Women Who Write To Heal, January 2026
Theme: Mending
I have had a long time to think about the theme of “Mending”. The theme was suggested to us by a wise woman in our community who sews things. She knows something about life, needles and thread, and how to fix damaged things.
I had so much time to think, and there are always plenty of things in need of repair, both in the sock drawer and in the psyche, but the inspiration wasn’t coming. Perhaps because I was recently struck by Cupid’s arrow, and through the eyes of new love, the world appeared miraculously whole. As a writer, this was problematic.
The fateful Cupid's arrow struck after many years of avoiding romance as if it were the plague. I thought that by hiding in my house, I could avoid love, but apparently Cupid is very sneaky and can arrive via a Craigslist ad I posted to find a new housemate. My ad was very specific and stated: no drinking, no smoking, no cooking meat, quiet after 8 pm, and, most importantly, 'don’t talk to me too much’. I closed the ad with. It could be a great fit for a traveling nurse, a female retiree, or maybe a monk.
I didn’t expect to have many takers.
To my surprise, almost immediately, an email popped up in my inbox. It said, “I’m just looking for a place to crash during the week while I take a class at the college. I won’t be a bother.” Hmm, that sounded okay.
When a middle-aged man showed up to see the room, I never suspected Cupid’s arrows would be hiding in the back pocket of his overalls. I cannot explain why I agreed to rent the guest room to him. I always knew I would be happy to rent to a woman in crisis, but this other type of human, the type with cowboy boots, and cast-iron pans? How strange it was to type the words, “I have decided it will be fine if you want to rent the room for the month, and then we can go from there”. Even more strange was the grin on my face when he agreed to move in. " What is the Wi-Fi password?" he asked. FlickerFeather, I answered. Northern Flickers are my spirit animal, he responded.
As many of you know, several years ago, I experienced an awakening to severe buried childhood trauma. Since then, I often comment on how I can’t feel my heart. My heart was beyond broken. The space where my heart had once been was either empty or unreachable. I have done a lot of healing, but my heart space has remained numb. Romance with another human was the last thing I wanted. I was very content living with a dead heart, in a house full of live plants.
But when this man arrived, it was as if he had come to say, “Your heart isn’t dead! It’s just curled up in a tiny shell that's gotten too small. It’s time to bust that shell up and unfurl.”
One morning, at sunrise, when the hummingbirds were buzzing around in the soft pink light of the breaking day, he read me a poem. Tears came to both our eyes, and he gave me a feather of a Northern Flicker, which I put on my altar.
And it wasn’t all rainbows and sunshine. We are both small-town kids who come from nothing. We were doing our best to wake up and heal in society that offers so little to help.
Have you ever heard of Parts therapy? This is where you start to become aware of the different aspects of yourself that have split off and become their own personalities. This helps you survive the unsurvivable. You have protector parts, wounded parts, and critical parts. And if you had it really bad when you were young, you have some additional quirky characters, like the circus clown part or the fortune-teller part, which add some additional flair. Falling in love while waking up in midlife is like two traveling circus acts colliding under one big top. Learning to live with and love every angry tiger, mischievous monkey, and perimenopausal bearded lady is a challenge that requires patience and a sense of humor, which we both had just enough of, or at least it seemed.
Even amidst the chaos of being messy humans, oh, how sweet it is to fall in love. Stormy days, cuddled up by the fire. Fresh flowers, love notes, and home-cooked meals. Suddenly, my tiny, dull gray snail heart began to buzz. I could feel it pressing up against its too-small shell. It was as if the heavens were dancing and the animal kingdom cheering as we became dear friends and then friends who frequently rested our heads on one another's shoulders. And the things love can do! Love acts as a filter, turning every physical flaw into a work of art. Love smooths over rough edges and melts walls. Love laughs, and cries happy tears, and spills out to everyone around you. Even the hummingbirds became more cheerful, feeding right out of our hands. Love does other strange things. It autocorrects the words of your lover so that you don’t hear “I wonder if I did enough to save my marriage” and “It would be so much easier to go back to my old life”. You don’t hear these words.
And in this way, the tiny shell around my heart began to crack, and the space around it started to grow. There was a bit of kicking and screaming from the snail-heart because it can be pretty scary to inhabit new space. There is always the risk of fresh pain.
And so that morning, when he told me that he was going to give his marriage another chance, I was not prepared. The words were like a fist through my chest. One sweeping, fatal blow, and the honey-sweet romance was over, leaving me curled up in a ball of tears.
All of the healing I had done didn’t make this fresh heartache any easier. In fact, in some ways, it hurt worse. I could feel everything and numbing isn't an option anymore. Furthermore, unlike in previous relationships, this had been a person I actually enjoyed talking to and spending my days with. It was the loss of his presence that ached. As the shock wore off, tears poured out. And then, naturally, anger rose.
I thought back to when Marianne Monson read aloud, right here at Sleeper, about a breakup she had experienced. Marianne has a much more “robust lexicon” than I, and it was the classiest rage-rant spell-casting cathartic ex-lover curse I had ever heard. I wonder if I could beat it?
With the love chemicals wearing off, I could now concentrate on magnifying all of those flaws I had so lovingly embraced.
I stared out my upstairs window at Youngs Bay toward Saddle Mountain. I let the anger rise, inviting the words to drop down from my brain and meet and mingle with the rage rising up in my mouth
What a freaking idiot…I say to nobody
It was no Pulitzer prize-winning insult, but it felt pretty good. I knew I could do better.
I started thinking of some clever and nasty things I could say. Insults mean enough to make him cry. The anger rose up in me when, suddenly, a Northern Flicker appeared just outside the window, in an impossible perch under the ledge of the second-floor window.
The anger resided, and when it did, my aching heart softened. Everything was quiet. All that was left was this new love.
How will I ever mend my broken heart?
I went downstairs, opened my laptop, and started writing.