Category Archives: Amazing Women

H is for Holocaust

Leave a reply

I had no idea this was going to be my word for the letter “h.” In fact, when I brainstormed a list of words the other day, my “h” word was “happy.” Such a bright, sunny, hopeful, feel good word. So what happened?

Last night, I watched the movie “Sarah’s Key,” (Netflix added it their streaming options, so you can watch it on demand). It made a better movie than it did a book, most likely because the amazing Kristin Scott Thomas played the lead. She has the ability to play a character haunted by longing in a way no one else can match.

Then I woke up to a gray, rainy day, still thinking about it, about them, all those people lost, all that suffering and brutality. You might not know this about me, but I am a bit obsessed with the Holocaust, and have been ever since I first read Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. 

When she made her first entry in her diary, Anne was four years older than when I first read it, but there was something about Anne’s voice that seemed to come from inside my own head. She was so much like me. She loved books and movies; had one older sibling; wanted to grow up and marry and have children and to be an actress or a writer; she was independent and stubborn, but also sensitive; she felt like no one who knew her really knew her, that no one saw her true self. She wrote in her diary because “I want to write, but more than that, I want to bring out all kinds of things that lie buried deep in my heart.”

I identified with Anne’s isolation and her hope for the future. I fell in love with her, mourned her death as if I’d lost a real friend. I felt the sad recognition that for every person like Anne, full of hope and possibility, there was another full of pain and anger, someone who had the potential to get in the way, to wreck and ruin that possibility.

I’ve read this book many times over the years. Every time, I brace myself for the disappointment that I am sure will come, because I can’t believe the actual book could possibly match my memory of it. I expect that it won’t be nearly as moving or meaningful—but it is, every time. And every time, my heart breaks again—that we as humans can be both so wonderful and so horrible.

Gratitude Friday

3 Replies

This post is a mashup of The Little Bliss List and Joy Jam, and as such is meant to celebrate: the little things that brought me hope and happiness this week, the sweet stuff of life, those small gifts that brought me joy this week. By sharing them, I not only make public my gratitude, but maybe also help you notice your own good stuff and send some positive energy out into the world.

1. Tiny spring flowers. How do they get them so small?! There are two huge beds of them as you enter from the south side of campus by the parking garage at CSU, tiny daffodils and tulips and a few others I can’t even name, all in miniature but such bright color, such big joy in my heart when I see them. I know the picture above looks like a regular sized daffodil, but it’s full bloom was no bigger than a quarter.

2. Susannah Conway is going to be at World Domination Summit in July, and so am I! She’s proposed a session called “Writing from the Heart” and I hope it gets enough votes to run, but at the very least, I am going to be able to tell her in person, right to her sweet face, how much I adore her. It was on my Mondo Beyondo list to do just that some day, and it looks like it’s going to happen.

3. Eating clean and drinking juice. After two weeks of this, I cannot tell you how good I feel, not just physically but emotionally. My brain works better, I am happier, I have more energy. So simple, so profound.

4. Spring. I know, I know…blah, blah, blah. But, I can’t help but mention it again–the weather, everything budding out and blooming, sitting in the backyard reading, watching Dexter roll in the grass and Sam chase the squirrels. Although, this is Colorado, so Spring weather this week meant it was 80 degrees on Sunday and snowing on Tuesday.

5. This week, I got the best (and most surprising) compliment: she called me “positive.” After years of struggling with anxiety and depression, thinking of myself as moody and dark and disgruntled, it makes me so happy that people are noticing and appreciating the change, the shift in me.

6. WILD. My writing group met today, and we had so much fun, even made Full Moon Dreamboards together. I adore those women.

7. Laurie Wagner’s Telling True Stories. Class officially starts on Monday, but there’s lots of prep happening already, lots of anticipation and excitement. To add to my own personal hysteria, I just found out that Andrea Scher, author of Superhero Journal, and teacher of Mondo Beyondo (the course that started it all for me) and Superhero Photo is going to be there too! I owe Andrea so much gratitude, that even after nine months, I still haven’t worked out quite how to communicate it–it’s just too much.