I discovered Chris La Tray a few months ago. Yes, I shared his substack link with you before. He is nearly finished with his book, Becoming Little Shell.
As I work on memoir, I find it all consuming mostly. Going back over journals, photos, emails, etc. Then putting it down on paper for my memoir coach and I to fine tune. It has broken me open. My heart is tender, trying to reconcile how all has come to be, losing my daughter and grandchildren and my part in it. Chris’s post today felt relevant as they often do.
Excerpt from his writing today, Broken Open:
“The thing about being broken open is a lot of love pours through too. Love coming in, and intense love reflected back out. It sounds overly sentimental but love can heal the world. Or at least our human place in it. It is the only thing that can! But we have to move beyond the definitions of what love is as just this airy thing and create an active love in the world. It’s like hope, it’s meaningless if one just shrugs and throws it to the universe to solve whatever problem while we just go on with our business. The business of hurling ourselves into the grinder of doing the same thing over and over until only shreds of what we began as remain. The universe does provide but it takes work. Sometimes toil. Sometimes setting aside what is easier, or what we think we want, to show love as courtesy. Love as simple kindness. Love that can be inconvenient. Love that challenges us. If we all did a little more of that, how much better would we get along? That’s what I try and teach these kids about poetry. It is what I am trying to teach myself but I’m not very good at it at all. I’m too angry all the time.”
Fscottwrites 