Vulnerability and love
One of the reasons I don’t try to write fiction is that I am more comfortable writing about things instead of feelings. And a writer can’t create great characters without feeling.
Robert, my husband, sees the world and all relationships through a filter of intuition. In his universe, there is no intellect without emotion. Over years, he has gradually helped me find and nurture my own feelings. This has not been easy.
Maybe I don’t really have feelings? No, that’s not it. When I allow myself to feel, it can be so painful, so overwhelming. So very early on I learned to hold back. Shortly after we moved from International Falls to Minneapolis (I was 6), I tried to hug some other girls I had met. They spurned me. The lesson was brutal and effective. Don’t try that again.
I didn’t hug anyone else till adulthood.
Recently, I’ve been listening to the several books of Robert Caro’s massive biography of LBJ. Johnson, with his bull-in-a-china-shop persona, was so supremely sensitive that many of his acquaintances felt sorry for his hurts and his loneliness. He had such great needs.
What are my great needs? Connection, love, integrity, authenticity. Creativity and nurturing. Cooking is a nurturing act, but I don’t have much chance to cook in assisted living, and I don’t much miss it. It seems like so much effort, and not long ago it wasn’t. I think that perhaps working on recipes—I’m struggling to transcribe all the handwritten notes of dishes I’ve created over the last several decades—will help. Yet that writing of bare facts is a move away from feelings, a return to things.
What feelings did I have yesterday, besides the gratitude that I remember to give thanks for on rising and while falling asleep? Some frustration when quilting didn’t go quite right. Edginess at the state of the stock market. Elation at being able to nail some harmony on the violin. Quiet enjoyment when I found pictures of Robert to use as my cell phone wallpaper.
What emotions do I want to foster? Deeper love, more connection, yearning to abide with Spirit, relying, trusting. Trust, yes. Serenity. Acceptance. Big-heartedness: I suppose that’s compassion. The will to do rather than just feel bad about injustice.
And finally, I am becoming sensitive to the lack of feeling in our culture in general. I am so saddened by the colorless, cold kitchens and other living space I see in magazine ads or on TV shows, the unhappy young men in suits on downtown streets, the suburban women whose priorities I think are out of whack. Yes, that’s judgmental, but an empty life is not worth living.
Neither is an unfeeling life. It’s so hard to walk around with these emotional scars showing, scratching at the scabs of memory. But what alternative is there?
Fran,
I saw your card posted in the mail room the other day and took a picture. Going through my photos today, I passed by the photo of your card and went to see what you had going. 
And this is the entry I landed on. I am ever so grateful that I did, but I don’t know if I can handle two entries in one sitting because you stirred something in me that was so deep, waiting for the perfect time in my life to wake up, that I must sit with my own emotion pool, to let it nourish me and usher me more deeply into previously evaded inner truths. 
There is joy, a little envy that you courageously stepped into this domain (I’ve had an active, “any day now,“ urge to start writing again since 2019), a little grief about the obstacles I’ve thrown in my own path, self compassion because I know my journey is exactly what it needs to be and that I will write when the conditions are right (I’ve had a lot of thawing out, self discovery, and self acceptance to do since I moved here), a “new to me,” buoyancy supported by an inner knowing that the universe is much more supportive than I thought, and a shimmering, visceral infusion of grace that I am not alone!
Right now I celebrate the realization that you’re more of a comrade than I could have imagined.
Your words are Poignant and powerfully moving. Thank you for offering your unique voice for the world to witness.