Bless the Birds – Susan J Tweit

Life Lessons: I Can’t Do Everything Myself?

Posted on August 20, 2023 | by Susan Tweit | 10 Comments

I had a plan for this summer (I know: Life is what happens while we’re making plans): I would devote myself to narrating the audiobook version of Bless the Birds, my latest memoir and my 13th book.

I’ve procrastinated narrating the audiobook for the entire two and a half years since Bless the Birds was published, partly because I wanted to do the narration myself. It’s my story. (Also, I narrated the audiobook for my first memoir, Walking Nature Home.)

My excuses were good ones: since the book came out, I’ve moved four times, to three different states, and renovated three houses. And until this condo, which has a walk-in closet in the main bedroom, I haven’t had a place I could turn into a home recording studio.

The real reason? I wasn’t ready. Bless the Birds is an intense story. I needed time and distance, and perhaps every one of those four moves, to prepare myself.

This spring, I blocked out June through late July, the weeks between my two weed-management trips to the ranch, for audiobook narration. First, I had figure out the technical end. I watched some videos about audiobook narration and ordered a new microphone and headphones. I experimented with GarageBand, the recording and editing software, which I last used in 2010. Pretty soon, I thought I had it down.

By mid-June, I had set up my studio in my closet, and begun audio work. I recorded and edited the first few files (the front matter, introduction, and chapters one and two) and after listening to them carefully, decided there was too much background noise.

My recording microphone, a Blue Yeti Nano.

So I ordered a boom to hang the mic, with a vibration-dampening mount. When they arrived, I reconfigured my “recording desk”–a bookshelf I use as a dresser.

And started recording again. I would record a chapter, listen to the audio track and edit out any flubs–word mistakes, bad pronunciation, etc–and correct pacing issues, and then record another chapter and edit it. I could do two chapters a day before my voice tired.

About two-thirds of the way through the narration, I decided to make some small changes to the read and show the shift in Richard’s physical voice through the story.

My closet recording studio, set up between my winter coats and my hats!

That meant re-recording some sections and splicing them in. No problem; I’m good at that. I finished the final audio-edit a few days before I was to leave for Wyoming for my second weed-management stint at the ranch.

Before I left, I talked to an engineer highly recommended for audiobook mastering. When I got home, I uploaded some sample files for him.

A few days later, he called. There was good news, and bad news. The good: “You read well, and your voice is compelling.” The bad: My recording levels were too low; when he boosted the levels, the background noise was too high. “You wouldn’t be happy with the final product,” he said. “I suggest you re-record the whole thing.”

Oh.

Honestly, I said, I didn’t have the heart to start over right then. “Give it some time,” he advised.

I realized that I had just learned a life lesson I managed to avoid for more than 66 years: I can’t do everything myself. Sometimes it’s best to ask for help–before I jump in.

Me and my brother in about 1958, when I would have been two years old, and he four. That’s my “I can do anything you can do!” face.

Growing up, I was the small, often sickly kid who struggled to keep up with her adored older brother. My first sentence, my mother said once, was “Do it myself!”

I have always believed I could. And here I am at 66, still trying to prove myself. It seems that it’s time for a change.

I called The Guy and poured out my disappointment, and added my realization about not always being able to do everything myself. As I said those words, I remembered one of the few real arguments we had. “You never ask for help!” The Guy said back then, clearly frustrated. “I need to know I bring something to the relationship!”

Now, I reminded The Guy of his words and said, “You were right.” He didn’t gloat. “Yes,” he simply said. “That’s an important realization.” He asked what I planned to do.

“I’m going to look for a recording studio nearby,” I said, “and in the meantime, the new book is taking all of my attention.” I could hear his affirmative nod over the miles between us. “Patience is good,” he said, voice dry.

“Another thing I’m not good at,” I said, and we both laughed.

Learning sometimes comes hard and takes time to digest. Still, I’m grateful to continue to grow.

What have you learned about yourself lately?

Emotional Anniversaries & Bless the Birds

Posted on October 10, 2021 | by Susan Tweit | 14 Comments

Richard Cabe two months before his death in 2011, his head misshapen from five brain surgeries and swollen from steroids, but his smile undimmed.

Ten years ago today, I was preparing the guest apartment at Terraphilia, the house that Richard built for us, for the arrival of our friend Grant Pound, director of Colorado Art Ranch. Richard came in from his studio, his steps slow as he leaned on the cane he had begun to use to aid his wobbly balance after we returned from the Big Trip, our 4,000 mile honeymoon drive to the Pacific Coast.

“I feel like a sculptor again.” He beamed, his once-chiseled face now round from the steroids he took to combat the swelling from the brain tumor threading its way through his right hemisphere, but his smile undimmed.

“Because Grant is coming?” Grant had suggested a sculpture apprenticeship with Richard BC–before brain cancer–when Richard was busy with commissions. But now, he hadn’t worked in months. I hoped teaching Grant might revive Richard’s passion for working with native rocks as, in his words, “Ambassadors of the Earth,” revealing their inner beauty in functional sculptures.

Richard before brain cancer, with a local boulder he was carving into a sculptural sink.

“Yes.” Richard’s smile erupted into a laugh. “Even though it looks like my brain exploded out there,” he said, referring to the chaotic state of his studio, where dozens of hand-tools were spread willy-nilly on every surface, since he no longer had any spatial memory. “Working with Grant will help me get organized.”

