April is the Cruellest Month: Loss, Suicide, and Finding Joy During a Tough Month

Tia--a good day on the canal

Simon and Garfunkle's "April Come She Will" has been playing in my head since April 11th, the day we lost our pooch, Tia Maria, to liver cancer. It was a rough five weeks from diagnosis to the day when we had to call the vet.

Dan and I loved that little dog. Never having been without dogs or cats, our empty house seemed to echo the time when I lost Dad to suicide and our family had no anchor. I also haven't been able to get T.S. Eliot's first four lines of his poem "The Waste Land" out of my head either.

April is the cruellest month, breeding 
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing 
Memory and desire, stirring 
Dull roots with spring rain.

I remember Mom often saying, "I hate April," that month when you expect birth from winter, the land greening with newness, the flowers and trees blooming, the sun finally remembering it needed to shine. Warmth, birdsong, goslings waddling behind their parents, calla lilies spiking through dirt.

April seems a schizophrenic month that promises a new start, a leaving of winter and a thriving of all living things but tests everything and everyone. Sometimes after seedlings burst, April will deliver a frost. Birds are wild with mating, but lose their head and smash into windows. Frenetic energy brings mistakes. The season is full of beauty and the stirring of desire--from sexual desire to a need to garden. It's all about planting of seed and escaping winter.

And this brings me back to suicide and the seasons.

Many believe the rate of suicide peaks in the cold and dark months of winter, but that's not true according to research. Suicide is prevalent in late spring and early summer months.

My theory on this is that the holiday season keeps us engaged and filled with interaction with loved ones. My dad made it through pain and emotional suffering the winter of 1969 surrounded by family and celebration. There was hope. Then the need to carry this through with New Years and the idea that something would change, a better year, a different year. By March it's pretty damn clear that nothing has changed for the person suffering, and when April comes, so does the frenetic energy, never mind taxes and the responsibilities of clearing, growing crops, pruning, weeding, the long hot summer ahead meaning work, maybe the craziness of not being able to mate or let go of that pent up energy, and like a bird flying into the window, the mistake is made. 

Dad, me and my brother Kent working in the garden 1955

So today, on the anniversary of Dad's death, I offer this letter to you, one I wrote to him today in the hope that I can pass on more info about the pattern of suicide. I have no idea if any of this will help anyone, but I do know the rate of suicide is brutal for the men and women in our military. Maybe, just maybe, if we understand more, have more information, and keep a list of resources handy, we might keep someone from leaving us, someone who if they live might invent something amazing or give birth to the next great leader. Who knows? I am ever hopeful.

Today is the first day of May. Yay! May brings birthdays, my oldest granddaughter and mine. May also brings new life. We're so excited because on May 19th we bring little Stevie, our new Havanese puppy, home.

Stevie at four weeks

Embrace life. Love and light to you all!
Val

* * * * * * * * * * *

                                                                     30 April, 2016 

Dear Dad,

On this day forty-six years ago, April 30, 1970, you committed suicide.

I understand why you did it. You were in pain, struck down from an autoimmune disease that hit in 1944 when you were an officer during WWII. You spent a year in a Texas Army hospital that couldn’t diagnose your illness. Later it would be called PTSD.

April 3, 1970 was your 54^th birthday. You told us not to buy you any presents. You were gray-haired, skin and bones, and physically worn out. You still had two kids at home, a 17-year-old son and a 13-year-old daughter. I was going to have your first grandchild in July.

But you couldn’t wait. And as I said, I understand.

You were always self-sacrificing. You thought your family would be better off.

The truth however is something you didn’t understand and I didn’t discover until much later—the idea of suicide is addictive like a drug. The pattern is the same, the same spikes and plateaus, the ever-shortening relief brought on with the bigger the need. The idea of suicide brings relief at first, but then needs to be fed more and more to get ever larger doses of serotonin, the calming, happiness-producing hormone.

I don’t know when you first thought of suicide as a possible way out. It could have come rather innocently.

Maybe it came when you had to call into work sick because your body felt aflame. Perhaps a bill came due that you couldn’t pay or it was the day you scraped your beloved new blue Oldsmobile against the side of the garage and realized you no longer had control. Maybe it was from me dropping out of college, getting pregnant, and marrying a Vietnam Vet with his own demons who I thought I could save. Possibly it was when your business partner bailed and your business failed.

