"I long ago let D. go. By reading this memoir while I wrote it, D. let me go. And I have been freed and seen.
"Our marriage that was broken has had a solidity I could never have imagined. It is like a mahogany breakfront that holds all the broken china of our lives together."
I feel very moved by these lines.
Powerful, insightful, and no doubt painful at the time it happened. To experience letting go, and freedom, only to find solid ground which was there all along ~ and could only be seen from the distance of letting go (maybe?)
"Break a vase and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole."
This story *seems* to have taken a turn over the past few weeks that I did not anticipate. I'm not sure. *Good* for storytelling! But I'm unsettled -- uncertain ground -- for several reasons. I've been thinking a day before responding. (Not, in general, a bad thing . . ..) Now I *really* can't wait for next week.
Oh Mary, the love that carries and wrecks bc then remakes you is so beautiful, seemingly sourced from some deep well within, the questioning only purifying, the writing of this memoir, a reckoning with the love that you’ve always been. ❤️
If you can stomach the author's misogyny, used mostly for effect, there is a fascinating depiction of therapist and patient in Philip Roth's My Life as a Man.
Lovely and heartfelt post. It's important to be "aware" that it had solidity because then we're in a better position to move forward, hopefully stronger and wiser.
This is a great passage, Mary: "Our marriage that was broken has had a solidity I could never have imagined. It is like a mahogany breakfront that holds all the broken china of our lives together."
If I haven't trotted out this anecdote before, I heard a hospital chaplain say something to me once about how we don't put ourselves back into the same shape again after a big loss. I'd already experienced that with a serious loss in my 20s -- and some trauma to go with it -- but somehow I'd believed that who I was before was recoverable. His words were a watershed, and I'm living with the truth of them after a series of devastating losses over the past three years. Maybe that mahogany breakfront is what I'm looking for: a shape that holds the brokenness, knowing it will never be whole again, but neither surrendering to the ruins.
You’ve opened the window to your heart to allow the connection carried by artful words. Lovely.
Also, thanks for saving me from that movie!
"I long ago let D. go. By reading this memoir while I wrote it, D. let me go. And I have been freed and seen.
"Our marriage that was broken has had a solidity I could never have imagined. It is like a mahogany breakfront that holds all the broken china of our lives together."
I feel very moved by these lines.
Powerful, insightful, and no doubt painful at the time it happened. To experience letting go, and freedom, only to find solid ground which was there all along ~ and could only be seen from the distance of letting go (maybe?)
"Break a vase and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole."
This story *seems* to have taken a turn over the past few weeks that I did not anticipate. I'm not sure. *Good* for storytelling! But I'm unsettled -- uncertain ground -- for several reasons. I've been thinking a day before responding. (Not, in general, a bad thing . . ..) Now I *really* can't wait for next week.
Oh Mary, the love that carries and wrecks bc then remakes you is so beautiful, seemingly sourced from some deep well within, the questioning only purifying, the writing of this memoir, a reckoning with the love that you’ve always been. ❤️
If you can stomach the author's misogyny, used mostly for effect, there is a fascinating depiction of therapist and patient in Philip Roth's My Life as a Man.
Lovely and heartfelt post. It's important to be "aware" that it had solidity because then we're in a better position to move forward, hopefully stronger and wiser.
This is a great passage, Mary: "Our marriage that was broken has had a solidity I could never have imagined. It is like a mahogany breakfront that holds all the broken china of our lives together."
If I haven't trotted out this anecdote before, I heard a hospital chaplain say something to me once about how we don't put ourselves back into the same shape again after a big loss. I'd already experienced that with a serious loss in my 20s -- and some trauma to go with it -- but somehow I'd believed that who I was before was recoverable. His words were a watershed, and I'm living with the truth of them after a series of devastating losses over the past three years. Maybe that mahogany breakfront is what I'm looking for: a shape that holds the brokenness, knowing it will never be whole again, but neither surrendering to the ruins.
I love the Rodanthe intro and your dialogue.