Linn-Gust Conversations with the Water

A Memoir of Cultivating Hope
1. Auflage 2012
ISBN: 978-0-9837776-0-1
Verlag: Chellehead Works
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 156 Seiten

For nearly twenty years Michelle Linn-Gust has journeyed through grief following the suicide of her younger sister Denise. The road has taken her through authoring seven books, speaking around the world about how to cope with suicide, and to the presidency of the American Association of Suicidology. In 2011, she took up surfing, something she always dreamed of but never thought she would, and watched her life change around her. This is her inspiring journey as she reflects back on her life with Denise, the importance of water in her relationship with her sister, and where she goes from here as she moves beyond speaking and writing about grief and loss.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Linn-Gust, Michelle

Leseproben

Part I 1 Surfing is life. The rest is details. I loved that saying although it meant little in my life. Growing up in the Chicago suburbs I wrote it all over my school folders. My Barbies had plastic orange surfboards, but it wasn’t something I ever thought I would get to do. I caught the surfing bug in junior high even though living in Chicago wasn’t the only reason I wouldn’t get to surf. It wasn’t really something that girls did in the late 1980s. We only heard about boys surfing, not girls—except for Gidget, of course. So even though I didn’t think I’d ever do it because I didn’t think I was coordinated enough (not realizing that my leg strength from years of running cross-country and track would be enough to balance me on the board) and because I didn’t live near an ocean, I tore out pages from surfing magazines and taped them to my walls, giving them prized space next to all my Top 40 favorites like Bryan Adams. I bought board shorts and a turquoise Catch It surfing T-shirt, one that I wore with an oversized Forenza belt and an Esprit skirt. I bought the shirt on layaway at a boutique-like surf-clothing shop on a corner in my hometown in the Chicago suburb of Naperville. I paid for it with babysitting money. “Surfer Girl” was not a nickname that I thought I would earn. “Pseudo Surfer Girl” might have been better for me. I developed an affection for surfing in junior high through my sudden obsession at thirteen to move to California (although I didn’t quite make it that far, ending up in New Mexico for seventeen years instead). But never in a million years did I really think I would get up on a board. People think I’m fearless. This is a misconception. I was not a good athlete in elementary school; I never could climb the rope in gym class. Heck, I couldn’t even get up past where I started. I got picked next to last for every sport that involved a team. And when I started running in junior high, I threw up at starting lines, putting too much pressure on myself to do well. Sometimes life has a way of changing us, although sometimes I think I simply learned to hide my fear because I knew that if I didn’t step out of the box I wouldn’t experience new things. And it was through those experiences that I saw my growth and the fun I could have doing them. Running taught me to push myself and that I had no limits. Degrees were easy to get compared to many other life experiences. You followed the rules and did what they laid out for you to do. You didn’t have to forge your own path; someone else did it for you. I loved speech class in high school and learned the lessons that would prepare me for public speaking (take your time, look directly at the people in the audience, write your speech in notes rather than sentences). I had been speaking in public for so many years by the time I got to my dissertation defense that it was easy to stand in front of my committee with my PowerPoint presentation behind me and talk about it. But surfing? It was cool to watch. I didn’t think I’d ever make it up on a board. And then I went even farther away from California. Life would never be the same after my trip to Vermont and the long series of events that took me there.   2 I ended up in Vermont because I couldn’t find a parking space. Craving a burrito one day for lunch, I’d driven just two miles to my favorite restaurant in Albuquerque, the Frontier. After eating there for seventeen years, it was the first time I couldn’t find a place to park. I drove around several times, baffled, finally paying to park, something I’d never done in all my years of Frontier dining. My burrito stowed safely beside me in the car, I drove home in traffic as slow as molasses. New Mexico is truly the land of mañana. If you are in a hurry, don’t go to New Mexico. For the first time in a very long while, I began to tell myself I needed a vacation. I loved and still love New Mexico but I needed a change of scenery. I had been traveling on and off for several years, but life was keeping me at home that summer working on a large web site. My only trip was to Tulsa, Oklahoma, to speak at a conference. I loved the people of Oklahoma, but it was July and would be 100 degrees. That wasn’t a vacation. I went down the list of friends whom I could visit, and whom I’d find fun and interesting to spend time with, and landed on one of my high school friends, Kim, and her husband, Rob. I hadn’t seen them since my wedding, in 1999. They had since moved from Virginia to Vermont and had three kids, none of whom I’d ever met. It was time to go sample the maple syrup that Kim talked about and to meet Ella, the oldest, whom I’d made a quilt for. What I didn’t anticipate was Kim’s joking suggestion that I take surfing lessons while I was there. We had planned to visit her sister Lisa, who had just moved to Rye, New Hampshire, on the coast. “Yeah, right,” I messaged back to her. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized it wasn’t so absurd. Why couldn’t I try what I’d always dreamed of? Something inside me stirred. Was it because I was turning forty later that year? Was it because I could see my marriage coming to an end? Standing in the thick of it, like standing near the edge of the ocean where the waves crash and the water flies toward you before it recedes, I couldn’t see it clearly. It wouldn’t be long before I did. No one would take a lesson with me, though. Kim worried it would knock out her back and then worried who would take care of her kids. And even George, Lisa’s daring army-doctor husband, wasn’t game. They were happy to help me make it happen, though, and after a phone call to the surf shop, the lesson was scheduled. The next day off we went. The three of us girls walked from our spot on the beach on a Sunday morning to the Summer Sessions surf shop, leaving behind the husbands and six kids who were frolicking in the ocean. I had no expectations. I was a little nervous but I had nothing to lose. I knew if I got up on the board I would be happy. My wetsuit zipped up, my teacher Zach handed me a board and told me to carry it. “It’s yours,” he said, pointing the way to the ocean across the street. There was no crowd hovering around to watch me take my lesson, only the people I’d called family for so long. And they were there to support me in my endeavor, living vicariously through me, especially Kim, with her bad back. Zach was half my age, a BMX racer who surfed in the summer. He taught me the pop-up on the beach, and then we set off into the water, where I lay on the board facing the beach and he watched the waves, holding onto the board to push me when it was time to go. Atlantic Ocean waves aren’t great like they are in Southern California. (I sound like I know what I’m talking about right?) There was a lot of waiting. I felt a little dizzy, my head at the horizon watching the water meet the sky. Zach sent me out in a wave and I tumbled off the board, not getting the balance. He followed me and told me what I did wrong and we returned back to wave watching. While we waited, we talked about my work helping the suicide bereaved and as a speaker. I told him that I had just come up with a book title the day before, Conversations with the Water. I wasn’t really sure how I would use it at that time. Zach suggested that it could have interviews with different people to whom water means something different: a meteorologist, a person who lives on the water, a surfer, and so on. I was thinking it was going to be fiction. Although I shouldn’t be surprised, the lesson turned into something totally different from what I expected. As Lisa said, “You two were out there having a philosophical discussion about life while you were surfing.” Learning to surf wasn’t hard. I got it. Zach said I clearly understood the body awareness and the mental piece that rides alongside it. I managed to ride one of my first waves, surprising myself, along with Kim and Lisa who stood on the shore and watched. It was like I was floating across the water. I jumped off the board, not sure what to do when I ran out of water. Zach high fived me, called it “Sick!,” and congratulated me on becoming a surfer. “The rest is frosting,” I told him. “I didn’t know if I could get up at all and now we’ll just see what happens the rest of the hour.” I rode several more waves and, I fell off a few times. I played the game every surfer does every day not knowing what each wave will hold. Just like the game of life. As we waited for the perfect wave, me lying on the board, Zach holding it and treading water, we continued our discussion and I realized that twenty years ago this wasn’t how I would have approached the lesson. I would have been nervous, afraid of falling off the board, scared I would lose a contact lens, and definitely worried I might get whacked in the head with the board (which actually did happen). It was worth the twenty-year wait. As I slipped out of the wet suit, I wondered where I could surf next. Maybe I would buy a wet suit. Better yet, I need a beach house, I thought, and then I could buy a board and keep it there. The possibilities were endless. There’s a reason that dreams don’t die. Sometimes they come back even more meaningful than when we first dreamed them. I was so proud of myself. I had really done it. I had ridden on a...