How to Begin Again

when you've been gone for 20 months

Dear Reader:

I am not sure how to begin, nor will I likely know how to end.

It is coming up on 2 years since I have written anything in this space.  What is surprising to me is that I still regularly receive emails from devoted (and superhumanly patient) readers, wondering how I am and inquiring when I will begin writing again.

I have a hard time responding to those emails, because (1) I have not been well in so long and (2) I don’t know when I will ever begin writing again.  Thoughts are always swirling in my head, but the impulse to then transcribe those thoughts onto paper has significantly diminished over time, to the point now that I wonder if anyone will actually care to read what I write.

And this begs the question:  do I even want to read what I write?

I am not sure.

So perhaps I will begin here:  the last time I wrote a newsletter was in June 2022.  Since then, my health has been up, down, sideways, and every which way possible.  There is nothing I like talking about less than my health. And yet it is always what every kind soul wants to ask about, for which I truly am grateful – and yet I rarely share anything beyond – well, I’m doing okay this week.

How does one speak about suffering (emotional or physical) that is currently underway?  How much easier it is to recall a former hard time, because you know how the story ends, and no doubt there are at least a couple of providential lessons you have learned.  But when one is in the midst of the crucible, is it right and true to communicate about it and speculate on its divine purposes?  I am unsure, and that has also led to my hesitation in writing again.

Let me back up

The year 2023 was the hardest one my husband and I have ever experienced in our 24 years of married life.  It rivaled torture on virtually every front:  relationally, health-wise, finances-wise, job-wise, family-wise, and emotions-wise.  In many ways it felt like our whole lives fell apart, and we are still standing in the shards of that.  An unexpected job loss, with significant financial implications, preceded by months of nonstop cross-country travel, fostering a child for two months who carried with her a lot of trauma – which led to a whole lot of trauma for our own family, moving to a suburb we had always joked we would never move to (leaving our land in the country due to my unrelenting health issues + my husband’s nonstop airline travel), receiving the words “it is cancerous” from a doctor’s mouth, the unremittent stress of 5 months of job hunting, the high school graduation of our eldest – which felt like both a mountaintop and then a collapse into the oblivion, and such a massive change in our schedule and our lives that I still have to review my planner every morning when I wake up, because nothing feels “normal” or “routine” yet.

There is much more that has happened and is even continuing to happen on a very penetrating level, that I will never share publicly. But the sense of loss and loneliness is one of the few things that feels like it may never go away.

Our new phase:  the Young Adult years

We had planned for our oldest, recently turned 19, to take a gap year after she graduated high school – to save money for college and to help us sort of re-stabilize as a family.  After 3 years of sickness and intense focus on music and our family band, Madeleine readily concurred that the best thing for our family as a whole would be her to take a gap year.  And so a couple weeks after graduation, she interviewed for a nannying job that has been the most wonderful gift from the Lord.  She is squirrelling away mountains of cash for college and loves her days with two beautiful little girls on a lovely piece of country property not too far from our new house.  The downside, for me, has been that my right-hand-woman, my comrade-in-arms, my best friend, my confidante-who-has-been-emotionally-tracking-with-me-on-every-single-thought-for-many-years daughter is now gone at least 3 days a week, often 4, and sometimes 5.  The change has been so shocking to my system that I am still mourning it.  Sophia, our 17-year-old who is nearing the completion of her junior year, has felt the same level of impact – as she and Madeleine have been functionally twins their whole life, experiencing every.single.thing. together.  But I also quickly realized that this job and new schedule were good training wheels for me and for our whole family: this is what it will be like when she is in college full-time (still living at home, thankfully, but gone every day and probably several nights a week), and then of course when one day she gets married and starts her own new life entirely.

Yes, I do know all the platitudes and have preached them to my daughters and to myself:  this is simply the good and natural process of my oldest daughters growing up into independence.  This is a beautiful development.  Look how they are flourishing and blessing the lives of everyone they meet, etc.  But what I also always preach to my kids is this:  two different things can be true about the same thing, at the same time.  I can be thrilled that Madeleine is an adult, learning to make adult decisions, forging her own new friendships, and preparing to jump into a Whole New World of Delight when she enters college.  But I can simultaneously be heart-broken that my years with her at my side are gone.  One truth does not cancel the other out.

