The Healing Power of Music

"Just remember in the winter, far beneath the bitter snows. Lies the seed, that with the sun's love in the spring becomes the rose." --from "The Rose" by Gordon Wills, sung by Bette Midler

My mother had an amazing voice and she love, love, loved to sing. I remember how she'd hum her favorite hymns as she washed dishes or ironed my dad's shirts, and especially when she sat at her sewing machine.  I'd watch her lean into the lever with her knee, pushing the fabric past the needle, bubble-tipped straight pins clenched firmly between her lips. I always worried she'd accidentally swallow one but she never did. And she never stopped humming.

I don't know if I inherited my mother's voice, but I'm pretty sure my love for music came from her. From the time I was a small child, I'd volunteer to sing in church and auditioned for school musicals. At the age of twelve my older sister Mary Beth gave me a beginner guitar, a thing my other sister Nita never forgave her for because I considered that guitar a license to sing all the live long day. Singing brought me joy. It brought Nita to tears, and not in a good way.

When I created the character of Isabelle, wife to the Rev. Henry Carter and mother to four daughters in THIS I KNOW, I gave her my own mother's beautiful voice. And then I took it away from her when Mrs. Carter suffers an unbearable loss. I wanted the reader to feel her deafening silence, how grief not only stills our hearts, it will come like a thief for your tongue and the soul that feeds it. But also how music just might be the one thing to make you feel whole again.

The other day I drove home from a literary event feeling exhausted. Not just from a busy day, but from the heaviness of recent heartbreaking news, the dreadful political noise, and not knowing how to rise above the ennui resulting from day-to-day information overload. I have so much to be happy about--a new book coming out, living where other people vacation, and exceptional good health. And yet here I was, sighing as I exited the 101 toward the Pacific coast.

I turned on the radio hoping to cheer myself up. I surfed from channel-to-channel without landing on the perfect song. I turned it off again, choosing the hum of tires on pavement over bubblegum pop. It was in the silence that I heard my mother whisper, "Come on, Donna Sue." That's what she called me when she was being playful. "Sing us a song." 

And so I did. I sang, nay, belted out a rendition of The Rose that cleared the fog from my lungs and the dread from brain. I sang it three times until, pulling into the driveway, I felt an imaginary pair of wings unfold as I emptied myself from the car and floated into the house.

What about you? Is there a song that lifts you out of a funk? What was your relationship with music growing up? 

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THIS I KNOW by Eldonna Edwards releases 04.24.18

"Once in a while you read a book that just takes your breath away with its beauty and truth. This I Know is such a book.This is one of the most beautiful coming of age stories I’ve ever read, and it will stay with me for a long, long time."  --Rosemary S., Librarian

Good Grief

I sometimes imagine we have all these invisible cords leading to those we love. Even when we aren't close physically, our loved ones exist on the other end of those cords and all you have to do is give a little tug, feel the resistance and be assured of their constant connection to you. Life and love flow beautifully between the two ends. When we lose someone close to us that cord loses its resistance, comes to you freely. You worry the frayed edges knowing it will take time to adjust to a world without this particular human in it. 

Grief is a gift. It is an affirmation of our loved one's presence in our lives. In THIS I KNOW, Grace's beloved Aunt Pearl tries to explain this to my young protagonist after she experiences the loss of a dear friend:

"Sorrow is the good Lord's toll for love," she says, shaking her head. I know by the way she says it that Aunt Pearl has paid a great debt for the generosity of her big heart.

I wanted to convey that earned elder wisdom, how opening your heart to love also means subjecting it to possible pain. And that by becoming vulnerable, we more fully appreciate that the price is more than compensated by the depth of that love. The bigger the joy the greater the sorrow. The deeper the love, the higher the toll. That's just the way it works. 

Although we're sometimes glad for the end of suffering, when a loved one dies it often feels as if someone has turned off the sun and the world is suddenly darker and colder. Every inch of you feels raw, tender, fragile. To those of you currently reeling from loss, I know there are no right words. We can only listen and offer comfort. Perhaps the best we can do is to hold up a mirror in hopes that you'll recognize your loved one in every tear, every fold of your heart, and know that you still carry them you.

This post is dedicated to my dear friend Anna Banana Unkovich, who left this world on August 7th. I miss you every day.

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My debut novel, THIS I KNOW, releases April 24 2018. I'd be honored if you added it to your wish-list on Good Reads. You can also pre-order the book on Amazon or from you local bookstore.

"Set in a small Midwest town in the late 1960s and helmed by an unforgettable young protagonist—compassionate, uncannily wise Grace—This I Know is a luminous coming-of-age story from an astonishing new voice."

And Then There Were (Still) Six

I was five years old when my mother lost her seventh daughter. I don't remember my mom being pregnant. I only remember my exhausted dad lining up the six of us girls and telling us that our baby sister had been born with a hole in her heart so she went to be with Jesus. They named her Lori Lee and she was laid to rest in a tiny cemetery in New Era, Michigan. I never got to see her. Fifteen months later my mother had another baby, her only boy. He weighed thirteen pounds. That one I remember.

One day, while snooping in my parents' closet, I found a pair of tiny white booties, a lock of hair, and a photo of a ruddy-faced infant lying in a silk-lined casket surrounded by bouquets of flowers. I wanted to ask my mom about the stillborn baby but it seemed a box tucked that deep into a closet was a thing she might prefer to stay hidden, so I left it there. Every once in a while I'd sneak back into the closet to visit the box and study that photograph. The baby looked like she was sleeping; the casket, like a tiny doll bed. I'd whisper her name over and over, as if by doing so she'd recognize me someday if I ever bumped into her in heaven. Even after all these years, the image of that baby remains frozen in my mind's eye.

My mother died when I was thirty-one and I regret not asking her more about how that was, losing a child. I imagine people might have tried to reassure her with clumsy words about how lucky she was to have six healthy children. I doubt those words soothed her pain. I wish I'd talked with her about it, felt the full weight of the sorrow she must have endured. Maybe I'd have been better equipped to console friends who've miscarried or given birth to stillborn babies. Maybe I'd have navigated my own episode of postpartum depression with more self-compassion. And maybe I'd have understood my mother better than I thought I did.

I can't go back in time, but in writing THIS I KNOW I was free to imagine what it might be like to endure such a loss. The book opens with twins communicating their last thoughts to each other in the womb before being pushed into the outside world. What follows is the story of a prescient child who longs to harvest the pit of sorrow from her mother's heart and replace it with seeds of hope. Something we could all use a little of right now, yes?