The day I drove you to the VA Hospital in Vermont for tests, you thought you might have cancer. You hadn’t felt good for three years you said. Because the hospital had no doctors on staff that day or over the weekend, they said to go home. We went for coffee. You seemed calm and relaxed. In an unusual confession, you told me you had never wanted children because of your condition, knowing you wouldn’t be a good father, even admitted to being too controlling, like your father was. Later, I would realize that this was your way of saying sorry, and goodbye. Thank you for that. Later, it would give me understanding and closure.

           

Whatever first put the idea of suicide into your head, you thought of it and experienced your first hit of serotonin. You were back in control and had a way out if need be.

That didn’t last however.

The next time you experienced stress and your body was wracked with pain, you thought of suicide again, and that brought relief, only this time not as much. When the pattern repeated, relief came when you started planning your suicide. Now the relief was stronger and longer.

The family doctor had given you painkillers. That’s how you’d do it. A big surge of relief this time. You functioned for a while and felt back in control.

But it didn’t last long, and the next time some incident brought back the pain, you were ready to be done with it. You calmly took that bottle of pills and laid down on the bed, waiting for relief. Instead, you slept for three days. Probably you’d built your drug tolerance too high. Mom had me go over to change your sheets and I found you in the bed, and you were breathing, but wouldn’t wake up. Only nineteen and scared, I called Mom, but Mom said let him sleep. He’s tired. He sleeps a lot. So I covered him and left.

After the failed attempt, you no longer felt a big surge of serotonin. So this time you started carefully planning, took your time, and made sure your business was in order, from making sure your insurance policy had no suicide clause to figuring out how much paint it would take to finish painting the garage. The serotonin surged. You were acting happy around that time, even for your birthday on April 3^rd.

By the end of the month, you’d finished writing a love letter to Mom and telling her how and why you were doing what you were doing. You’d convinced yourself that since you couldn’t provide for your family anymore and no one could help you medically, you’d end up being a financial burden on your family. You said you hadn’t felt good for three years and didn’t want to get out of bed in the morning. I wondered if you cried as you wrote that four-page letter. I can imagine you also felt relief. You felt free. You’d done the right thing for your family. You gave Mom instructions on everything she’d have to do after you were gone, including having me paint the rest of the garage. You told Mom how much you loved her and the best days of your life had been with her. You said how sorry you were. You even apologized to me for not being there to see your first grandchild and made a joke that we would probably not name our baby after you, Albert Horace. You also told Mom where the police could find your body. You didn’t want Kent and Wendy coming home from school and finding you.

You folded the letter, sealed it in an envelope, and left it along with a copy of your insurance policy standing against the fruit bowl on the kitchen table.

Then you drove to town, bought a new license for the dog, paid all outstanding bills, got a haircut, drove home to leave the license and pick up your gun.

At one of your former favorite hunting grounds in Sanbornton, you parked your car. That beautiful blue Oldsmobile that you loved so. The day was sunny. A lovely flood of serotonin hit. You no longer had to worry about your family or the burden you’d become. You’d no longer be in pain. The gun felt familiar in your hand. I don’t know if you were crying or smiling or just ready to go. Then you shot yourself.

You were free. But we had to suffer the burden that suicide leaves on a family.

I’ve had many years to heal from losing you. I still write letters to you and one year I even bought a Father’s Day card for you. This year I want you to know one thing: I don’t blame you, Dad, for what you did. Many forces were at play.

I blame war and our stupid fixation on what is heroic. I blame a system that hadn’t identified PTSD as real or the health system that failed you and still fails others in our military. I blame the Greatest Generation’s belief that they could control everything and valued keeping an outward appearance of perfection vs. recognizing when a family or person was in trouble. You couldn’t ask for help. It was too embarrassing and would be a sign of weakness.

Suicide is not painless. We would have rather had you alive even if it meant hard times, because suicide caused rough years for all of us. Twenty years after your death, like a gateway to grief, when my two dogs died in one year, I finally felt your loss and grieved so hard I thought I’d never stop crying.

I love you. And as I said, I understand your decision. I don’t even look at it as the wrong decision. It was the only one you thought you had at the time, and who knows? I cannot see into the parallel universe that would have been if you had lived.

All I can say is you were and are deeply loved and missed. I forgave you years ago for leaving so soon. You missed so much joy with Jason and his girls and the two great-grandsons.

Yes, there is pain in life, but joy is always around the corner. You just need to be patient and keep the light on.

