What Dead Writers Teach us About Resilience

and how to cry everything holy

It’s been a difficult week for all of us, and easier to stay under the covers, but this morning I’m going to get out of bed and head over to The Kauai Writers Conference and meet students I’ve been writing with for many years thru Zoom, and I have that good feeling in my stomach when you are about to meet your real family.

This week many of us have had to whisper who we voted for. A friend of mine is a doctor and she held space for the post election panic every day, refusing to offer prescriptions and stockpile vaccines for people who feel they will never get a needed vaccine again.

A friend I love asked me to please not raise my voice to her on the phone a few days ago, but that’s always hard for me on a good day, because I’m from New Jersey and sometimes my opinions are too big for my own mouth.

When Audre Lorde was dying, she said I am listening to what fear teaches. I will never be gone. I am a scar, a report from the frontlines, a talisman, a resurrection. A rough place on the chin of complacency.

Though it’s good to be on the frontlines, it’s also good to take out time with friends and laugh about it all, because I’d rather die laughing than crying. Shalom Auslander’s Substack helped me laugh this week - Request for Stronger Drugs - we are way past heroin.

I taught ten students the day before the election, ten students the day of the election, and three classes in the days following.

You might think we wrote about Kamala or Trump or corruption or taxes, or women’s rights, or our fears for our friends, or Gaza, or social security, or abortion or immigration.

But we did not write about any of those things.

Instead, we went deeper, deeper deeper into the well until we came back into the light. The subject this week was Crying as a Healing Act and as usual, I was reminded that crying is our superpower, not a weakness, that tears hold a special magic that can change the world.

In class this week I showed this beautiful video poem by the young Canadian poet, Zach Polis - It’s Okay to Cry Everything Holy, and I offer this poem as a balm.

Toni Morrison said There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear when discussing the writers task in troubled times.

Let’s be clear - these are troubled times, no matter who you voted for.

I don’t know what the future holds, but I do know story is the glue that connects us all, wanting something better for the world, our families and our communities.

Ursula LeGuin warned us in 2014 Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom — poets, visionaries — realists of a larger reality.

If you are reading this, you are one of the visionaries, and your voice is needed in the world. If you are reading this, the most important thing you can do in the weeks and years ahead is keep writing and keep loving and live your life to its fullest.

Live, live all you can. It’s a mistake not to (Henry James).

Art is here to prove, and to help one bear, the fact that all safety is an illusion. In this sense, all artists are divorced from and even necessarily opposed to any system whatever. Said my favorite writer ever, James Baldwin.

I wanted to offer some soothing words to my followers this week, so I stayed up all night post election to write a story about my three- year-old granddaughter dropping and breaking the arms off a buddha statue. The story encouraged me to remember things and people and countries break. Something must be destroyed before something new can be created, said Kristi Stout, (who is not dead).

Dead writers live in the words they wrote so many years ago, and they become the torch in what may feel like dark times. They are guiding us and inspiring us to keep writing, to keep living our best life. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal, said Audrey Lorde.

Let me be clear - You will one day also be a dead writer. Your words will illuminate the path for future writers and readers long after you are gone through the challenging times ahead for them, so begin building that needed bridge for our future now.

It’s not a small thing, writing our stories. It’s the biggest thing ever.

Audre, James, Toni, Ursula and Henry want you to know - it’s your turn now.

And you’ve got this.

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I’m hosting a free writing workshop - Stories of Resilience Saturday, January 4th through Literati Academy, to write our resilience stories. This workshop is free to celebrate reaching an early milestone of 1,000 subscribers on Substack. Thank you for showing up for your stories.