It did, for a short while. Until his once strong and muscled body began to fail. For those few weeks though, he reveled in having his hands on the rocks he so loved.

I didn’t remember that moment in Richard’s journey with terminal brain cancer when I woke this morning with my heart racing and my mind awash in unsettling dreams.

I got up and did yoga, which almost always settles me, but didn’t this time. My balance was bad. I took a hot bath, but the anxiety only got worse. My hands shook. My stomach hurt. I got dressed, and fumbled with the buttons on my favorite shirt. Even breakfast–a soothing hot cereal blend of organic grains with raisins, blueberries, and pecans–didn’t help.

I couldn’t imagine what was wrong.

“What is going on?” I asked out loud in the quiet house. “I don’t have anxiety attacks!”

And then I remembered a time when I did, ten years ago. I was caring for Richard at home, and he was dying.

I looked at the date on my phone: October 10th. I opened Bless the Birds: Living With Love in a Time of Dying, my new memoir, and began looking for anecdotes from ten years ago. And I heard Richard’s voice in my head, as clearly as if he had been in the room with me: “I feel like a sculptor again.”

Richard (center) and Grant Pound in October of 2011, talking sculpture over the steel trestle dining table that Richard designed and made.

Ten years ago, he was doing his best to live with severe brain impairment. I had just begun to grasp how emotionally intense and physically demanding caring for him 24/7 was. And to wonder how long my energy would hold out.

That’s when the anxiety attacks began, waking me in a sweat at night, sending my heart racing and my body shaking at odd moments. My greatest fear was not living up to what I had promised: to care for him with as much love as I could through his death.

I somehow did. With a lot of help: Molly, my stepdaughter, moved home for the last five weeks of her daddy’s life to help out; my family circled around us with support; Richard’s hospice team, led by nurse Wil Archuletta, were there whenever I needed them. And, as I wrote in Bless the Birds:

Love continued to pour in from near and far. Cards bearing sweet and funny messages filled the mailbox, along with books, hand-knitted socks, and a cap “to keep Richard warm,” plus gift certificates for local restaurants. Poems arrived via email. A food drive through Ploughboy (a local grocery store) paid for our groceries. Meals appeared at our front door, plus other offerings: special stones, flower bouquets, and the monthly envelope containing four crisp $100 bills: “For whatever you need.”

I was grateful for the support, even as my pride resented our needing help. My emotions were all over the map. One thing was constant: My heart wanted a different ending to our story.

There wouldn’t be a different ending. Richard died on Sunday, November 27, 2011, encircled by love, with Molly and me, one of his hospice nurses, and our dear friends Doris and Bill.

After his death, the anxiety attacks vanished. I had kept my promise.

It’s not like everything was fine then. I was alone for the first time in my adult life and deeply in debt after setting aside my writing to care for Richard and my mother, who died earlier that year. I didn’t know who this newly solo “me” was. But I knew I could manage all that, though it took years.

And now, a decade later, the anxiety has returned. The rekindling of those muscle memories leaves me feeling frail and exhausted, as if those grueling weeks of 24/7 caregiving were just yesterday, not ten years ago.

I don’t like admitting to frailty. But I hear the message: Slow down! I’ve got a feature-article deadline coming up, and I had planned a series of author conversations for the fall and winter. I need to seriously consider what I can handle.

Because when I was caring for Richard with as much love as possible, I also promised to care for me with love for the rest of my life. I want to honor that promise, too.

Time Out (from writing)

Posted on August 15, 2021 | by Susan Tweit | 4 Comments

Sunset over Torrey Rim, from my cabin at Ring Lake Ranch

I’ve been on an extended time-out from income-producing writing for much of the past year. (Other than promoting my new book, Bless the Birds: Living with Love in a Time of Dying.) It’s not that I haven’t been working, I just haven’t been forcing my writing to pay the bills.

I thought when I first began this time-out from freelance writing that I would spend last winter thinking and reading (and finishing renovating my house outside Santa Fe). And then come spring, I would be ready to dive into book promotion and begin writing the next book.

I did read and think, and I did dive into book promotion, but I couldn’t make myself start the next book. The fire that has always driven me to write and revise, and write and revise until the story sings was not there. I wrote in my journal (I’m up to 145,000 words for the year), wrote my daily haiku for social media (I’ve written more than 5,000 of those over the past 15 years); and wrote some manuscript reviews, and blurbed a couple of books. But no book.

After Bless the Birds was published, I wrote up a plan for a series of monthly Living with Love author conversations that will eventually become podcasts. The first two conversations were in May (with memoirist Kati Standefer) and June (with author and fellow Quaker Sharman Apt Russell); the series will restart in October.

The cover of Bless the Birds, with a stunning endorsement from author Lyanda Haupt

Then I sold my house outside Santa Fe, and moved home to Cody, Wyoming, where I bought a sweet house on a bluff overlooking the Shoshone River. While I waited five weeks for my belongings to arrive, I started renovating that house, rather than writing the next book. (Do you see a pattern here?)

Five days after the big truck arrived with my furniture and cartons of books and other household goods, I headed to Ring Lake Ranch, a spiritual retreat center and guest ranch in the wild Torrey Creek drainage of the Wind River Mountains in western Wyoming, to work for the remainder of the summer season.

Torrey Creek falls through a narrow chute on one of our regular hikes from the ranch.

