BOULDER
When I began writing blogs I vowed I’d avoid politics. But the political has caught up with me and everyone I know. What made it especially personal was the murderous attack in a peaceful college town: Boulder, Colorado. My son and family live in a nearby town, so I know Boulder’s charming streets and lively cafes. What I couldn’t have imagined was that a group of peaceful residents demonstrating on behalf of the hostages held in Gaza would have lethal “cocktails“ thrown at them. The weapon was different, but the hatred was familiar.
The next day national news outlets, struggling for a new way to describe an almost daily national scene, came up with the same headline: American Jews Are Very Afraid.
Well, yes. You’d have to have just landed from another planet not to be afraid in this climate of hate. But fear isn’t limited to those who are Jewish. I have a Catholic friend who is terrified, and Muslim neighbors behind locked doors. Yet despite the public tendency to see any group as monolithic, we cope in individual ways. Some of us become stronger with anger, others try to protect ourselves by making our personal world small and keeping close to home. After all, we say, where is it safe? Boulder wasn’t even t even the first site of a Colorado attack – there had been a fatal one in a local market – and Boulder won’t be the last.
I confess I’m one of the the group that tries to be invisible. I’ve refused many invitations to meetings and concerts because I saw the locales as potential death traps. Even my Jewish neighbors, who customarily lit Chanukah candles and proudly displayed these images of a miracle in their windows, now keep the “Festival of Light” behind shuttered windows. We’re all more cautious about how we speak in public, how we dress. The Mogen David (Jewish star) jewelry we enjoy wearing is discreetly obscured by coverings, if worn at all.
I’m not advising anyone to throw caution to the political winds. But what makes me.really cringe is what we’re doing to ourselves. For if we allow fear to lock us in, aren’t we hostages, too?

Ih my youthful years as an actor “agency” was a professional goal, for if you were signed up by a talent agency your career would be managed by agents speaking in your behalf.
So I was surprised to discover that agency also has an opposite meaning. The Internet defines it as the “ability to make independent choices…and take control”
Agency is in full bloom with my writing. I direct my characters to behave in whatever brave manner I choose. But my personal history is a different story. Like myriad other people – especially women – I’m often silenced by my fear of disapproval or losing a friendship or love, if I dare to voice my own truth. {There should be a college course in Personal Independence!).
I thought of this when I heard about Reverend Mariann Budde’s confrontational sermon at the Inauguration. In full view of a president who wasn’t likely to appreciate her lecture she courageously pleaded for mercy for trans children and immigrants. She’s been called “fearless” for doing this, but she wasn’t. As she later confided, she’d been “scared.” But she refused to let fear defeat her!
I would add another definition of agency: Respect for your own strength and the courage to use it.

These tinsel days of December

Let us fashion hopeful hearts

In the face of hopelessness,

Adding our annual plea for peace

Though the world is in pieces.

Let us strive to go beyond  

Barriers of bigotry,

For no one is all black or white

Despite contagious hatred

We are discolored by.

‘Tis the season!  May festive lights

Illuminate ourselves as well!

(Memorize this futile prayer

 We’ll need again next year.)

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Holiday hint: “ROLE PLAY” and “ARISING” make enjoyable gifts! At BookBaby and Amazon.