The same will be true this fall, when Sophia enters her senior year; she already has all the credits she needs to graduate, so she’ll just be taking a couple classes, nannying almost full-time (the same two little girls Madeleine is spending this year with), and making a decision about college.  So it will be good and true and beautiful for her to love and help shape two little souls, save piles of money for college, and forge ahead into her future of independence.  And yet I will be crushed when both she and Madeleine are gone all day.  I have literally spent hours wailing in tears about this reality (and a few others) these last few months. 

And while this may all sound like borderline emotional lunacy to some mothers, it is my reality.  I am faced with both the up sides and the down sides of what it means to have a certain level of mother-daughter emotional intimacy.  It has been God’s greatest gift to me in being a mother -- and a subpar one a good bit of the time -- to experience this “sisterhood,” as it were.  These girls have always been old souls; they know what I think before I speak it.  We finish each other’s sentences and half-formed thoughts.  We go on trips together and can happily sit in silence for hours or talk nonstop for hours and there is literally nothing except laughter, camaraderie, and peace. 

And yes, I readily acknowledge that it is selfish of me to mourn that they will someday soon not need my friendship as much as I very much need theirs.  One of our longstanding jokes is that once the girls are married and out on their own, I will come to their houses as often as their husbands will allow me to – in order to bring them food and books and gifts, to clean their bathrooms and stock their refrigerators, and that I will buy all their math curriculum and pay for their music lessons and take their children home with me as often as I can, and we can all vacation together, and so on.  We all laugh.  But deep down inside of me, I think – wait, but that is actually what I want it to be like!  I want to serve you because of the way that you have served me; my life has so been so enriched by who you are, because you have allowed me to learn to become a mother and a more fully alive human being alongside of you; and you have witnessed all my failures as a mother and yet you still love me.

One more note along this line:  when your teen daughters have lived alongside you a years-long illness, a remarkable bond forms.  These girls have gone through what I have gone through in a way no female adult friend, as supportive and encouraging as she may be, can ever experience.  So, while I would never choose a baffling long-term illness, the ties that have resulted are more gloriously deeper than I ever anticipated they could become.

There is more that I could say about this new season of young adulthood happening under our roof, much of which is sheer joy and expectation, but I’ll leave it at that for now.

Recommendation: Cindy Rollins

I love Cindy Rollins.  I have loved her from afar from the first time I stumbled across her many years ago – not through her blog (I was too late to the game there) but through various interviews and talks I heard her give online, and then through her books.  I have told my girls that there is no other older homeschool mom whose words I honor and respect more than hers.  That is in large part because she seems to speak from a place of deep of hurt (and healing).  She has messed up.  Her kids have messed up.  She has failed her kids.  Her kids have failed her.  Homeschooling is not just an unending string of halcyon days, and it never can be when multiple sinners reside together.  She raised 8 boys and 1 girl, so her family dynamics could not be more different than our own. And yet I so deeply resonate with much of what she says – because all of those above sentences apply to our family as well.

When I heard she had recently published another book, Beyond Mere Motherhood, I immediately ordered it and read the entire book in a single day.  Then I went back and re-read it a few days later, making notes of all her book recommendations and her Shakespeare tips (and then went online to spend a few hundred dollars on said books….sorry, dear husband!)  This is one of my life maxims: I know the places and people I can trust and so they suggest something, I generally buy it without hesitation. This is not a foolproof approach, mind you - and I have bought things over the years that were not my favorite, but when I trust someone’s judgment in books, then I pretty much buy based on their recommendations without any hesitation.  That is the kind of person Cindy Rollins has been for me.

