by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
It’s a brutal world out there.
The climate of our country, currently, is a wild, fierce, fiery summer of seemingly eternal proportions. We are burning ourselves, we are burning each other, we are burning the opinions and viewpoints that do not align with our own. The smoke stings our eyes, blisters our throats, constricts our breath. We ball up and try to survive in our corners. We talk and talk and talk and forget that the most important thing we can do, ever, is simply listen.
And in this place of me against you, us against them, human against human, we all lose.
For most of my life, I have been obsessed with stories. Not just the stories I can create while I’m tucked away in my room for a few hours every day or the magnificent stories I can read in the pages of a book. I’m talking about the stories of others.
I have listened to stories with rapt attention as I sat across the room from an interviewee and jotted down notes in a reporter’s notebook. I have listened to stories with nothing in my hands, only a watchful eye and invested heart. And I have listened to stories with a mind reeling to grasp the words I want to say before I’ve even heard the person with whom I’m engaged, more intent on my own story than another.
So, you see, I have work to do as well.
Recently I invited into my home a young teenage girl who has attempted, multiple times, to commit suicide. These attempts were demanded by a dark depression that would not let her go. I listened to her story of loneliness, acute pain, misunderstanding, trauma, misery. Later, after she’d left, I paged through the journals she’d left me with a clipped “I don’t want them anymore. I was going to burn them.” I cried, I raged, I ached for the girl who’d felt so alone and burdensome in her despair that suicide was the only logical conclusion. I held her heart in my hands, gently, willingly. Hopefully. We were connected by our shared humanity. And when I was finished, I understood teenage suicide better.
This is what happens when we sit face to face with someone who is different from us and we listen to their story.
My husband, Ben, engaged in a long and random conversation with a homeless woman not on the streets of our city but on the streets of Austin, Texas, where he and I were attending a business conference. I didn’t talk to her, because their conversation was so animated that I assumed she was one of the other conference attendees, rather than a woman who lived on the streets. I was engaged in my own conversation. But then he bought her lunch and introduced her to me. She gratefully took the food he offered, hugged him, and called him an angel. She is a light to the homeless, she said, because she keeps them on the straight and narrow. And who are we to argue with a purpose like that? Perhaps it is only our place to listen to a broken woman with most of her teeth missing. And when we finish listening, we understand the homeless a little better.
This is what happens when we stand face to face with someone who is different from us and we listen to their story.
When I scroll through social media feeds (though, to confess, I don’t do it often anymore, because it’s too painful) and see the ways we are so glued to our corners that we come out fighting with the least little provocation, when I see how much we assume about people who are different than we are, when I consider the fear that keeps us safe and curled up in our protective shells and insulated opinions rather than boldly listening to the stories of real people, I can clearly see how we have shifted into such a combative place.
We’ve traded individual people for representative groups, and our opinions and assumptions paint them with broad, general strokes. Lazy. Lying. Selfish. Despicable. Making much ado about nothing.
It’s easier to dehumanize people when we assign them to groups. It’s not as easy when we look in the individual’s eyes.
The stories of others can teach us important things: what it means to grow up black in America, what it means to be poor in America, what it’s like being a woman in science or technology or any other field in which pay gaps exist, who the homeless really are, why people commit suicide, why addiction is so hard to overcome. Regardless of what we think and believe about any of these things, the best thing we can do to better understand them is to consider that perhaps we don’t know everything there is to know about these issues and then listen to the people who have lived lives marked by them.
Alfred Lord Tennyson once said, “I am a part of all that I have met,” and if these word are true, if we are, in fact, part of all we meet, then it’s also true that we belong to each other. And if we belong to each other, that means there is no me against you, us against them, human against human.
When my oldest son was younger and had periodic meltdowns during which his legs and arms flailed wildly and he shouted things he didn’t really mean, the best way to calm him down was to wrap our arms around him and whisper, “This is hard. I am here. You are safe.”
Our world is flailing. We are completely polarized from each other, suspicious, defensive, ready for a fight. Who will be the first to cross the bridge, approach the other side, wrap arms around a perceived enemy and whisper, “This is hard. I am here. You are safe. Tell me your story, because I’m ready to listen.”