Website: www.annehosansky@gmail.com

“You are invited…”
Two weeks after my husband died I accepted an invitation to a dinner party. It wasn’t that I wanted to go, but I couldn’t bear being alone in my empty apartment. The guests included old friends who had known my husband. Yet through the entire dinner he was never mentioned. Then as dessert time came jokes began to a chorus of boisterous laughter. I trained my lips to curve upward, but after one of the jokes I blurted out, ”Mel would have enjoyed that one.” Utter silence . Then the host said, ”Let’s keep this light.”
That was decades ago, but indelible. I was angry but also felt that as just half of a couple I had spoiled their fun. I spoke about that night countless times and reaped what I wanted: sympathy. But playing the victim role isn’t helpful in the long run. So when the following Christmas season loomed I told my bereavement counselor I was going to ignore the entire month of December. “How are you going to ignore your feelings?” he asked. I realized the answer wasn’t in running awa6, but toward what would genuinely help.
I also realized that my host hadn’t been intentionally cruel. Thoughtless, yes, but the reality for all of us on both sides of bereavement is that we often can’t find the right words. The sight of someone in mourning brings up fears about our own mortality and that of our loved ones. “Sorry for your loss” is a cliché , but it’s better than dismissing someone’s pain.
I’m thinking about this now as we face another holiday sea
son. For anyone who has lost a loved one, this is a tough time. But we make it tougher for ourselves when we go somewhere just to avoid being alone. I happily accept invitations to be with people I genuinely enjoy seeing, but I no longer say yes out of fear. This reminds me of a widow I interviewed who was advised that she should get out of her “comfort zone” and accept a New Year’s invitation. “I went reluctantly because I never liked large parties even when my husband went with me,” she said. “ As midnight came near I saw the couples reaching for one another. I’m ashamed to say I hid in the bathroom..” Ever since then she’s deliberately been alone New Year’s Eve, but there’s a big difference between alone and all one “I order in my favorite snacks, splurge on a bottle of expensive wine, stock up on movies, and have a perfectly good time,” she says. She echoes the surprising number of women who make festive solo evenings. *I enjoy my own company,” is a common refrain. ( Men generally seem dependent on having a companion.). I’m not advocating being a recluse ,but knowing ourselves well enough to reach for what we genuinely choose.
As a postscript I bless the memory of a friend whose holiday invitation I was afraid to accept because, I confided, the guests would be all couples. She shot back, “.So what? Aren’t you a whole person? “
That’s the reminder we should all give ourselves!

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.

GREETINGS A LA MODE
As I write these words, Rosh Hashana is almost here – which accounts for the deluge of emails and texts with a routine message: health, happiness, peace, etc. This is only the beginning of a long season of greetings from Christmas to New Year’s, usually sent digitally. I fear that paper greeting cards may become obsolete.
I guess I belong in an earlier era because I miss sending and receiving cards with familiar handwriting on them. I miss scanning racks of cards in a store and choosing different ones for friends and family, geared to individual tastes. I especially enjoyed buying comical ones for friends who still had a sense of humor. I remember searching years ago for a Mother’s Day card that wouldn’t drip with sentimentality. I found one that read, Mother you made me what I am today… , NEUROTIC. I didn’t think my mother would appreciate this, but I bought it for myself.
The history buff in me decided to research how greeting cards began. Actually they owe their origin to postcards. In the mid-19th century an Austrian economics professor named Emmanuel Herman suggested that brief letters could be sent thriftily on cards. A major newspaper published this idea and it rapidly spread throughout Europe and the United States. Millions of. korrespondencekartes were sold the first months and by the end of the 1890’s they were featuring pictures on one side.
Polish artist Haim Goldberg became the principal designer of these cards, with the aid of paint and graphics. He also used actors dressed in traditional clothes, and had them model Jewish scenes such as weddings, family portraits, and so on. Goldberg even composed rhymed greetings in Yiddish. Greeting cards had been born. (Their popularity long outlived their creator, for Goldberg was murdered by the Nazis in 1943.)
Despite my nostalgia, I’m well aware that typing words on a keyboard or finding messages pre-selected by the Internet, is a lot more convenient than having to shop, address envelopes, get to the post office, and whatnot. But as with so much in life, convenience isn’t everything.
Website: annehosansky.com

