Some readers have asked how this newsletter will differ from my blogs. Basically, the blogs focus on forging a life after loss, while the newsletter will roam through whatever is uppermost on our minds and include your voices. This brings me to the current event that’s causing nervous tremors: the election. I’m writing this in October so the results are unknown and probably will be for weeks afterward. My doubtful hope is for a civil post-election scene. Meanwhile, let’s not allow political disagreements to destroy treasured relationships. I was amused when my doctor refused to tell me his voting choice but slyly hinted, ”Let’s hope the right woman wins!”
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I’m pleased to announce that my poem MINUS SIGNS is in the current issue of Naugatuck River Review. Despite the poem’s title it isn’t about mathematics, but the multiplying subtractions we endure when a partner becomes seriously ill . Because the poem is so personal, I’m gratified by messages from readers telling me how it resonates with their own lives. (I’ll be glad to Email copies of the poem if you send a requbelated response to a friendwhimocked my needful time to est to ahosansky@gmail.com).)
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For those who are intrigued by magical realism , I recommend “The Cemetery of Untold Stories” by the celebrated Dominican author Julia Alvarez. The heroine is a writer who devises a unique way of giving up on her “failed” stories. She purchases a cemetery plot and buries each story in its own grave! However her characters refuse to be silenced and tell their candid real-life versions to a startled groundskeeper. Alvarez’s imagination makes this novel memorable.
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As previously stated the newsletter will include YOUR voices. My recent blog about the difficulty of making people understand our need for uninterrupted private time brought dozens of fervent comments. They all seemed to favor one line in particular, my belated response to a friend who scoffed at my need for time for myself: ‘Ultimately I found courage to tell her, ’You don’t have to understand what I need, you just have to respect it.’”
Send thoughts you’d like to share to ahosansky@gmail.com.