Denise

The Three Graces - Raphael

I've had a hard time coming up with blog posts of late -- I don't know whether to tell you, daily, of struggles and recovery from struggles or whether to post favorite poems or music or even to just be silent. I've felt a fleeing of the muse, I guess, and perhaps a tiny bit of boredom. Generally, this blog writing is like exercise and my writing flexibility is greater when I'm blogging, less when I'm not. So I try to keep going.

Today, though, I'm going to post a link to a wonderful site called Literary Mama, and, in particular, to an essay written by a friend of mine, Denise Emanuel Clemen. Denise and I met in a writing workshop at UCLA many years ago. It was taught by another writer (whom I now call friend and mentor), Barbara Abercrombie, and was called Writing the Healing Story. I began this class in the fall before Sophie turned ten years old, and while I had been a very active writer prior to her birth, I had literally written nothing since her birth and diagnosis. During the decade that passed I had filed away encounters and thoughts about the medical world we had been thrust into with the mantra this will go in my book. I had built a book in my mind and it buttressed me, but it wasn't until that morning class with Barbara that I dismantled the book in my head and began to really write it.

Four years later, I've written most of that book but still struggle with its structure and with finishing it. Perhaps that's because IT is not finished and I'm hard put to impose a finish. The book is about Sophie and her seizure disorder, but it's also about the health system and what it means to be sick in our culture. It's about the difference between healing and curing and it's about what it's like to be subsumed by something other than oneself. It's about our family and the journey we've been on that separates us from others and binds us to others. It's a sad story and a hopeful one, I think, but there is no end to the story because there is no end to this.

I digress. I wanted to post Denise's beautiful essay, recently published at Literary Mama. Denise is an amazing writer and a dear friend. Her voice is clear and true, sometimes angry and often filled with wonder and love. She has written a book about giving a baby up for adoption when she was seventeen years old. It's an incredible book, a testament to her as a woman and writer. I hope that it's published soon. In the meantime, read THIS.