Love always,

Valerie

The Day My Dad Died

            The day my dad died I was one month shy of my nineteenth birthday and six months pregnant. I’d spent the day with my husband, whom I would divorce three years later, driving around Lake Winnisquam, looking for a place to rent so we wouldn’t be stuck in our second floor, two-room stuffy apartment in Laconia. I’d grown up on Lake Winnisquam and needed a place with fresh air where I could walk outside with my baby, barefoot, maybe even see the lake shimmer in the distance. If really lucky, we’d find a place where I could sit under a tree by the water and wade in to cool off on hot muggy days.

My brother and I at the lake

            We drove all afternoon and found a place, a small two-room cabin just down the road from my parents on Hill Road, across from the right-of-way that gave everyone on the opposite side of the road access to a swimming spot. The right-of-way, as we always called it, held memories of neighborhood swims and my first kiss from an out-of-town boy called Punk. When I needed space from my family or a retreat from a fight with my dad, I’d slip down to the right-of-way and sit under a big pine to daydream, cry or cool off.

            The day my dad died, we rented that cabin, relieved to find a place we could afford. I thought how lucky I was to be near my lake when the baby came. As we drove down Hill Road and approached my parent’s house, something happened that I’ve only been able to describe as a flash of light, as if an old-fashioned camera bulb had popped in my face and blinded me for a moment. I clutched at my rounded belly and said, “We have to stop. I need to see Dad.”

            I’d been taking Dad to the VA hospital in Vermont, checking on him for my mom when she was at work, but being so wrapped up in new-found love and baby making made me blind to how ill my dad was.

Dad, me and my brother Kent picking beans

            My husband didn’t like my father, so he drove past the salmon-colored ranch-style house that my father spent years remodeling, my life-long home only six months earlier. As we pulled out onto the Route 3, I glanced back at the house where my dad had tended his garden and raspberry bushes, a house that he insisted was “salmon-colored” not pink. The tiny porch wasn’t big enough for a chair, but it was a good place to get out of the weather and take off boots, to greet guests, to sit on the steps as a little kid with a friend or my brother or sister. I remember window boxes, having always had a soft spot for them, but I’m not sure they existed.

Kent, our Beagle King, Wendy & I

 Aunts, uncles, grandparents, friends, and co-workers would pass through that front door for parties, holidays, and summer gatherings. Christmas was our favorite holiday because mom always over did it with presents and Dad would complain that she was driving him to the poor house. When I think of my dad, I picture him sitting in his recliner, smoking Winstons, eating his Bridgemix and reading a book, if he wasn’t watching our new color television, the cause of one of my parents’ biggest arguments that left them not speaking for days and put us three kids on our best behavior because one thing we never doubted, even through the bad times was the great love our parents had for each other. I may have doubted my dad’s love for me at times, but I never doubted that my parents were in love.

Me with my mom and her sister Vera on our "porch"

            When my fights with Dad started, it was normal teenage fare, the whole unfairness of life. Why couldn’t I ride in cars with my friends? Why did I need to be home at that hour? Why couldn’t I hang out at the Tony’s Pizza Parlor? That’s when I became the cause of their arguments. Mom wanted to give me more freedom; Dad didn’t. Mom said the reason Dad and I fought was because we were too much alike. Dad said it wasn’t me he didn’t trust; it was boys.

            After leaving Hill Road, after deciding not to fight with my husband about stopping at my parents’ house, we drove in silence and when we reached our two-room apartment in Laconia, I trudged up the outside stairs, wanting to go back. We had just entered the apartment when the phone rang. My husband answered it, then handed the receiver to me.

            “Valerie, this is Dr. Robinson. I’m sorry. Your dad is dead. He shot himself.”

            I screamed and dropped the phone.

My son Jason was born three months later. I never doubted I was having a boy, even from the beginning. After Dad died, I was even more convinced it would be boy. I don’t remember picking out a girl’s name, although I know we did.

            Jason looks uncannily like his grandfather and has his wicked sense of humor and wit, his mannerisms, his work ethic, his sense of responsibility, but thankfully no health problems. I think my dad would have loved him. Or, would the two of them been too much alike and rubbed each other the wrong way? I don’t know.

Mom and Dad

            My dad was responsible right up to the end. On the day he died, he bought a new license and tags for the dog, made sure there was enough paint for one of us kids to finish the garage, and went to the barber for a haircut. He told mom all this in a letter he left, including letting mom know was no suicide clause in the insurance policy. The letter glows with his great love and adoration for my mom. He didn’t want to be a burden on the family and knew the way it was going, he would be. He included a p.s. to me, saying he was sorry he wouldn’t be there to see his first grandchild and, to the end, tried for humor by writing he hoped we wouldn’t give our baby his middle name, Horace.