I hope it will be you. Because it’s hard to hate people when you sit across the table from them.
Have a wonderful, love-filled November.
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by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
Marriage has been on my mind lately—probably because this month Ben and I celebrated 14 years of marriage.
When we married on a cloudy October day 14 years ago, we were idealistic kids, wearing love-colored glasses that erased things like a man taking off his shoes in the middle of the house so a woman would trip on them when she wasn’t looking; a woman squeezing the toothpaste from the top, rather than the bottom, because this is the only logical way; dishes left in the sink, clothes left on the floor, dinners that repeated too frequently to be considered anything but boring.
We were two different people. We came from two different backgrounds. We were raised differently, taught to value different things, shaped by our environments in different ways. We carried different victories, different scars, different wounds. We interpreted the words, actions, and motivations of people differently.
Over the years we learned, in an awkward, fumbling way, how to open ourselves to one another. We learned how not to diminish the experience of one another by explaining it away, or, worse, saying one or the other was being ridiculous for feeling this way or that way. We learned that feelings, beliefs, hopes, worries, the whole array of human emotion is valid—whether or not we readily agree with the emotions and experience of the other. We learned, most importantly, to listen to the words that lived underneath the spoken-aloud ones—the hidden words that were huddled up in a balls of hurt, disappointment, fear, hopelessness. These were the most important words, because they required work to uncover them. They required patience. They required listening with both a mind and a heart.
In the work of these last 14 years, we have uncovered my fear of abandonment, which drives my response to conflict, which drives my wall-building, which drives my sense of isolation, which drives…well, perhaps you get the picture.
A marriage of 14 years does not flourish without listening for these places of difference, without laying love gently over them so the hardened shells begin to soften. Even after 14 years spent together, I still do not know completely what it’s like to be Ben, because I have never lived his life or grown up a boy named Ben. And he still does not know what it’s like to be Rachel, because he has never lived my life or grown up a girl named Rachel. And so every day we battle our own defenses, and we seek to better and more wholly understand each other.
Because we belong to each other. Because this is what it means to love and be loved. Because the world needs more of this kind of love, stretched gently across all the places where we are most different.
by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
As I mentioned last month, I have, for the first time in eight years, only one child at home during the day, because his five brothers are now in school. So he and I have been going for runs together (he gets to ride in a stroller up all the hills here in San Antonio, while I huff and puff to his, “Run faster, Mama!”), practicing colors and shapes at the grocery store, and playing together on the playground. He’s not used to being the only kid around, since he was born into a household of seven—but he’s having a pretty good time being the center of our attention.
I’m still working on my mental health/suicide research for a traditionally published young adult book (or two…maybe even three). I recently had the privilege of sitting down with a young woman who has tried to commit suicide more than 10 times; she gifted me with her journals, which were both heartbreaking and illuminating.
I’ll be finishing up the draft that will be sent to my agent soon, and hopefully we’ll be on the way to getting published a book that portrays depression and suicide in a more accurate and hopeful way than has been thus far done. It’s so very hard to pull myself out of the research, because I want to make sure I do this right. It’s too important a subject to attempt writing even a fiction story without an accurate understanding of all that’s involved in a suicidal attempt.
Otherwise, I’m trying to keep my boys from doing stupid things (which is a full-time job when they’re not occupied with school)
celebrating 14 years of marriage with this guy
and doing the best I can with healthy dinners that don’t need cooking (or only have to be placed in a rotisserie grill).
Husband and I had a surprise vacation (surprise for the kids, not us) a couple of weeks ago, so next month you’ll be hearing all about what it’s like to keep a secret vacation from six children.
I hope you have a wonderful November!
by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
I was 19 years old when I stumbled upon these words from Madeleine L’Engle: “You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.”
This has been the mantra of my own writing life. I write the books that must be written, and I write them for children.
I have mentioned elsewhere that Madeleine L’Engle was a very big influence on me as a child. She was one of the first authors who awoke in me a love for science fiction. She taught me so many vocabulary words—in fact, my sixth grade English teacher, whose name I regrettably don’t remember (sixth grade was a pretty traumatic time in my life, and I think my brain, for self-protection, blocked out certain things), saw me reading L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time and required that I keep a vocabulary journal while reading it. She knew the power of vocabulary words and the multitude of unknown words in L’Engle’s book.