My official title is hike leader and housekeeping coordinator, which means I wear at least two hats.

My work day starts at 6:50 am when I walk to the corral with the Guy to help he and the wranglers with horse chores–scooping poop and spreading hay to entice the ranch’s 30 horses to come into the corral so it’s easier to catch and saddle them for the day’s rides.

Sometimes the horses graze just outside our cabins.

After horse chores, I put on my housekeeping coordinator hat and head uphill to clean and restock supplies in the public bathrooms. And then collect the kitchen laundry and put it in the washer.

Then comes breakfast (which I don’t have to prepare, thank heavens!), after which I trade for my hike leader hat and fill my knapsack with first-aid kit, water, sunscreen, bug repellent and other hike-leader supplies, and then lead a group of guests on a half-day or over-lunch hike. Along the way, I “read the landscape,” telling stories about the geology, history, and the relationships between plants and other species that make up the community of the land.

After the hike, I switch to my housekeeping hat again and hang the kitchen laundry on the line. Then I work in the linen room, organizing dozens of sets of sheets, towels, and other cabin linens, plus maintaining vacuums, mops, and other housekeeping tools.

On Thursdays, I head to town, a 20-minute drive down a winding gravel road and then up the highway, to pick up garbage cans full of clean and folded cabin linens. On Fridays, I check the incoming guest list and make up supply bags for each cabin with sheets, towels, and other supplies, and hand them out to departing guests with instructions on cabin cleaning. (Guests generally leave Saturday morning and arrive Sunday afternoon.)

On Saturdays, I haul the garbage cans full of dirty cabin linens to the truck and then drive to town to leave them at the laundry. And then I check each cabin to make sure the beds are made, re-stock soaps and other supplies, and finish cleaning (the guests help, but the truth is that everyone’s definition of “clean” is different!). I also clean the living room (our main meeting place for the weekly seminars and other programs) and the chapel.

The view up Torrey Creek above the ranch.

If you are getting the idea that each day’s work swallows up most of my time and energy, you are correct. There are compensations though: Not only is the place gorgeous and brimming with the rejuvenating energy of wild mountain landscapes, the community of humans is inspiring and nurturing as well. The food is great too, and spending time with the Guy is a bonus in itself.

I’m not at all unhappy to be working here. But I am also not writing the next book. I remind myself I can write this winter when the nights are long and the days short, and the snow flies. For now, I’m storing up time in the wild, and new ideas and experiences. And that is more than enough.

*****

I want to share two extraordinary write-ups about Bless the Birds:

First, a tweet completely out of the blue from Jacob J. Erickson, Professor of Theological Ethics at Trinity College, Dublin (Ireland):

“Been spending time reading Susan J. Tweit’s heartbreaking and love-wrapped book this week. Such a story of personal and political love for our earthy lives, terraphilia made intimate. ‘Love couldn’t heal all wounds, but it could carry us through.’ [A quote from BtB] Amen.”

And then my friend and fellow writer Len Leatherwood recommended Bless the Birds on her blog, calling it “exceptional,” and writing praise about the book including this passage:

“Susan’s book is peppered with wisdom, warmth, honesty and a generous dose of reality-based humor. It also tells a real love story of two people who face losing one another far sooner than they had anticipated and how they savor the time they have left. I laughed, cried and excused myself from several family gatherings so I could sneak away and continue reading. I highly recommend this book for anyone who wishes to have a glimpse into a world where consciously living in the present teaches us how not to be so terribly afraid of dying.”

Wow!

Thank you all for joining me on this journey, and for your support. I am honored. Blessings.

Bless the Birds Coming Soon!

Posted on March 28, 2021 | by Susan Tweit | 8 Comments

Bless the Birds cover layout, with great blurbs from Lyanda Haupt, Craig Childs, and Kathleen Dean Moore. Thanks to all who read and wrote blurbs (there are more inside the book).

I confess that I have spent a lot of March playing hooky. My lack of discipline either comes from the sheer terror of having Bless the Birds, the newest and most gutsy of my book ouevre, close to hitting the streets, or from my resolve to take advantage of the company of the Guy, Badger, and the horses for the nearly four weeks they were here.

Honestly, I think it’s a combination of both. I haven’t entirely neglected book promotion, but I’ve logged more miles in the saddle than I have hours at my desk. Which is probably healthy, and part of why I am in pretty great physical shape right now.

Me, riding the arroyo on Sal, followed by my faithful shadow.

When the Guy arrived at the end of February, we were determined to ride every day if we could, and we managed at least a mile or two most days, and some days we went out for much longer, including one weekend when we rode a twelve-mile loop one day and then did a seven-mile cross-country (off trail) ride to a ruined 14th century pueblo the next. I admit that I needed a day to rest after that!

Three blondes and a paint head cross-country…. (That’s the horses; we riders are all going silver.)

The herd, Badger, and the Guy headed north on Thursday morning in a huge swirl of spring-is-coming-and-the-hayfields-need-preparation energy. So it’s suddenly pretty quiet around here, and I have no excuse for neglecting magazine and journal interviews, upcoming radio appearances, a potential blog book tour, and my planned year-long author conversation/podcast series, Living with Love — Cultivating Earth Sense. (Thanks to the amazing Dan Blank of We Grow Media for helping me clarify what I have to offer, which lead to the idea of this series.)

What’s ahead?