            Our family still carries on his insistence of having manners, table manners being high on his list: elbows off the table, sit up straight, slow down. Dad would often say, “Don’t eat like your mother,” meaning the English way with knife and fork reversed and fork piled high.

            But this is also a man who sometimes did not eat what mom served for dinner, instead breaking Saltines into a bowl of milk after a day of working outside in the heat and humidity. He ate slowly, chewed each bite over and over, driving us kids crazy. This kind of control extended to the way he raised us. When he couldn’t control us and we fought him, he’d punish. “You might not love me,” he said once, “but one day you’ll respect me.” He was wrong. All I really wanted was to love him and be loved back, but he was a hard man to please and he took my rebellion personally.

            I have grandchildren now and, if I lavish them with love, it’s because sometimes all a teen needs is a hug and a “It will be okay. You’ll get through this.” Many times my fights with my dad might not have happened if I hadn’t felt judged and shamed, if I hadn’t felt my emotions being negated by a parental need to be perceived as in control and being seen as a perfect family.

            Don’t get me wrong. I’m not kidding myself here. Teens have their emotional needs and drives that often supersede anything parents can provide. Guiding teens through their teens is probably the hardest job there is as a parent because they’re competing with peers and hormones. Dad had two more children coming up fast behind me and I’m sure that crossed his mind as we battled and he grew more ill.

Dad

            And he was ill, more than I knew. He battled rheumatoid arthritis and prescription pills, and was unable to work toward the end. The only way out for him, as he concluded, was suicide. He did what he thought was the responsible thing, plus it would end his pain and sense of powerless. In his besieged mine, the only way our family would survive would be if he didn’t become a bigger financial and medical burden. I don't doubt that that indeed would have happened.

            Yet on the day he died, he didn’t realize he exchanged those possible burdens on us for bigger, emotional ones.

            Time has given me perspective and knowledge of suicide. Time has given me an understanding of how a need for control can also cause a loss of control. Some have said to me that suicide is the ultimate show of control, but I don't believe that in my dad's case that's true. If he hadn't been ill, he would have never given up. But when he couldn't be the husband and father he wanted to be, needed to be, he couldn't fake it anymore.

            Time has also, above all, shown me that perception should never overshadow love. I don’t care what others think about what my family goes through. We all have problems and I choose to be friends with people who share them and exchange knowledge so we can help out each other. The generation of our parents living in a “keeping up with the Joneses” and “what will the neighbors think” culture better be over because they’re faulty paradigms and destructive on so many levels, especially for a writer like myself who was conditioned to keep a lid on everything of importance and has had to fight to be free and express myself truthfully.

Kent and I in snow

            A few days ago, Mom said to me on the phone, “I wonder what our life would have been like if your dad had lived.” I couldn’t say. I couldn’t imagine it. I hope she visualized something sweet and carefree, something that, like in an act of creating fiction, she formed in her mind while erasing sickness, lack of money, a crazy political world that would have turned my dad apoplectic. I hope she saw her and Dad, retired by the lake, him fishing, her reading or talking on the phone. Maybe they even hold hands while sitting in chairs on the dock. 

Poppy day or Memorial Day around 1961

But maybe they would still be attending their American Legion activities, maybe still dancing as they always did so beautifully. I think she can create that in her mind, create her own story for a life they'd live now. I doubt very much that they would have ended up in Florida where she now lives. I think he’d had enough of hot and humid. But maybe, after shoveling snow one hard winter, he'd have been happy to join the snowbirds. Why not?

* * * * *

            I remember one winter day after a storm had dumped a foot or more of snow. Dad was out shoveling the walkway and I was playing on one of those high snow mounds the snowplow had left along the road. I dug a hole, probably one of those “digging to China” holes, and I dug it so deep, I couldn’t get out. When I realized this, I yelled over and over, “Dad! Dad!”

            When he finally heard me, he walked up the mound, looked down, shook his head and laughed. Then he reached down for my hand and lifted me out.

Dad, my mom's mom Nannie Smith holding me, and Mom

 

In Loving Memory

Albert Horace Brooks ~ April 3, 1916 to April 30, 1970.

Confession: Being Cheryl Strayed

My confession—

This is the most difficult blog post I’ve written so far. It’s about being emotionally naked as a writer. It’s about being vulnerable.

I hate that.

But I swore to myself I wouldn’t post it until I was naked on the page although I gave myself some leeway: it didn’t matter if the piece had flaws or awkward prose; it didn’t matter if I stumbled; it only mattered that I let go. This time I needed to truly examine myself. On the page. For the whole world to see.

