santa Rosa to visit my aunt. We will be home on Election Day, not that we expect any clear results by that night, but we don't really want to be traveling...

Books Read (click on the title for my review):

Watch Us Shine by Marisa de los Santos (3/5)

Tilt by Emma Pattee (4/5)

Holly by Stephen King (4.5/5)

Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe (2/5)

Movies & TV Series:

Slow Horses (Season 4) - Such a great show. I'm glad there is more in store for us with at least one or two more seasons.

Shrinking (Season 1) - I love this show. It's funny and touching, and the acting is very good. I'm glad I have another season to watch. It's always a good thing to laugh out loud.

L.A. Dodgers - We watched a lot of baseball in October. We saw them beat the Mets in Game Six to win the NL pennant, and then the New York Yankees in Game Five to win the World Series Championship. What a thrilling season!!

Travel:

As I mentioned above, we are currently on another trip, visiting my aunt in Santa Rosa. We love traveling down Hwy 101, and we especially love spending time with Sue (and her dog, Cooper).

Wildlife:

Last month I shared some landscape photos from our great adventure to Wyoming. This month, I'll leave you with some of the birds & waterfowl we spotted along the way.

Bluebird

Clark's Nutcracker

Bottoms Up!

Ruffed Grouse in hiding

Mountain Quail

Take care of yourselves. Get outside and go for a walk. Read a book. Listen to music. Watch a comedy that will make you laugh. 

*Pitchers and catchers report for Spring Training on February 12th!