April 27 is the official publication date for Bless the Birds. If you’ve already ordered the book, you should get it then. If you haven’t, and you want a signed copy, Collected Works Bookstore here in Santa Fe has kindly agreed to be my official source for shipping signed books, so please contact the good folks there.
April 26 my blog book tour begins with a wide-ranging interview with author and translator C.M. Mayo on her Madam Mayo blog. C.M asks great questions, so we covered a lot of topics within Bless the Birds and beyond.
April 30, at 8:30 pm (ET), I’m reading as part of the NYC-based “The Greatest Indoor Reading Series.” It’s virtual, and I don’t know what other readers I’m paired with, but it’s bound to be an interesting evening! Join us via Zoom through the website.
May 4, Interview on the Richard Eeds Show. (Time TBA, sometime between 1:00 and 4:00 pm RMT, available as a podcast after the show.)
May 6, at 6:oo pm (RMT) is the big day: BOOK LAUNCH! Collected Works is hosting my Zoom-based conversation with fellow memoirist Kati Standefer, author of Lightning Flowers, a personal and environmental accounting of the cost of advanced medical technology. Lightning Flowers is an Oprah and NYT book review editor’s pick, among other honors. Our talk is also the first conversation in my upcoming Living with Love — Cultivating Earth Sense series. Our topic: Living on the edge of death. Join us for what I know will be a fascinating and insightful exchange.
June 5 & 6 I’ll be in Lander, Wyoming, as faculty at Wyoming Writers 46th annual conference. If you can’t make it to Lander, at the foot of the spectacular Wind River Mountains and in the heart of Eastern Shoshone and Arapaho Indian country, you can also attend virtually.

There’s more, including an author conversation with philosopher Kathleen Dean Moore, author of Earth’s Wild Music, in June, followed by a conversation with Lyanda Haupt, author of Rooted: Life at the Crossroads of Science, Nature, and Spirit, in July. But this is enough for now. (If you haven’t subscribed to my email newsletter, now’s a good time. I’ll send out periodic updates on my schedule.)

Bless the Birds and an interview with me was featured in the March-April issue of Neighbors Magazine. Illustration courtesy of editor Cheryl Fallstead.

Sabbatical Report: Taking the Non-traditional Path

Posted on January 31, 2021 | by Susan Tweit | 24 Comments

Along US 50, the loneliest road, across Nevada

When I wrote about taking a sabbatical from forcing my writing to earn a living back in November, many of you left supportive comments on the blog or on social media, all of which I very much appreciated. Now that I’m two months in, I thought I’d let you know how it’s going.

Which is probably not the way you may have imagined. I’m not spending my days in leisurely reading and contemplation of the universe in its wondrous and chaotic ways. Nor am I writing up a storm.

What am I doing? A lot of planning for the April release of Bless the Birds, my upcoming memoir. I’ve been sending advance review copies to magazines and newspapers that have book review sections, which involves a lot of tedious looking up of addresses and editors’ names, and finding their requirements for review copies in these COVID times when many people are still working remotely.

The advance review copies of Bless the Birds

I’m also dreaming up virtual book events involving bookstores and libraries. The idea I am percolating is a series of internet-based conversations with fellow authors whose work intersects with mine, exchanges on topics that relate to our work.

One idea, for example, is a conversation with my over-the-ridge neighbor, Kati Standefer, whose absolutely stunning debut memoir, Lightning Flowers, tracks in gorgeous and raw prose the human and environmental cost of the defibrillator implanted in her chest that both saved and irretrievably altered her life. We could talk about living on the edge of death, a subject we both know more about than we’d like. My dream is to have that event sponsored by Collected Works, my favorite Santa Fe bookstore, as my book launch event.

I’d like to have a conversation with Ken Lamberton, author of Wilderness and Razor Wire, among other fine books, about stumbling into the understanding that the world outside our skin boundaries, the wild world nearby, can save us. I’d like to talk with Kathy Moore, author of Earth’s Wild Music, about what humans lose when we lose other species, when the tapestry of this living planet frays beyond what seems repairable.

Lichen, an entity made of two kinds of lives that are entirely different but manage to cooperate for their mutual benefit, a fungus and a photosynthesizing algae or bacteria.

I imagine these virtual events as a series of thoughtful interactions between people you’d like to listen to, conversations that explore ideas you’d like to know more about. Conversations that are inspiring and thought-provoking, and yes, might relate to our books, but are mostly offerings from us to you.

Because what I’ve realized during this sabbatical is that, while I do have a book to promote, what’s most important to both the writer me and the scientist me is that I have experiences and ideas that I want to share, and I know writers whose ideas and experiences I want to delve into. So if I can combine those things, book promotion will be something useful to all of us, instead of merely an exercise in selling something.

In dreaming up this series of conversations, I’m taking a non-traditional path, focusing more on what I have to share than on sales. Because that’s in alignment with why I wrote, which is to offer something I know to others in a way that I hope will be useful, inspiring, life-changing, or simply worth the read.

I owe this realization in part to work I did last year with Beata Lewis, goddess of transformational work (you could call her an executive coach, but that’s too limiting), and work I am doing now with human-centered marketer Dan Blank of We Grow Media. Both of them pushed me to look beyond the conventional view of what success in writing means, to integrate the left-brained scientist and the right-brained writer, and to listen to what my heart and spirit ask of me.

Which occurs to me is very much in the spirit of this sabbatical: reflecting on who I am and what I am doing with my life.