This is my humble and terrifying attempt.

* * * * * *

About a month ago, my Litchix crewmate Chris Scofield sent a link to an essay in The Sun magazine. I remembered reading Cheryl Strayed’s story “The Love of My life” years ago when it was first published. I remembered thinking at the time, “How can she love her mother like a lover? How is that possible?” I remembered feeling a little sick and sad for her. I remembered being a little repulsed. But I never forgot that story, and I’ve read everything of hers since, including her novel Torch.

This time, after rereading, I felt sad for me. I’d been writing for over twenty years and couldn’t get a novel published. Cheryl at twenty-three sent her first short story to a contest, won first prize, sent a copy of the story to Alice Munro—yes, that Alice Munro—and Alice wrote back within two weeks, ending her letter with "I wasn't writing nearly so well at your age."

So I printed out “The Love of My Life” and read it six more times. I underlined. I highlighted. I sat with it. I carried it with me, as if by osmosis I could find the secret to writing like her.

I highlighted her first sentence:

“The first time I cheated on my husband, my mother had been dead for exactly one week.”

I highlighted and underlined the paragraph’s last sentence:

“I was raw, fragile, vicious with grief. I would do anything.”

Raw. Fragile. Vicious.

I’d been there.

I would do anything.

Pause.

Had I been there?

No.

I would not do anything. Emotions did not control me. I controlled emotions. By suppressing them.

And there it was. Years of conditioning. Years of growing up in New Hampshire where never exposing yourself or your emotions was considered a strength. If you did, there were consequences.

I remember my brother the day after my dad shot himself. The police came to the house with the gun. My brother started crying. The policeman, still holding the gun, said, “Stop crying. You’re the man of the house now.” And Kent stopped crying. Has he cried since? Probably. Has he fully grieved my dad? I have no idea. For me it took twenty years and the death of my two dogs to crack me open. Months of crying, sometimes sobbing until I felt sick. But the grief finally turned to a manageable level and eventually disappeared. I did this by myself, sometimes in bed next to my husband.

But those years of conditioning, of being the oldest, the caregiver, kept my emotions bottled up. Oh, I acted out, fought against the strict rules and unfairness of my parents’ world, but that’s a normal reaction to parents who rule by reward and punishment. I wanted to be good girl, but in this case, it was impossible to live up to the standards without being lobotomized. It was dangerous to show emotions, too, so I went head on with my folks, thwarting their rules. My mom would prefer to forget those teenage rebellious acts and prefers me as a little girl. As mom puts it still, “You were always such a good girl. When you were upset, you went to your room and closed the door.”

Closed the door.

Yes, I did.

Cheryl Strayed

So when I read Cheryl’s essay again, that door creaked open a bit. I needed to see how I either compared to her or not. I had a life as intense as hers, feelings as vicious. I suppose you could say that since my dad gave or withheld love depending on my obedience, then getting pregnant by a bi-polar, alcoholic Vietnam Vet with PTSD was an in-your-face act of rebellion. Oh, I was madly in love with the guy. He did look like George Harrison. But once my parents started talking to me again, we followed a pretty standard path—marriage, work, living near my parents. Then my dad committed suicide. But I had a husband who loved me. I soon had a baby to care for and love. My husband, in a few years soon to be my ex, at the time proved himself worthy, helping the family, shoring up my sister, being there for me. For a while, it seemed I had done something good, accidentally good, but good nonetheless.

I turn back to Cheryl’s story. After her mother’s death, she had sex with some risky, possibly dangerous characters. She destroyed her marriage with a good man. She shot heroin. That’s how vicious her grief was.

Damn. Was I lacking? Did I not love my father enough? Did I not show my grief enough? Did I actually have enough grief?

Some would say I was simply trying to replace a father who didn’t know how to love by finding someone who could, someone who would accept me without conditions on my behavior. But as they say, love is blind. What they should say is youth is blind. I wanted to live and love. Cheryl wanted to join her mother. She wanted to die. At least that’s how I see it.

Thankfully, she didn’t. But the risks she took were outside anything I could take. Her grief drove her there. My grief drove me in a different direction. Different roads, different drivers.

Perhaps the key to our differences is this—I lost someone every year of high school. My best friend’s mother. The neighbor boy. A girlfriend’s brother whom I had a crush on. My best friend, Diane. I knew grief in many different forms. I’d grown up with death.

