Prayer For Those Who Are Grieving
Not what you expect to find on The Moderate Voice: a headlong, hold-nothing-back essay by Clarissa Pinkola Estés (Women Who Run With the Wolves) on the flaying pain of losing a human or an animal we love and the holding each other through this. As she anticipates the loss of an aged, cancer-stricken Dalmatian ("Pepino is our relative. That's all there is to it"), she knows it will reopen in the whole family the barely clotted, bottomless wound of the recent loss of a child. The one thing you do not want to be at such a time is alone, and it is when family (blood family with all its capacious adoptions) rises up and shows its stuff.
One of the more memorable things you'll read on a blog this year, if you are so minded.
It may well be. Thanks for the link.
Posted by: Randy (Internet Ronin) | July 17, 2007 at 08:25 PM
Amazing essay from a fantastic writer (I have her book), it brought me to tears, and I don't have a pet. Thank you for the link.
A good time to say 'hello' as I'm a new reader, having somehow found you via "The Wounded Angel"- one of my favourite Finnish paintings (I'm Finnish born). Am enjoying reading through your blog and getting to know you!
Posted by: marja-leena | July 18, 2007 at 05:44 PM
Hi Marja-Leena, and welcome...I'm glad to see you here.
I've been aware of your work for a while because of qarrtsiluni. I just came over for a reciprocal visit and will come again. The photographs are
very nourishing to me, as are Bitterroot's. In spite of my saying "a word is worth a thousand pictures," I need relief from words from time to time.
Posted by: amba | July 18, 2007 at 09:42 PM