Hence this new mission statement:

I aim to restore our love and care for this numinous Earth, and help us be our best and kindest selves–wholly at home on a healthy planet.

Reflections on a lake in the Cascades above Bend, Oregon

2020: Remembering the good parts

Posted on December 27, 2020 | by Susan Tweit | 8 Comments

Desert four-o-clock (Mirabilis multiflora) in full bloom.

As we come to the end of 2020, a year that has been tumultuous and difficult in ways we all know, my impulse is to kick the old year in the rear and unceremoniously slam the door behind it. Instead, I want to remember the blessings that came my way, so that I can welcome 2021 with my heart open and my gratitude foremost.

Those blessings? What comes to mind first are the Guy and his dog and horses. I who was perfectly happy to live the rest of my life solo now have a loving partnership again with a man who shares my bond with these Rocky Mountain landscapes, with the literature that rises from them, and who also shares my need for time in the wild.

Me on Cookie, leading Silky into the wilderness on our pack trip.

For my birthday, he gifted me with four days in the remote Washakie Wilderness of northwest Wyoming, just southeast of Yellowstone, where I worked as a young field ecologist. It was pure heaven. Our long-distance relationship isn’t simple, but the rewards are beyond words. My heart is full, and my understanding of the world is enriched by his company, knowledge, and insights.

A lake in the Washakie wilderness where we stopped for lunch on our pack trip.

Another blessing has been time with friends and family, much of that virtual. But in these socially distanced COVID-19 times, the connection with the people I love and whose company nurtures me is so critical.

I treasure the in-person time so much more now that it’s rare. Visits like the walk I took yesterday (masked and socially distanced) with the memoirist Kati Standefer are what sustain me in these challenging days, mind, body, and spirit. (If you haven’t read her stunning debut memoir, Lightning Flowers, do. You’ll understand why Oprah picked it as one of the top 100 books for the year, and it was an Editor’s Choice book at the New York Times Book Review, plus landed Kati on NPR’s Fresh Air.)

A heart-shaped and face-sized chunk of native sandstone, sculpted by time and weathering, and transported by Galisteo Creek.

We trekked up a dry stream-bed near her house at the base of a red sandstone ridge, talking about life and writing and memoir, why we need solitude and the wild and what love is worth, anyway. We hung out with her chickens, and discovered a shared love for Stranahan’s whisky. I found the large heart rock in the stream-bed and lugged it back, knowing somehow it should come home with me.

I needed that high a few hours later when I learned that my friend and writing inspiration, Barry Lopez, had died the day before. It’s been that kind of high-slammed-by-lows year, and I am so fortunate to have a community who cheers me on. Thank you all.

Crossing the farm hayfields in early summer at sunset, after moving the irrigation water one last time.

Another blessing has been time on the land. I live in the rural West, outside Santa Fe in the winter, and in northwest Wyoming in the summer. In between, I spend time on the Guy’s farm, getting to know a whole new landscape in the broad swath of the sagebrush county I call home. Living where there are few people and lots of open space makes it easier to stay safe in COVID-times, and means I get abundant vitamin N, time in nature, to keep me healthy and reasonably sane amidst the tumult of the larger world.

Then there’s the gift of seeing my new memoir, Bless the Birds: Living with Love in a Time of Dying, come to life with a beautiful cover and an inviting page design. And the generosity of fellow authors writing advance praise for BtB. Best-selling novelist Jane Kirkpatrick wrote,

Bless the Birds is the book for our times. It’s a splendid blend of landscapes, relationships, creative work, and spirituality–finding meaning in life framed by an awareness of death. I have a dozen people I want to share this authentic, honest, hopeful memoir with. You will too. It’s a treasure.

Bless the Birds, with a beautiful cover designed by Julie Metz of She Writes Press.

I am honored that this memoir, my thirteenth book, resonates with writers whose work I admire. (The book is due out in April, and if you are so moved you can pre-order it through Amazon, Bookshop–which supports independent bookstores–or your local bookstore.)

And in this year of so many endings, but also new beginnings, I am grateful for this beautiful new website, courtesy of my multi-talented and generous friends Tony and Maggie Niemann of Tracks Software. I’m not sure what I did to deserve Tony and Maggie, but I truly appreciate them!

One more gift of this difficult year: a new appreciation of simply being here. Alive, relatively healthy, and comfortable. I can take a walk in the near-wild every day. I can write, laugh, read, ride, cook, and love. I have faith that 2021 will bring positive changes. For all of these things, I am truly grateful.

May the new year bring us all chances to be kind, compassionate, and live with our hearts outstretched. Be well!

Sunset glow on Sierra Blanca in the Sacramento Mountains, on our Solstice camping trip.

Living with Love in a Time of Dying

Posted on February 27, 2020 | by Susan Tweit | Leave a Comment

That’s the new subtitle of my forthcoming memoir, Bless the Birds*, a phrase that came to me this winter when I realized, as I write in the Preface, “The personal is the political.” Meaning my story of living with heart open through times more difficult than I had ever imagined is directly applicable to all of us now, as we do our best to live with hope rather than despair through what seems the death of civility, the death of our planet, and the death of our democracy. Not to mention the threat of a Coronavirus pandemic.

How do we avoid being paralyzed by grief and fear in these times?

