Susan Popper is an important, even heroic figure in my life, and I don’t use the term lightly.

I think the real heroes in life are not just those who rush into burning buildings or flooded homes or bullets but also people who struggle through great suffering and pain and illness to rise again and keep their hearts and souls intact.

To be good friends and generous people, to work hard every day to recover the lives that they lost or nearly threw away.

Susan Popper is such a person for me. Susan has been reading my blog since I started it in 2007 although I did not meet her or speak with her until a few years ago when she came to one of our Open Houses. She is a medical technician, nearing 60, she lives near New York City.

She came to visit Maria at the farm today and we spent time this afternoon talking and then went out to dinner at the Bog. We both loved having Susan here, there is so much warmth and intelligence and joy in her, it felt like we were being with old friends or family, only better.

She was one of the very first people to love the photos I was taking with my new Achromat lens, so I took her portrait with it. The lens liked her smile.

Susan was a member of the Creative Group at Bedlam Farm, and also of a different online creative group.

She always posted the most beautiful photographs and struck me as a profoundly loving human being, although clearly troubled, depressed at times, and in distress. She always stuck out, I think the photo above shows her true spirit, it shines through, photographs can’t like or dissemble. That smile is a beacon.

A couple of years ago, the people on her other group investigated her and discovered that she was publishing photos that were not  her own. She admitted doing that. She knew she was wrong, and was ashamed. She was kicked out the group and condemned in a way she felt was cruel and hurtful, by people she thought were her friends.

She messaged me and confessed to the plagiarizing. She apologized for it, took full responsibility, deleted all of the questionable photographs and said she was quitting our group, assuming we would also demand that she leave. I appreciated her bravery and her taking full responsibility, without lament or complaint.

I thought about it a bit, but not for long. I posted a piece about it on our group without mentioning Susan’s name, and every single person on the group asked that she remain, be forgiven, and allowed to move on. It was unanimous.

It seemed very wrong to humiliate and dishearten so sensitive – and troubled – and creative person as Susan obviously was.

I pleaded with her to stay on our group, to explain what happened to the others. I told her the photographs she had posted were so emotional and touching that it was obvious she knew what a great picture was, why didn’t she take her own, as she had done so many times before.

She was genuinely remorseful. She wrote about it and apologized.

She said she didn’t know why she had done it, but she would not rest until she found out and understood why. She had gone into therapy to deal with the issues of acceptance and need that inexplicably drove her to copy the photographs of others,  when she was so talented a photographer herself.

It was a turning point for me, I think it led me towards the path I am now in my life, when I am finally understanding what empathy and compassion really means.  If I couldn’t feel compassion for Susan then, then what does compassion mean? I thought of the mistakes I had made in life that were far worse than hers, and the people who had forgiven me and helped me to heal. I thought about friendship and wondered what it meant if I were to abandon a friend in such need at the time of her worst trouble.

That didn’t sound like friendship to me.

I thought of the kind of man I wanted to be and so often was not, and decided to try to be him. I could not have looked in the mirror if I had not tried to keep Susan in our group, and so I knew what to do. And I felt good about it, and still do. I remember thinking, you just don’t throw people away.

She was surprised, but she agreed to stay.

After this trouble, which she said devastated her, Susan began a long and frightening slide into a depression so paralyzing and for so long she became seriously and ended up hospitalized.  She couldn’t work or go out. She couldn’t walk.  She nearly died. She didn’t want to talk or return messages.

An old friend online contacted her and told her she was a good person who made a mistake, as all humans do.  The two talked and connected and spoke almost every day and her friend helped greatly. She never told me how sick she was, or how dangerously troubled. But she didn’t leave the group either. I had no role to play but wait.

Susan worked hard day and night to recover. She said my plea to her to stay on the group and return to her own good work was life-saving for her, although I had no idea she felt that way. She said that sometimes the thought of coming back to the farm, seeing the dogs and the donkeys, Maria and her art, kept her going.

Earlier this year, she re-emerged. She came to our Spring Open House. She has risen again.

Susan had worked hard to come through her awful nightmare and was once again writing and taking beautiful photos, as she always had. She said she and a tough therapist were still exploring her very painful family issues that led to  her need for so much approval. She said her therapist was tough and demanded the truth, and this was familiar to me.

I realized by then how important Susan had been to me, how she jolted me into understanding what empathy really meant.

That could so easily have been me, I was so close to falling off the edge so frightened and needy so many times in my life, I would have done almost anything to feel better.

I wished every minute of my earlier life that someone cared enough for me to help pull me back to life. Eventually some one came and did.

When Susan came to our Open House this Spring, we were both so happy to see each other,  we threw our arms around one another and cried. I found that I had come to love Susan, and so had Maria, and saw that we were both important to her as well. We each understood the other, we were comrades, brothers and sisters,  fellow travelers on the hero journey, from which many never return. Susan did, and  Maria did, and so did I. We are in no position to judge.

That is a pretty strong bond.

Susan is flowering, brave and grounded, back to work, looking for a partner, taking beautiful photos, writing beautiful posts, cranking up her dusty blog, traveling to see her friends, happy and optimistic about the rest of her life. Her very radiant smile is back, she is one of those strong woman who defies the camera to take her photograph.

If her life isn’t heroic, I don’t know what is,  although she will surely never make the news or get a medal at the White House.

That doesn’t make her any less of a hero to me. She has a big heart, and is genuine and authentic.

Tonight, at dinner,  I thanked her for what she had meant for me, and what she had helped me to learn and see. I doubt very much I would be anywhere near the Mansion or the refugees today if not for Susan. She swung open some big gates for me.

And I can remember a time when I would have  condemned her, and booted her out into the cold myself. I am glad that was no longer me.

Susan is coming back to  the October Open House, to see us and many of  her new and very real friends on the Creative Group. She is much loved there.

I am happy I have lived long enough to learn something about life.

We are all so grateful she didn’t give up on us, and we didn’t give up on her.