I have deepened an important connection today and begun a remarkable collaboration. I have given myself the greatest gift I can offer myself: a new friendship, an opportunity to be creative, to support the power of the word to heal us and give meaning to my life.

Yesterday, I wrote about a friend, a woman who is a Zen teacher, a fiction and non-fiction writer  who lives in nearby Massachusetts.

I did not identify her, but wrote of her struggle to cope with the sudden illness of her beloved husband, who had a stroke a month ago. I had messaged her and asked if I could be of any help, and she wrote back and said she didn’t know how I could help. She said “all of my life I thought I had the discipline and energy to take care of things; that’s not true now, and the gap is more visible than ever.”

She is a writer, but she said one of her most painful losses was not having the time to write.

Her message touched me deeply.

I wrote back. I said “I think I can be  helpful to you, I think it would be valuable to others and incredibly good for you to write what you just sent me in  your e-mail, to help yourself figure it out and to help others. Great writing is often about vulnerability and authenticity and learning, I said, and perhaps I can help you by offering myself as a writing coach and an editor through this experience.

“Everything is a gift, as you know,” I wrote. “I propose you write about your life now when you can, hopefully daily and on your blog, and I will respond with suggestions and observations and help if you need it. Think about this and let me know.”

I wrote that people often tell me they don’t have time to write about the critical things in their life, and I often respond that it is my belief that they don’t have time not to.

My friend’s name is Eve Marko, she has given me permission to use it and tell some of her story here. She thought about my offer, and she said it had done her good instantly. She wanted to come up to Cambridge to have lunch with me at the Round House Cafe and talk about it. She same to the farm today and we met at the Round House and spent an extraordinary two hours together.

We connected very strongly and we agreed to collaborate on this crossroads of her life, to open a dialogue between us on creativity and healing, and also to assist her in writing about the impact her husband’s stroke has had on her life. She is a strong and independent person, a life-long spiritualist and a committed creative, and she believes her challenge is to care for her husband but also preserve her work and her life.

Beyond that, she can use her blog to journal about one of life’s most momentous experiences and about the gap that has opened  in her life between discipline and energy. I know we can all learn from this, Eve is a brilliant thinker and a profoundly gifted writer. She is also a loving human being, she has followed my work for some time and supported it in important ways. I’d like to do the same for her.

Please check out the very powerful piece she wrote about the night her husband fell down and he could not get up, and she could not get him up.

Eve had a classical education, she loves literary works and the idea of writing openly on a blog  – informal and different for her – worried her and troubled her, I could see. I believe she will come to embrace it, as I have. Blogs are, in many ways, a new form of the book.

This is a rich experience for me, and if I can  be honest, I am excited about the chance to work with Eve, who brings a deep spiritual experience as a Zen teacher and also as a writer to this chapter in her life.  She brought me another gift, beside herself, a book by Christian Wiman, My Bright Abyss, a beautiful and very spiritual account of his cancer.

I saw pain and sorrow, as well as laughter and joy, etched in Eve’s tired face this afternoon.  This evening, I opened this very poignant book and the first thing I read was on page 19:

“Sorrow is so woven through us,” wrote Winan, “so much a part of our souls, or at least any understanding of our souls that we are able to attain, that every experience is dyed with its color. That is why, even in moments of joy, part of that joy is the seams of ore that are our sorrow. They  burn darkly and beautifully in the midst of joy, and they make joy the complete experience that it is. But they still born.”

Eve and I spent the afternoon together and she came to farm and spent a long time talking to Maria in her studio. Our friendship deepened, and instantly. I felt completely at ease with Eve, our time was marked by honesty and trust. And then, by love. We often connect with one another when we are opened up by life, this happened to me again and again.

She was enchanted by the dogs, Red reached right into her soul, and Fate had her grinning with her energy and enthusiasm.

Maria loved her as much as I did, and also felt the power of this connection and this collaboration. Eve bought two potholders, she has followed Maria’s work. She left with a jar of Scott Carrino’s sweet maple syrup.

I await Eve’s writing, I will have a conversation with her about joy and sorrow and share her writing, when and if she can. She will, I suspect, write often and well. She had many fears about sharing this journey on a blog, and we talked about those fears a long time.

We got, I think, to a beautiful place in the middle of sorrow, pain and the joy and glory of life. You are invited to join us. More to come.