It’s not easy, but it is possible:

This story is about living in a time of dying. It is both prayer and love song, an invitation to walk in the light of what we love, especially when times are hard or heartbreaking. To open our hearts and go forward with as much grace as we can through life’s changes. To honor our cell-deep connection to all of the other lives with whom we share this planet. To celebrate the miracle of simply being, our capacity for love that is both gift and salvation.

How can we rise above and be our best?

Walk in light of what we love, rather than what we fear. That means reminding ourselves—often—what it is that we love. We we care about, what we appreciate and can celebrate about ourselves and our lives, and about life on this amazing animate planet.

As is opening our hearts and living our days with as much grace as is possible. Consciously looking for the beauty inherent in each day, whether that is a flower blooming inside in winter, a coyote glimpsed trotting through a grassland, a fragment of bird song, a painting, piece of music, or dance; an unexpected smile or the touch of a warm hand…

And staying connected to our community, near and far. Not just the people who are most like us and easiest to love, but all of humanity, and all of the species who together make Earth the green and living exception to the vast silence of space.

You’ll notice the repetition of the word love, the quality which I think is the greatest gift our species has to offer Life. Not just romantic love or intense physical desire, the genuine attachment we humans feel for each other, for other species, and for this living world as a whole.

How can we thrive, despite the convulsive changes happening to the world we love?

I offer this personal story as an example of something positive we can do: live with love, and “lean in” to nature, the community that birthed our species. I see love as humans’ greatest gift to this Earth, and one we need to cultivate—especially now. I bless the birds because the sudden and profoundly unnerving appearance of Richard’s avian hallucinations afforded us time to learn how to walk his journey to its end with love. To be reminded of the kindness and generosity intrinsic in our fellow humans. To take heart and sustenance from the miracle of life on this glorious planet, challenges and all. To live fully in a time when life seems especially hard and heart-breaking.

When we find ourselves curling inward in grief and fear, we need to remember our species’ best gift: love.

Living in light of what we love can carry us through. That takes practice, conscious cultivation of being present with compassion and an open heart. Simply being here, hearts open to the flow of life.

Blessings to you all!

*Bless the Birds: Living With Love in a Time of Dying, is due out from She Writes Press in a little over a year, April of 2021. It’s been a long journey, and I am excited to have this, my 13th book, on a path to publication at last.

A coyote from my neighborhood pack hunting the open space below my house at sunset…

Life: Practice in Revision and Adaptation

Posted on June 22, 2019 | by Susan Tweit | Leave a Comment

Noche, my Toyota Highlander hybrid, parked in the driveway of my brother’s house in Washington state.

For some years now, I’ve had this dream of a little camper with solar panels on top and a cozy bed, kitchen, and space to write–a super-tiny house on wheels–that I could live in while I do my weeding work in Yellowstone and other wild places. Over the winter, I got as far as putting down a deposit on the compact RV I had chosen. And then, the very same day the sale of my Cody house closed, the RV manufacturer went bankrupt.

So I revised that dream, and settled instead on a sweet trailer made by Colorado Teardrops in Boulder, a custom shop producing amazingly efficient, beautifully designed trailers, and working on becoming a zero-waste manufacturer. Their designs and values are very appealing.

Only I found that plugging trailer brakes into the hybrid regenerative braking system in Noche, my beloved Toyota Highlander Hybrid, isn’t allowed. (Meaning Toyota can’t guarantee that the system would work with trailer brakes; further, adding the seven-pin hitch and brake socket would void my warranty.)

So I revised the dream again and fitted my basic camping set-up right into Noche, giving me a “micro-camper” with a cozy bed, storage for my clothes, weeding tools, camp-stove, a lap-desk for writing, and even a camp toilet. It’s an amazingly comfortable set-up, if quite basic and compact. (And Noche averages 29-30 miles per gallon of gas, not bad for a vehicle I can sleep in–or transport seven friends or family members at a pinch.)

It’s also a lot cheaper than the custom camper I started out dreaming. Too, this set-up is better than my old camping space in Red, my pickup, because I’m inside Noche, not in a pickup bed. In bad weather or if something goes wrong, I just climb into Noche’s front seat and head on my way without having to get outside.

I still imagine that the perfect small camper van is out there for me, something energy-efficient, simple, comfy, and well-built–without costing an arm and six legs. Since I haven’t found it yet, I’m quite comfortable with the simpler and smaller, revised version of that dream. Just being able to hit the road is a blessing. I get a lot of thinking done during windshield time, and I get to experience the landscapes I love in all sorts of moods and seasons.

Heart Mountain, north of Cody, from Dead Indian Hill, where the grasslands were unbelievably green this spring.

Revision and adaptation seems to be a major theme in my life right now.

For instance, I spent this spring revising Bless the Birds for what I hope is the final time. It’s since been accepted for publication by SheWrites Press for their Spring, 2021 list. Which brings up an ending: Bless the Birds will go off my desk (finally!) and that opens up space for working on the next book, Weeding Yellowstone.

Another revision and adaptation: I intended to spend a good part of my summer in Yellowstone digging weeds. Then I flunked my annual blood tests, so those plans got revised. Instead, I spent a long weekend in Cody helping my friends Jay and Connie Moody at TAC, a spiritual retreat center, and also got to hang out with Judy, another dear friend, who is recovering from a massive stroke.

The labyrinth at TAC at sunset, with Carter Mountain and the Absaroka Range in the background.