My dad’s death the year after I graduated made me want to save people. My ex husband. My sister. Friends. I would not lose one more person.

So what prevents me from writing about this? Where’s the rawness, the fragility, the viciousness of Cheryl’s grief in my writing? What am I afraid of? Am I afraid that I’ll hurt someone? Am I afraid of divulging someone’s secrets or showing them in a negative light? No. Not really. Writing with heart and empathy prevents this. Writing about our lives is not about vendetta or judgment, and Cheryl and I both write without those.

I ask myself again, "What am I afraid of?" Truthfully, nothing. Anyone who knows me can attest to that. I can write about my father who shot himself in the family Oldsmobile out in the woods at his favorite hunting spot. He left a letter. He bought dog tags that day and got a haircut. He loved my mother with the love of a teenage boy. The night he died, I curled up with my husband and cried myself to sleep. My brother was probably left alone now that he was the man of the family. My mother slipped into my sister’s bed, curled up against her, and cried all night, and many nights for years to come.

And then we went on. I’m sure we were back at work or school within two weeks. I was one month short of nineteen, newly married, and six months pregnant. My brother was seventeen, my sister thirteen, mom forty-seven. We went back to the lives we were living before dad died.

Cheryl says that everyone tries to help you through your grief by telling stories that are similar. I doubt if anyone told her a story where they went out and fucked every available man or tried heroin, but I bet there are stories just as intense. What makes Cheryl’s story so different is in the telling, is in the way she puts you in her shoes and doesn’t apologize and at the same time seems just as surprised by her actions as the reader does. She could not imagine a life without her mother. She wanted to die. That’s how she handled her emotions.

Hers was the cry of a child. I picture a three year old abandoned on the street in a strange town, and it’s raining. She screams. She screams out to those walking past and grabs their legs. She won’t let go. And when one pushes her away, she grabs another and another until somewhere amongst all those people asks “Where’s your family?” She didn’t have any. No other family members appear in her stories. She has nowhere to turn, so she decides to hike the Pacific Coast Trail. A pilgrimage of sorts? Another risky, do or die act? Yes. Another physical act that walks/hikes/sweats away her grief. She’s written about it in her new memoir Wild, out in March. Will she ever put her mother’s ghost to rest? I don’t know. Maybe her mother’s gift is the gift of story. Maybe that’s what she gave Cheryl by dying young. Her mother became her muse.

 

Cheryl reading a funny/hairaising bit from WILD

And me? Well, I’ve come to the conclusion that what I write about is different from Cheryl. I take risks, I’m not afraid about what my family or friends think, but I rub up against life in my own way. I, too, had sex with lots of men after my divorce from, as Cheryl would write it, the Bi-polar Vietnam Vet George Harrison Look Alike. But I had sex because I was free of my family and could do it my way. I liked having sex. I felt empowered by it. As I remember either my dad or husband saying, “You never know someone until you either work or sleep with them.” I’d say that’s true. Also, I was looking for love and seeing who was out there. I knew their names, I asked them questions about their lives, I had short relationships that didn’t work out. But I remained friends with most of them. I sure as hell wasn’t going to confuse love with just sex. So I took care of that. I wasn’t trying to find my dad. I didn’t need another control freak, but I did want a man with a sense of honor and humor. And I found him eventually.

As did Cheryl. She found a husband and had children and can boast that she’s one of the finest writers alive. She did good. So did I. I could leave it there, but it’s not about us. It’s about writers.

My essay about my relationship with my dad

And you can see what we go through. The comparisons. The constant re-examination. The lottery-like odds of winning a New York publishing contract. I write novels and I can’t tell you why New York publishers haven’t picked one up yet. I’ve won awards and residencies and have short pieces published. But all this worry and comparison to Cheryl could be explained by where I’m at now. I’m finishing a novel and once again, I’m putting myself out there. Naked again. I’ve probably written this blog to work through my anxiety. I’m sure I wrote this blog because Miss Gonna Be a Great Writer Who Is Loved By Alice Munro showed up at the right time for me to use her. Sorry Cheryl. I do adore your writing and you.

“Trust the process,” everyone tells a writer.

Yes, well, you can say that all day to a writer, but in the end, you have to trust yourself. And that can be the hardest part of the whole damn journey.

Yours, as always,

Captain Val

Coming Up!
Who the hell knows? I'm trying to finish a novel, for landlubber's sake!

For more about Cheryl:
Cheryl comes out as Sugar, the advice columnist on The Rumpus
Cheryl is featured in the March issue of Vogue 
Click here for Cheryl's website