ANNE-OTATIONS.ah              No. 1 Sept.2024
You are looking at the first issue of a new connection: a monthly newsletter that will alternate with my blogs but differ in a major way, featuring thoughts you -the readers -want to share. The newsletter will also include messages and news items from me, plus profiles of people who are doing unusual things. What the newsletter won’t include are the foibles of the royal rivals, details of costumes worn (barely) on red carpets, or the nerve-wracking electoral scene – with the exception of my enthusiasm for what women are achieving in that difficult arena.
For years I’ve wanted to share the inspiring responses to my blogs. My recent one about the challenge of finding private time for yourself struck a common nerve, for it reaped more comments than any other message.  So a prime feature of the newsletter will be your reactions to the blogs, plus other issues you want to share (posted with your permission). I invite you to let me know what additional topics you would like to see. Send to ahosansky@gmail.com.
Sharing our hopes and fears can bridge distances these isolating times. As E.M. Forster wrote, “Only connect the prose and the passion….”
Anne
Website: annehosansky.com
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Decades ago I decided to write my first book, a memoir about my late husband and our futile battle to save him. To write something so personal I needed not only privacy, but to disconnect from distractions. By luck I came across a 1930’s book that told me how to create this space. It was “Becoming A Writer” by Dorothea Brande.
Brande believed that creativity demanded time reserved for it, and that it was necessary to get to the typewriter(!) as early as you can, before the everyday clutters your mind. This currently means no radio, TV, phone calls, visits, or Internet browsing – and to stay with this regimen for as many uninterrupted hours as possible ( Those employed in hybrid schedules may need similar discipline.) Inspired, I announced to friends and family that from then on I would be off-limits each day until 3:00.
Naively I thought this was a simple request and it did draw puzzled agreement from almost everyone. The sole exception was a friend who said I should go to a “shrink” to find out why I couldn’t answer phone calls while I was writing. Ironically, she was a therapist herself! I valued our friendship, but I was finding that my hours of privacy with my embryonic book were the most fruitful I had ever known.
The problem is, how convince someone else to accept this? My request became a bone of contention between us, with me either hanging up on her or trying to ignore distracting ringing. These days we can let cellphones take messages, but park the phone in a distant room. Taking the phone off the hook made me anxious about being unreachable by my school-age children. Ultimately I found courage to tell my friend ,“You don’t have to understand what I need, you just have to respect it.” This only worked for a brief time and the friendship has long since died. But I still believe my answer is the best response.
Of course, the need for protected time isn’t limited to creative endeavors. It can be for hours to fortify ourselves by reading or listening to music or simply communing with our thoughts. But this requires not being afraid of anyone’s opinion of our “selfish” behavior. A new neighbor who had a day job in an office asked me if I’d be available for some deliveries, since I “didn’t work.” I hesitated, reluctant to offend a potential friend , before saying I was sorry, but I couldn’t help her since even though I was home I was working.
The reality is that the world often doesn’t recognize being at home as important time. Women, especially, are expected to be available for gossiping, baby sitting, whatever, whenever. It’s easier for the ‘hybrids,” who can cite a company they’re employed by as contrasted with ‘just for me” time.
I have kept close to my writing schedule for 30 years. I tell people, I know I’m being rigid but….And I always make time for my children, family occasions, and for any friend in emotional need. Still, prioritizing my work has cost me other things, like hours of socializing that I would have enjoyed. But it has also enabled me to give birth to six books and dozens of stories. More important, it has helped me know who I am and can be.
We all need to respect everyone’s time but be just as vigilant about protecting our own!

COMING SOON: YOUR MONTHLY NEWSLETTER!

I must have watched the airport scene in CASABLANCA a dozen times. It’s the one where Humphrey Bogart nobly sends Ingrid Bergman away. (She leaves with Paul Henreid which isn’t so bad.) But there’s a famous line in that scene I found hard to accept. It’s when Bogart assures a tearful Bergman, “We’ll always have Paris.” He’s referring to the idyllic time when they were lovers. But there’s no possibility of going back to the past, so I thought it was just a screenwriter’s unrealistic verbiage. And doesn’t remembering lost times just depress us?

The realitv is that memories are two-sided. As a candid example, I’m estranged from a friend I was once close to. For a variety of reasons, she chose to end our relationship and has no desire to revisit the past. So I’ve put a lot of energy into trying to avoid anything that brings reminders of her. I even attempted to keep memories off limits. But this week, perhaps because her birthday’s coming up, the memory of one of our last days together insisted on intruding. We had met for lunch in one of our favorite places, a restaurant in Springfield, Massachusetts. I tried to shut off the memory , but I found myself reliving the hours of sharing and laughter, and our hugs when we parted. But remembering felt different this time. Instead of the usual pain and anger, I was surprised by joy With apologies to Bogart , I’ll always have Springfield – provided that I’m willing to welcome the memory instead of trying to banish it.