In other words, I’ve been nurturing friendships instead of ecosystems. That’s fine: tending both brings rewards. I’ll resume my work in Yellowstone when I’m healthier again.

Revising my Yellowstone plans also gave me time to drive to Washington state for a gathering of my family. Our branch of the Tweit clan isn’t big, but we do love getting together. We’ve been having such a good time hanging out, playing Yellowstone National Park Monopoly, taking walks with the dogs, and eating great meals, that I haven’t taken any any pictures at all.

Instead of thinking and planning photo opportunities, I’m enjoying the moments as they arise, reveling in being here and taking part in life, laughter, and love.

That’s a healthy adaptation, I know.

Happy Summer to all!

Calochortus macrocarpus, sagebrush mariposa lily, in the coulee country of eastern Washington

Memoir Revision: Starting Over With a New Perspective

Posted on September 4, 2017 | by Susan Tweit | Leave a Comment

Back in March, I started two new projects: my running practice, and a total rewrite of Bless the Birds, the memoir I've been working on sporadically for the last, well, six years.

The running's going well. I've settled into a routine of running two mornings a week, and I'm up to 3.7 miles now. I'm not fast, but I am running regularly, and that's what counts.

I love running for the righteous feeling when I've finished. And for the excuse to be outside in sagebrush country, the landscapes of my heart. It's a joy to see the occasional coyote (they are much faster than I am!), listen to sparrows call, watch swallows dip and swoop after insects, and see the sagebrush and bunchgrasses and wildflowers go through the cycle of the seasons.

(The photo at the top of the post is from my running route last week, with an forest-fire-smoke orange dawn lighting Rattlesnake–on the right–and Spirit–on the left–mountains, and the Shoshone River flowing in its shallow canyon below me.)

In May, that same view was greener and dotted with spring wildflowers.

The memoir work is going well too, if much more slowly than I had hoped. Which isn't surprising, really, since I am starting over from the beginning, writing the story anew from a completely different narrative framework.

The original versions (all eight or so of them!) were much more chronological, and that meant it was too easy for me to get mired in the details of brain cancer and not focus on the point of the story. Which is living the end of your life with love. Heck, living your whole life with love, whatever comes.

Bless the Birds is about being mindful in choosing how to live. Not just letting life roll you over, no matter how hard things become.

For Richard and me, that meant deliberately choosing to live with love and kindness and compassion and wonder and joy. Even as brain cancer took over our days.

Richard Cabe (1950-2011) on the way home from his monthly check-in with his oncologist; by then, he had survived two brain surgeries and a course of radiation, plus a course of chemo.

Even as Richard's tumor- and surgery-impaired brain challenged his ability to do the things he had always done so easily. Even when we know he wouldn't survive. Especially then.

This new version of the story begins with "then," when we knew he was terminal, knew he was headed for hospice care when we got home. It opens with the first night of The Big Trip, our belated honeymoon trip, a 4,000-mile drive to and down the Pacific Coast from Washington to southern California. A trip we took because we wanted to enjoy our time while we could.

Those three weeks on the road were more of an adventure than we bargained for, and two months from the day we got home, he died. But the trip speaks for the way we lived the journey with his brain cancer: we lived.

Richard savoring a meal at Redfish Restaurant in Port Orford, Oregon. (Thank you Ann Vileisis and Tim Palmer, for the visit and the recommendation to eat at Redfish!)

We didn't waste our time regretting. Or not much time anyway. We did our best to savor as many of the moments as we could. Laughed, loved, fought, ate, drank, celebrated, and grieved. And walked hand-in-hand right up to the day he "woke up dead," as he liked to phrase what he imagined happening.

This entirely new version of Bless the Birds is a story within a story, framed by the days of that Big Trip, with flashbacks to show who we were and how we got to that journey with Richard's right brain deteriorating to the point that he ws losing his vision and his balance; to the point that his bladder (as he put it) didn't always talk to his brain, and his ability read a map or dial a cellphone was gone. His sense of humor was intact, as was his ability to think and reason. He was as incisive and insightful as ever, even if he had to sleep a lot of the time.

Writing the story this way reminds me of E.L. Doctorow's quote about writing fiction (from the Paris Review, "Writers at Work: Interviews"):

Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

When I have time to work on the story, that's exactly how it feels: like driving at night in the fog. I'm in Chapter 11, not quite halfway through with the first draft of this new version, and I can't see very far ahead, but I trust I can make the whole trip groping along by the light of my intuition's headlights. I trust that the story will work.

It's slow, and it's painful to relive that time, but it feels right. And as with any good writing, I'm learning new things along the way about myself, about Richard, and about our journey together.

Here's how the new story begins:

Day One, Odometer Reading 182 miles:

Richard opened his eyes as I slowed the car for the turn to the gravel ranch road. I rolled down the windows, letting in the rich smell of new-mown hay along with a distinctive, throbbing call: “Khrrr, khrrrr, khrrr!”

“Sandhill cranes!” A smile creased Richard’s tanned face. He reached for my hand as the cranes called again. “I’m a lucky guy.”

Except for the terminal brain cancer, I thought.

I swiped at tears with the hand that should have been holding the steering wheel, and then drove on toward the ranch headquarters, a cluster of white-painted buildings. I parked in our usual spot the shade of the spruce tree by the bunkhouse and turned to Richard. “I’m going to haul our stuff upstairs.”

