Yesterday, I attended a writing workshop with the author, Elizabeth Berg. Among the many pieces of wisdom she imparted, she added: put it out there. Write, and then share.

For the workshop I wrote the following piece.

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Following the church spire, I drive and then walk around Wakefield, Massachusetts, first settled in 1638, a mere eighteen years after the Mayflower hit Cape Cod. On this crisp November morning, I find a gravestone on the town common memorializing a woman born nearly three hundred years later with the words:

In Spring we’ll wait for roses red
When faded, the lilacs blue,
In Early Autumn when brown leaves fall
We’ll catch a glimpse of you

Beyond this is the Veterans’ Walk of Remembrance with monuments to local sons fallen in the Civil War, WWI, WWII, Korea and Vietnam. To the side is another honoring “Wakefield Women in US Armed Services while inspiring future generations to answer the call. Past * Present * Future.” Did women only do the inspiring? I think about the wording on the stone and how likely many people weighed in on these words, designed to last in perpetuity. Were these two distinct thoughts, women and inspiring future generations? Maybe it was like a bill in Congress, the women could be on the rock, but it couldn’t be all about them.

Today a group of people are doing repairs; one is adding stones to the pathway. I see him, but tomorrow no one will. Only his work will remain, likely long after we both are pushing daisies. I think about the church spire leading me here, which leads me to thoughts about veterans, acts of service, brown leaves falling, the role of women, motherhood, and ultimately, God. The great unseen.

Moving onward, I walk toward the sounds of little people, the source of my purpose for so many years. The Dalai Lama recently wrote of our “universal human hunger to be needed… feeling superfluous is a blow to the human spirit.” I once was needed as a wife and parent. Now, not so much. I don’t have a ticket to the playground anymore—I am, in fact, abjectly unwelcome if not invisible—nor do I have the freedom that comes with being fully alone. My daughter comes home to sleep, sometimes to eat, often to criticize. The days of “Mama Love Gigi Love” and “Mama, here’s some happy” are long gone. I’m left with this enormous task of keeping my heart open in the face of distain or indifference. This is my work: not to take it personally. I say to her, “I’m trying not to take it personally, but how do I know when you mean for it to be personal? For me to get some important message?” There is no reply. I am used to listening, to being sensitive to her needs. Now I’m learning more and more how to be unseen but still present. For someone who races out of her heart at the first sign of a threat, this is no small exercise. These are acrobatics for my soul.

Sunday’s sermon at the First Baptist Church is titled “The Craziest Way to Happiness.” I didn’t tell you about that. One of the other things I’ve been working on is bottom-lining: getting to the point efficiently. I wanted to tell you the best parts of my morning, and in my effort to be speedy I was hasty. I missed something that might be important.

What I really want to know is the easiest way to happiness and how can I get there? Because these years lately have been hard. Someone said grief is love with nowhere to go. What happens to all of it, I want to know. Will it ever find its way home? Is it really all about loving ourselves? While my new anthem is Whitney Houston’s The Greatest Love of All, I keep trying to banish the image of her—that heavenly voice—in the bathtub.

I’m not trying to sound self-pitying, I mean, everyone experiences loss, I get it. But here is how it has gone for me: I lost my daddy, then my stillborn son; a few years after our girl was born; time passed and her daddy decided to downgrade our status of lifetime partners to friends; and a little bit later, my mother traveled on. We’re a small family: I’m all that’s left. The constant has been my daughter, until now, with her decision to seek greater autonomy. While an expected part of the parenting journey, this is a special kind of grief, one that has no finality. It’s an everyday is-she-going-to-be-nice-to-me-today kind of walking on eggshells. Our status? Unknown, unseen.

All I’m saying is I have a lot of love with nowhere to go. What am I going to do with it?

Even if I can’t make it to tomorrow’s sermon, I walk toward the place that knows about the Craziest Way to Happiness. Maybe crazy is my way. The front doors are locked, but I don’t give up. (Coincidentally it is volunteer day here, too, and parishioners are  cleaning up the place. More acts of service.) Summoning courage, I ask if the church is open, if I might be allowed to pray. I try to stay open in the face of potential rejection. I am guided to the back door and then to a chapel built of ornately carved quarter-sawn oak. I think about the hands who cut, sanded, etched the motifs and crucifix. It’s not the same as being in the hallowed Salisbury Cathedral where generations worked to build an edifice to the glory of God, but the spirit of faith is still there. I lower my head, close my eyes, and go into the land of the unseen.

The spirits travel beside me now, on the other side of the veil. As always, I bring them out, one by one. Even the kitties and pups and the angels that surround us here and there. I say, “I am in the house of God. I am not here all that often.” Nothing seems different, just a little bit more settled, like there’s better reception. I remember it from Salisbury, twenty-seven years ago, when I prayed so hard for love. Before all of the loss, before all of the life.

Since I’m sharing with you my latest work, I may as well add the hardest part: it’s through the channel of Family Systems Therapy: getting to know the Self separate from the parts of me that are hurt, vulnerable, angry, anxious. The self, as defined this way, is all goodness: kindness, compassion, curiosity, calm, confidence, clarity, creativity, courage, commitment. The work —my work— is to tease this purity from the surrogate parts and honor its separateness, its holiness. Allow it to breathe and to find the breath between me and the pain. If ever there were an Unseen, it is this. If ever there were a crazy way to happiness, it may be here. It’s not easy, that’s certain, but it feels right. I’m guessing the Baptists think it’s Jesus, but I’m more comfortable with the idea of it being God’s love, or to steal from Whitney, The Greatest Love, with capital letters, something bigger and welcoming to all.

Down the street at the Bread Shop, I’ve learned there is a countertop of copper pennies in honor of the owner’s departed grandfather, penny messages from the other side. I, too, found an uncanny number of pennies in my path after our little boy let go. Once in a blue moon, the song I associate with him comes on the radio, often just when I need it most.

Recently I was out late with the dog and I saw my first shooting star. It startled me so much I laughed out loud and said to the skies, “Are you kidding me?” Immediately thereafter I started making excuses for a sleight of hand in the heavens. Of course it was gone before I could show someone or get verification. Seen and unseen in a flash. It happened again a few nights later.

So I’m taking my shooting stars like I did the pennies. Maybe I’m on the crazy way to happiness after all. It’s my only sign, but I’ll take it.