Words have power
Words can heal. Words can help. Words can hurt. Words can forge relationships and words can end them. And the words on a book cover, I recently learned, don’t just help sell books; they can also send a potential reader fleeing in the opposite direction.
That’s exactly what happened two years ago, after the launch of the novel version of my book, A Widow’s Awakening. I am grateful the potential reader in question chose to contact me directly because her comment sparked a candid exchange about a deeper question:
When tragedy strikes, are we “supposed” to learn from loss and try to transform a horrible situation into some sort of change for the better, either in ourselves or the world around us?
This is the e-mail I received from the person:
“Sometimes we must lose what we love the most to awaken the person we are meant to be. I was about to order the book when this sentence stopped me in my tracks. I hear things like this, and I cannot reconcile anyone saying this to me. I would give anything to have had my life path go in a direction that did not include my losses. I will never know how my life path would be if my son and husband were still here. I will never know the difference between them being here and them not being here. Nobody knows, nobody could ever know. My son was killed at work October 2015 at 25 years old. My husband died of brain cancer February 2016 at 51 years old.
I came across your blog a year or more ago. I think your name caught my eye at first. Then I really connected with your way of thinking, writing, feeling. I understand that your loss allows for writing, from the financial point of view, and that it prompted you to write. But I just cannot wrap my head around that sentence. I do not know you…but I wonder if you wrote the sentence? I would have guessed your line of thinking was the same as what I have tried to explain. I would love to hear from you.”
This was my response (edited slightly):
Thank you for your heartfelt comment on my Pink Gazelle blog about the sentence on the cover of A Widow’s Awakening: “Sometimes we must lose what we love the most to awaken the person we are meant to be.”
No, I did not personally write that exact sentence. The publisher came up with that—based on the contents of my book and on the additional content (for marketing and PR) I wrote and sent to them. I approved the sentence and stand by it. But I can totally understand your perspective because that is certainly NOT everyone’s belief: that everything happens for a reason and when we suffer horrendous losses, we can choose to become better people through the experience.
Your comment raises an extremely important question: ARE we meant to learn from horrific tragedies and strive to become happier than we were before those we love were yanked from us?
Or do tragedies just happen…and we get to move forward however we choose?
I do not have the answer. As a writer, however, I have chosen the path of exploring the possibility that sometimes a tragedy has the potential for positive change—both in ourselves in and in the world around us. My personal experience has shown me that maybe, just maybe, there is always some sort of larger plan unfolding and that my husband John’s death was part of that…everything that happens is.
But I could be wrong. John’s death could be a simple case of cause and effect…no safety railing, no husband. And my decision to ‘awaken and become the person I was meant to be’ was simply a personal choice based on my beliefs, my relationship with John, the circumstances of his death, my financial situation and my dream of becoming a writer.
The argument John and I had hours before he died was a defining moment for me. I had been complaining to him, yet again, about how frustrated I was with myself for not writing…and how scared I was of waking up twenty years later and STILL not have finished writing a book. He looked at me and said, “You’re probably right about that…just as long as you know that will have been your choice.”
When he died the next the day, I knew exactly what I had to do: write. And in the process of grieving his death, writing, working with the John Petropoulos Memorial Fund to raise awareness about workplace safety, determining whether or not I wanted to have a child on my own, and trying to find a new life partner, I realized I had a choice: I could more or less stay the same person I was when John died…or I could change and grow and become better—with or without a new partner to share my life with.
In A Widow’s Awakening, I included a reference to this quote by Louis Menand: “Organisms don’t struggle because they evolve; they evolve because they struggle.”
That sums up my journey through grief.
I personally think loss and suffering hold significant potential for personal growth. But at the end of the day, this is a choice. There have been many days (and still are) when I wonder if John’s death was ‘meant to be.’ My writing explores this possibility…but that’s all it is: a possibility.
I have grown as a person in the wake of losing John. Yes, I was kicking and screaming for much of the process but at the end of the day, I have learned an awful lot of valuable life lessons that I likely wouldn’t have learned if he had lived. But if he had lived, I know I would have learned different lessons.”
How about you?
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Previously Published on Pink Gazelle
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