“I can help.” He pulled his six-foot length slowly out of the car, and then reached behind the seat for his briefcase. I grabbed our duffel, the box with his medications, my briefcase, and his pillow. We walked across the lawn and into the ranch house. As I turned to go up the stairs to the bedrooms, Richard stopped. “You go first,” he said. Uh oh.

“Richard can manage the stairs, can’t he?” Betsy, the facilities manager at Carpenter Ranch had asked when I called about our stay. I relayed the question.

“Of course.” His voice carried the confidence of 61 years of inhabiting a strong and appealingly male form. The voice of a man who could free-climb a cliff, sculpt a one-ton boulder, or juggle three balls while balancing on one leg. A man who once would have bounded up the narrow flight of steps at the ranch house, carrying our mound of gear because he could.

This Richard froze at the bottom, his right leg lifted, unable to move upward. I stopped at the top of the stairs, arms loaded, watching with a stomach-churning mix of horror and fascination, compelled to witness the debilitating effects of the brain-tumor I could not stop. Finally, he took the steps slowly, one at a time like an old man, gripping the handrail.

I showed him the bathroom down the hall, and then he stretched out on the bed and fell asleep.

On I go, feeling my way. I guess that's pretty much how we live life. We can't really see ahead (although we think we can). We do our best with what we can discern, and trust that our best will take us to where we need to go, safely and without harm to anyone. And that the trip is worthwhile.

Writing: The (Draft) Pitch

Posted on August 16, 2015 | by Susan Tweit | Leave a Comment

Normally, I reserve my weekends for work around the house, or for creek and landscape restoration projects. This weekend, writing called me instead.

(The photo above shows Ditch Creek, my restoration project, right below my house. The shrub with the scarlet stems in the foreground was a seedling when Richard and I planted it 18 years ago. Now it shades the creek, nurturing aquatic insects and providing food for songbirds.)

So I spent yesterday afternoon and much of today at my laptop, working on parts of the submission package for my memoir, Bless the Birds, which I hope will go out to prospective publishers next month.

The hardest part of the package for me is the "pitch," the teaser that will–if I get it right–hook an editor so that they are eager to read the manuscript. A pitch isn't a summary, but it does need to give a sense of the writing and the story. It also needs to explain why the book matters.

Did I mention it should be short? Several paragraphs is best, certainly less than a page. (Not Faulknerian paragraphs either!)

What works for me is to step back–way back–and focus on the essentials about the book: why it matters and what makes it unique. Those two form the heart of the elevator speech, the one or two sentences you would use to explain the project to an editor you happened to meet in an elevator, in the moment it takes to go between floors.

Here's my elevator speech, which you'll notice draws on the second sentence of the pitch and the last:

My memoir, Bless the Birds, illuminates a conversation that hasn’t been given sufficient national attention—how we die is part of how we live. At heart, Bless the Birds is a love story, an intimate, sometimes funny and unflinching tale of the choice to love life—every moment, no matter how painful—through the end.

Here's the draft pitch itself. Let me know what you think!

For a memoir to be successful in today's competitive environment, it needs to either contribute to an existing national conversation or initiate a new conversation. I believe Bless the Birds illuminates a conversation that hasn’t been given sufficient national attention—how we die is part of how we live. That conversation applies at the personal level—we will all lose someone close to us, and we will all wrestle with how we choose to live out the end of our own lives. It applies to our culture and customs, and even to our national economy and the enormous cost in time and dollars of end-of-life care.

We shy away from even talking about death, using various euphemisms: We "pass away," "meet our end," "lose our life," or even "cross the great divide." We spend a great deal of energy and billions of dollars denying that it will happen to us—but we’re all going there. Death and dying is the next big issue for nearly 40 percent of our nation’s population, the 76 million Americans who are Baby Boomers. Will they be the generation that reshapes how we die as they have reshaped how we work, love and live? I hope so, because all of us certainly need practice learning to accept and integrate what the poet Rainer Maria Rilke called “life’s other half.”

In late summer of 2009, my husband Richard, an economics professor just finding success in a second career as an abstract sculptor, woke one Sunday morning and saw thousands of birds. Birds lining every barbwire fence, birds perched cheek-to-wing on powerlines; tiny birds on each blade of grass, huge birds on the rim of distant mesas. Birds that existed only in his brilliant mind. Those bird hallucinations lasted just 24 hours and were the only significant sign of something growing in his brain. That “something,” we eventually learned, was a glioblastoma, the most deadly form of brain cancer.

Bless the Birds follows our journey through the two-plus years Richard lived with brain cancer, a journey we were determined to live well, mindful of our choices and with a great deal of love. We weren’t perfect—if we humans were perfect, we couldn’t stumble and fail and thus learn and grow. Which Richard and I did a lot of. What carried us through four brain surgeries, a course of radiation, two courses of chemo and innumerable MRIs and other tests and procedures, through the shock and anger and grief, the insights and grace, the pain and laughter and ultimately, through our parting, was love. Love for each other and our family, for the village of friends who sheltered us, and for the earth and its whole extended community of lives, the miracle that quickens our existence on this blue planet. At heart, Bless the Birds is a love story, an intimate and unflinching tale of the choice to love life—every moment, no matter how painful—through the end.

The story's dedicated to this guy, Richard Cabe, smiling at the camera in November of 2009 after his first brain surgery, smiling even though he knew he had brain cancer, smiling because he loved life wholly and thoroughly. Always.