by Lindsey on May 9, 2010
We think we are so connected. We read blogs. We interact through social media. We write emails. Some of us even write letters and read the newspaper. We think we are aware and involved and then we get an email from a friend which says, “Sorry, I haven’t been in touch for a while. I had a heart attack and quadruple by-pass surgery.”
What’s worse is the email came in a week ago and it took me several days to open the email and read it. I could spend a few minutes here gnashing my teeth about being too busy and self-absorbed but it would only be a cover-up for embarrassment. And really, all that fury and upset is just more self gazing.
Here’s the scoop.
My friend John Lee,the best-selling author of The Flying Boy: Healing the Wounded Man, had a heart attack and is recovering from quadruple bypass surgery at his home in Alabama. For the last twenty years, he has been a leader in the men’s movement and led countless workshops on anger management, emotional regression, recovery, relationships and spirituality. He has written sixteen books, including his latest release The Missing Peace.
His email said that he will continue to work. After all, this work healed John as much as it did his clients. But things will change. If he became a leader in the field of anger management and recovery to heal himself, then I would bet the healing from heart surgery will lead him down a different path. Already he has begun a blog to ask himself the kinds of questions that I think will lead to a deeper healing and contentment.
Not just in his life.
John’s thoughts and questions have always asked me to look a little deeper and understand myself a little more. From his May 8th post was this question: What has taken your heart and turned it around?
The answer for me is easy. Being a mother. It put my rudder in the water and the wind in my sails. At last, I loved someone more than myself and it has made all the difference.
Thank you, John, for continuing to ask great questions and for still being in my life.
by Lindsey on April 28, 2010
Somedays, you’re writing along in your office and you reach a stopping place and you go over to check your emails (which used to be like walking out to the mailbox…remember?) and there is this nice message to you from fellow writer Carmen Oliver about your book Snuggle Mountain.
It went like this:
Last week, I lent my Snuggle Mountain book to my son’s kindergarten teacher. She was looking for picture books that kept children guessing as to the outcome of the story. How something appears to be something and turns out to be something completely different. She absolutely loved Snuggle Mountain, like I knew she would. She ordered a copy of it and was “sigh” disappointed to find it out of print. She was able to get a copy of it and you’ve now got another admirer in your corner. Anyone who reads your work is a fan. Just wanted to share that with you 
Carmen
Little notes like these lift a person’s spirit. Especially when that person is writing like mad and is stuck in existential madness of wondering if one is a writer when one doesn’t have a book under contract or about to be published and the book that they have authored is out of print.
Sigh…so it’s nice to go to the mailbox and find this nice thing that tells me I am what I think I am. A writer.
by Lindsey on April 20, 2010
WOW…That’s what I said when Librarian Maureen Slocum said that Pease Elementary School is the oldest continually operating school in Texas. 1876. Wow, right? And what a vibrant community of children from all over the Austin because their parents work downtown.
And smart? Holy Moley. At one point while reading the book, I ask, “What do you think will wake the two headed giant?” After a few guesses, I give a hint. “What is the biggest light bulb in the world?” A kindergartner with a birthday crown on his head, said, “The sun.” Geez, I don’t think I was that aware in kindergarten.
Always during my visits, I tell the story of the book’s inspration: Early one morning, I woke to find my daughter peering up at me in bed. I was struck with the idea that I must look like a giant and the bed, a mountain. A Snuggle Mountain.
A little boy raised his hand and said that in his house, there is a blue couch and he thinks it is the Great Wall of China.
Fabulous.
