I love words! I love the power of beautiful words even more, especially if they are words that can heal a hurting heart. I began writing Tapestry with a hurting heart after my sister, Fran, died unexpectedly. The writing of it became a catharsis for me, as well as, a means to keep my mind occupied. Grief is a “soul-ache” and a violent emotional yanking on the heart –a labyrinth of overwhelming confusion. The questions about God’s presumed goodness abound.

My own heart was broken, but what makes it even harder is to watch the hearts of your other family members break as well. I felt the self-imposed pressure of needing to play too many roles to make up for the gaping hole in our family. I wanted to be a better daughter, a better sister, a better aunt, a better sister-in-law and a better mother. I have slowly realized that you can’t replace an irreplaceable person and you can’t let yourself feel responsible for mending the hurting hearts of others. We are all on our own to find the right balm to make our unbearable pain bearable. It’s a private, personal journey and we must be allowed to resolve it in our own unique way and in our own time. We must keep in mind that it is imperative that the balm be found. Our lost loved ones would want us to move forward with a peaceful heart. That’s why they are called our loved ones…they love us. Do it for them.

You are left with a heart that is full of tears and it blurs your vision to see that life can be good again. You want to feel a part of the world again, but you don’t know where to begin. It is a complicated process that involves creeping slowly, slowly on your hands and knees. With the steady “cane of support” from friends and family you are able to walk bent over. Finally, it culminates into walking upright as you realize that life can be good again and that God is good.

You know that your heart will hurt forever, but there is hope to be “whole” again. Hope would certainly be a cruel vessel, if healing were not there at the end. Healing and hope are cousins of a sort. Wisdom is not learned from living a “bed of roses”. It’s the “bed of thorns” that has the greater nourishing power.

After loss, you realize that your expectations from life and from others are not so grandiose. You realize that material things such as cars, clothes and gems are just that…“things” without lasting value. The true gems are your family and friends. They have the lasting value and what’s even more important is how we treat them. The great return is that you realize that it takes so very little to make you so very content. And that’s a good place to be. Ultimately, you arrive at a place of tranquil understanding. You see that, in spite of your pain, life is a mystical opaque sphere where there are just as many beautiful occurrences as there are hardships. Our only requirement is that we accept the full scope and we are promised that we will understand later.

The message in Tapestry is that we must have the knots and the double knots along the way mixed in with the silver and the gold threads in order to have the complete and beautiful tapestry. The chapter called The Loom was patterned after my father as the steady foundation in Olivia’s life. He was the person who made her feel the safest.

My intention for Tapestry is that it would be a quick, powerful read for someone whose heart is hurting from loss-an aid in grief resolution. The main character, Olivia, journals at the end of each chapter. The journals are where she articulates the power punch emotions of grief and the disillusionment towards God. She writes out a Grief Survival Plan that is incorporated into one of Olivia’s journals. This is actually the same plan I mapped out methodically for myself. It helped to make my disorderly world feel more orderly. I, also, hope that people who are grieving will know that some of the emotions they are feeling are normal.

My hopes are that my first children’s book, The Everlasting Snowman-a story of the cycle of life and Tapestry can be sold as a package for all family members who need the benefit of healing words. The dust jacket is a tapestry. The circular symbol in it is “the mandala” which is a sign for healing. That is the whole point of Tapestry. It is a story of the healing of the soul.