This, of course, ended up being a fantastic idea. L’Engle introduced me to a word that is still one of my favorites today: infinitesimal, which means, “extremely small.”
But it was not only her incredible use of words that drew me to L’Engle. She also showed me what it meant to be a strong girl. Meg Murry was a strong girl who did not back away from danger, though she was afraid. Not only that, but Meg’s mother was a scientist. Imagine that! A woman scientist. And a respected one, too.
L’Engle showed me that children are made to be valued. Charles Wallace was young but profound. He had a mind that could solve the most confounding of problems. She taught me that monsters are not always who or what we think they are by showing me the love Aunt Beast had for Meg. She showed me it was okay to be outcasts when you were outcast for the right reasons.
L’Engle was not afraid to write truth into her stories. Take, for example:
“Believing takes practice.”
“People are more than just the way they look.”
“Only a fool is not afraid.”
This bold ability to infuse truth into story made a significant impact on me both as a reader and a writer. I have read multiple L’Engle novels, including all her adult ones. I’ve read every memoir she’s written, including a heartbreaking one about her husband’s illness and death. Every book has contributed to who I am and how I see myself and my place in the world.
I am looking forward to the movie A Wrinkle in Time. I’ve been waiting for it since I was 11 and first read the magnificent book. I’m hopeful that the movie will honor L’Engle’s amazing contribution to literature and countless kids’ lives.
“A book, too, can be a star, explosive material, capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe,” L’Engle writes in A Wrinkle in Time. And it’s true. This is exactly why I write. I can be a light in my readers’ darkness.
I have been given the breathtaking opportunity to speak truth to your hearts, to communicate the truth that I myself have been given by so many writers who came before me, the truth that is this: You are loved, you are valuable, you are worthy, no matter what you look like, what you believe, how you live, where you come from.
And that’s a truth worth repeating again and again and again, and you will find it in every book I write. You will hear it so many times that one day you won’t need to hear it anymore, because your believing will have had enough practice.
And still I will tell you.
For more writings like this (and exclusive book recommendations, first looks at writing projects, and much more), sign up for Rachel’s monthly email newsletter. You’ll also get a few free books while you’re at it.
by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
The birds are singing just outside my window, some of them insistent, like they have something important to say, some of them relaxed in a way that speaks of family and maybe new chicks living in their nests among the rafters of my house. I watch how they dart about, a black blot in the morning sky. The chatter breaks the silence of sleep.
I am alone for now. It’s always good to be alone and yet know and understand that you are not alone, because something beautiful awaits just outside your window.
Here is the melody of their song:
- It is a beautiful day to be alive.
- I am here.
- Hear me sing.
They are singing a song I don’t understand, but it is a song I know.
by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
Well, school started!
Here’s a rundown of how we’re taking over the local elementary school this year.
This is the first time since our oldest started school five years ago that Ben and I have only had one child at home. And that one child is pretty delightful (as they all are). But seriously. He’s the easiest kid I’ve ever known. Or maybe I’m just practiced by this point.
With all my extra time (hahahahahahahaha) I’m reading extremely comprehensive bestiaries,
building cars and planes with the littlest,
and collecting the wildflowers my boys fling at me when they get home from school (because they missed me so much).
School has introduced a new dynamic into our reality, but it’s also heralded a return to our structure and routine that I need so much to thrive. So I’m in my element now, though I’m so deep in fascinating research I don’t know if I’ll ever climb out. One of these days I’ll get around to the story. But for now, I’m enjoying reading, conducting interviews, and gathering it all into a force of its own.
In other news, my book in the traditional publishing world is in exactly the same place it was when I wrote you last month: copyediting. Have I mentioned how long everything in traditional publishing takes? Sometime in the next few months, I should get a laid-out copy of it, which I’ll be able to read again (I’ve read this story about 15 times already) as the last eyes before it goes to print.
Fall, in my world, looks, smells, and feels like hope. May it look, smell and feel like hope in your world, too.