Cindy only sends out occasional newsletters, and I always exclaim with delight, then lean in and read it several times over the course of a few days.  I find her humility and her dogged determination to stick to what she knows is Truth, in spite of how it may have been imperfectly applied in her own family, to be a tremendous encouragement.  A lifeline sometimes.  I have wrestled with this question countless times the last few years in our own private family travail:  if I know something to be true apart from the human response to it, is it still worth pursuing?  I have at times thought to myself – does this make all of us hypocrites?  Does it make me a futile mother?  Or does it make me wise because I see that my own will is unable to coerce the will of another human being to do what I think is right?  In other words, should I keep preaching and teaching it, even if the human in front of me won’t accept it?  And just as importantly:  is it worth my time, and my tears, to keep at it?  Is it still true of its own accord?  And yes, I have come to believe it is.  And I think Cindy would say that it is, though this is my own speculation, as I will probably never meet her in person.  But I have concluded that wise older women like her would say that the true things remain true, and are worth laying down your life for, even when they are not always embraced by the ones you love.  That makes it wildly painful, and also (strangely) wildly freeing.  The truth, in spite of my inability to communicate it or demonstrate it consistently, remains true.  So I can rest in this external efficacy, as it were, not in my own strength.

What I Have Been Reading

One thing that never changes is my deep desire to always be reading, no matter how sick or distraught I may be. However, because of the varying levels of trauma of the last few years, my reading tastes have shrunk to an almost embarrassing degree.  When suffering – emotionally and physically – I crave comfort like any other human.  But for me, the comfort doesn’t come by way of food or binge-watching.  It comes from reading and re-reading old friends. 

Elizabeth Goudge in The Pilgrim’s Inn says this:  “In times of storm and tempest, of indecision and desolation, a book already known and loved makes better reading than something new and untried.  The meeting with remembered and well-loved passages is like the continual greeting of old friends; nothing is so warming and companionable.”

One day I hope to re-expand my literary horizons. But my brain and heart are operating on such miniscule reserves that I haven’t been able to muster up much of anything in the way of willpower in quite some time.

That said, here is a list of books I’ve read over the last 6 months (many are re-reads, but I have starred those volumes that were new-to-me):

The Pilgrim’s Inn, Elizabeth Goudge (quoted above)

Villette, Charlotte Bronte*

Beyond Mere Motherhood, Cindy Rollins*

Digital Minimalism, Cal Newport

Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

Lost in “Trans” Nation, Dr. Marianne Grossman*

The Happy Prince, Oscar Wilde*

The Heart of the Nile, Will Thomas*

The Dumb Ox, G.K. Chesterton*

84 Charing Cross Road, Helene Hanff

The Duchess of Boomsbury Street, Helene Hanff

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom, Amy Chau*

In Order to Live, Yeonmi Park*

While Time Remains, Yeonmi Park*

Tell-Tale Heart, Edgar Allen Poe

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson

Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe*

Safely Home, Randy Alcorn

When Race Trumps Merit, Heather McDonald*

Great Expectations, Charles Dickens

Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton*

Home, Marilynne Robinson

Homeopathy Basics, Priscilla Medders

What I Have Been Listening To

Here are the current shows in my podcast feed.  Because I am usually several weeks “behind,” I always have something to look forward to if I want to keep my mind occupied on a long walk.

Uncommon Knowledge by the Hoover Institution

Secrets of Statecraft by the Hoover Institution

The Theology Pugcast

First Things

Ten Blocks by City Journal

Conservative Conversations with ISI

The Great Books Podcast by National Review

The Glenn Show (warning: there is often language on this show; I don’t listen to every episode, but do enjoy a good number of them, and I do appreciate Glenn Loury’s mind and have pre-ordered his new autobiography)

Capital Record by National Review

How the World Works (this is a new podcast and I love it so far)

Acton Line

The American President

Thinking in Public

Homeschooling Made Simple

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When I started these 2,600 words, I didn’t know how I would end it.  And I still haven’t arrived on a particularly graceful way to close out this jumble of thoughts, so I will simply sign off by thanking you for sticking with me. I hope to be back in this space, sooner than later.

Until next time,

Allison