The reins

The reins

I founded Glow in the Woods in spring 2008, one year almost to the day after my son Liam died in the NICU after six weeks of love, longing, and agony. I spent the next ten years assembling many talented writers to build the community here at Glow, and writing Notes for the Everlost, which came out in Fall 2018. All these years later, emails like Christine’s — and all the writing here, all your stories — still make me cry. But not in a sad way, oddly. It’s just a repeated humbling, a circular sharing of love and company with other parents who understand.

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In response to June

In response to June

This week two readers of the book I wrote about life after loss got in touch to say what amounted to the same thing. One with an offhand comment, and the other with a handwritten two-page letter: You may not know where your baby has gone, but I do. Here’s the secret. God will save you from grief. Am I the caged animal, or are they? Which one of us eats better—the one who forages, or the one who is fed?

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Be where you are, darling

Be where you are, darling

Every now and then, I come across a community or a room that feels comfortable in its sass. There’s a certain rebellious streak I need to note, if it’s going to have the fortitude to include me. Us. It’s got to be a reclamation of sorts, a straight-forward pride of a weird sort that flies in the face of the western world’s oppression of anything real or raw. Modern Loss is one of those places, like ours but a bigger tent. Hop over there to read my thoughts on some intention-setting heading into the New Year—just for us.

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The power of positivity

The power of positivity

Sweet and simple, like a picture book from some other time, but I’ve made a devoted practice of turning up my nose at positivity. Doggedly charting and patrolling the boundary lines that denote my private space. Keeping anyone who would tell me to ‘manifest my joy’ out of my space. Not keeping out joy itself—never!—only those people who would insist upon my performance of it. Anti-positive is not pro-negative. Anti-positive is the staying off your feet of heart-convalescence, permission to be as you are. To breathe.

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