Estrangement is another form of loss and deserves to be mourned.. We also have to get past guilt and anger .But what are we to do with the embers? Trying to fence off part of an experience can mean losing all of it, including moments we could cherish. This isn’t just true of estrangement, of course. I’m writing this on my late husband’s birthday. I used to try to shield myself from grief by ignoring the day. But as I’m discovering, fear keeps us hostage to the past. Doesn’t strength mean owning what we choose to keep – and letting the rest go?

Website: www.annehosansky.com

CURRENT BOoK: ARISING:  available in print and E -version at BookBaby.com and Amazon.com.

There are few things as lonely as a world without the person we loved. Our only solace is that grief is so universal we have plenty of company. This week I watched a podcast featuring Anderson Cooper. I knew he had lost his father and brother years ago, and more recently his mother, but I didn’t expect his reaction to so starkly reflect my own; Like me, he’s the only surviving member of his birth family and he described this as “incredible loneliness,” for there’s nobody who knew him as a child. As Cooper would probably agree, fame and wealth can’t barricade against loneliness. But empathic voices can help bridge that emptiness.
I have learned that help is available and that reaching for it isn’t a sign of weakness but of strength. No wonder there’s such a profusion of support groups. But if you’re the type who shuns groups, there are also counselors you can talk to privately. Years ago I had my first major loss when my husband died. I felt totally alone, until I discovered that Cancer Care offered free counseling. I began weekly sessions that led to a transforming moment. I was talking about my husband and our futile struggle to keep him alive, when my counselor interrupted me. “I just had an image of you writing about this,” he said. That stunning remark planted the seeds for my memoir “Widow’s Walk” and two other books about coping with grief. From then on I was no longer alone because I’d found a way to share my feelings and also hear from hundreds of strangers struggling with the same challenges. I still treasure the brief note from a Wisconsin widow: “Thank you for giving my grief a voice.”
Of course, you don’t have to write a book to express your feelings. I urge my memoir writing students to use a journal. Looking through an old one of my own I see a tear-smudged reminder of a terrible evening during my husband’s illness. In a desperate attempt for normalcy, I had made a dinner with his favorite foods. He tried to eat, but was so nauseated he could only stumble upstairs to throw up and go to bed. I sat alone in the darkening room, desperate for someone to talk to but whom could I trust? Reaching for some paper and a pen, I began to write about feelings I’d kept hidden – anger at my husband for “abandoning” me and guilt about this shameful feeling. Surprisingly I felt better after confiding in this paper “friend” who wouldn’t betray me.
It reminds me of a widow I interviewed for my second book. She said, “My mother was horrified when she heard me cursing God for my husband’s death. So I bought a notebook and each morning I write the thoughts that would shock my mother and the priest. Then I hide the diary and can go about my day.”
If we’re able to, we can also keep the words of our loved one. When my father-in-law was dying, my daughter visited him with a tape recorder. She wanted him to tell her about his life as a young man she had never known, and he was happy to do this. Like many other people who have recorded, she’s still able to hear that beloved voice . I interviewed a man who said he had never had a good relationship with his mother. But in her last months he visited her often and recorded her memories. “She’s gone now,” he said. “But I feel close to her for the first time.”
Still, there’s nothing like being able to share with friends – as long as we choose ones who will listen without lecturing! “You’ll get over it, ”is profane and should never be uttered. The same for the cliché, “I know how you feel.” I’m ashamed that when I saw my widowed sister cry at a wedding, I told her I knew how she felt. “The hell you do,” she shot back. Rude, but right. None of us can fully know what’s inside someone else. As Willa Cather wrote, “The heart of another person is a dark forest.”
A friend who was widowed after forty years of a loving marriage, told me she was being criticized because she couldn’t cry. “Is something wrong with me?” she asked. The only wrong is heeding the judgments of those who think they have a right to tell us how to grieve. The most important voice is the one that speaks from our own heart.
Website: www.annehosansky.com
BOOKS: Widow’s Walk, Turning Toward Tomorrow, Ten Women of Valor available through Amazon.com. Role Play , Come And Go, Arising –also available through BookBaby.com..