McEachron road, in the afternoon

  December 23, 2008 – The farm is a continuum, connecting me to many things beyond it’s fences. All day, sad messages have been pouring in – a young man killed in a Michigan car crash, a partner with breast cancer, a husband with colon cancer, a family losing their home, people losing their work, their jobs, their savings, a wife stricken with a brain tumor. Why are these stories coming here, and how could anyone experiencing these things not feel fear?
  I’m not a shrink, or a theologian, and it is not for me to tell anybody else how to feel. I am not a member of the club that knows what other people ought to do.
  I have been dealing a lot with fear this year, and writing about it, on this blog in a photo/text book (Out Of the Shadows) and thinking about it. Fear is one thing, and life is another. Life happens. Fear is a wall between people and life, a clammy hand around the neck, a feeling that hovers between our psyches and reality.
  I don’t know what to say to Elise, whose partner is dying of breast cancer, or Peg, whose best friend was killed in an accident or Sam, who lost his savings, business and home in the same week. What they say to me is that they feel fear, and a lot of it, but that they also see beyond it. They found new friends, became closer to old ones, reconnected to family, found their sense of spirituality, got perspective, are loving more simply, more meaningfully. None of them despaired, and they were all determined to survive their troubles and lead different kinds of lives. This juxtaposition is so striking, and so curious – we are afraid, but many of us seem to know that if you don’t give in to the fear, or permit it to shut you down or paralyze you, then you can transcend it, survive it, even defeat it.
  It would seem to me that it would be disturbing, depressing, to get all these sad messages. But like hospice work, it isn’t depressing, isn’t sad. it is life itself, and each of the messages was as triumphant as sad.
    ” I just lost 20 years of my life, the roof over my head, my daughter’s college tuition. But I am not angry, or defeated,” wrote Sam.”I’m going to change my life, live in a different way, a better, simpler way.”
   Joanne’s husband goes into surgery Friday to find out how bad his cancer is. “The fear is a black figure hanging in the shadows behind me. I’t tried laughing at it, sneering at it, yelling at it. I’ve even written profane notes to it. It won’t leave me. So I have decided to allow it to follow me, but not consume me.”
  There is nothing much I could say to these people. There is a lot they said to me.
  I am fortunate to get these messages because I have written about fear, and these people don’t write to me to complain, but to share their experiences and to tell me that they are heartened and encouraged to know that others feel fear as well, and are nourished by the idea that fear is not eternal or impermeable, but is, in fact, a space to cross. Peace to us, this week. Thinking of the light that follows shadow, and defines it.