healing Archives - Lisa Duchene, Writer

As a kid glued to the TV in my grandparents’ living room, I relished every magical visit to the Land of Make Believe with Mr. Rogers. His gift and message — you are loved, just as you are — endures. We need it more than ever. With love stories, I’ll do my small part here to spread it.

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood — the new movie about Fred Rogers and his vision to create a quality, healthful TV show for children — is packed with gems of wisdom and great life advice. It’s well worth your time.

I’m always curious after seeing a bio-pic about what’s true and what’s a fictional product of movie-making, so I’ve been reading up and discovering wonderful nuggets of inspiration for my grown-up life and work.

Some quick background:

In the movie, a cynical magazine writer is assigned to write a piece about Mr. Rogers for an Esquire magazine issue on heroes. (True.) Fred Rogers took a personal interest in the writer — the relationship at the heart of the movie. (True.) Those interviews led to a rich, four-year friendship until Rogers died in 2002. (All true.) The writer-character’s name in the movie (Lloyd Vogel) and back-story on his personal crises are both fictionalized.

Tom Junod, the real-life writer, penned a gorgeous piece in this month’s issue of The Atlantic.

Junod tied this story to our times. What would Fred Rogers make of our times? A worthwhile read.

Here’s the gem from Junod’s story that struck me this week, as I was drafting this little post about writing love stories.

Junod once told Fred Rogers about seeing five motorists in Atlanta stop their cars to help an old, big snapping turtle safely cross a highway exit ramp. Fred Rogers asked if he would be writing about it.

No, Junod said, but asked Fred Rogers why he thought it would be a good story:

“Because whenever people come together to help either another person or another creature, something has happened, and everyone wants to know about it—because we all long to know that there’s a graciousness at the heart of creation.”
~ Fred Rogers

Love Stories

Holy guacamole. THAT gave me an A-Ha, validating moment.

I write love stories, mostly for my ThanksgivinginFebruary.com blog. That’s my most joyful work and “passion project.”

That real-life, big family turkey dinner in the middle of February almost 10 years ago led to my obsession with sharing real stories from my real life.

Why? Because I experienced something remarkable that February night and I’m wired to share it. That Mr. Rogers quote brought me a big step closer to understanding it.

You may wonder: What the heck do turtles and exit ramps have to do with roasted turkey, my crazy family and a snowy winter evening?

Love. Sweet. Love.

Graciousness over Pain

As my father lay unconscious, I believed there was some risk that one of his ex-wives or girlfriends could harm him. Not necessarily that any one of those women, nor that I, were capable of actually unplugging him from the ventilator. But that the stress of one’s presence — or an ugly cat fight between us — could perhaps trigger his cardiac arrest. Or something equally awful.

I understood their anger, even as I stayed close to protect him. I asked his ex-wives to stay out of his room, and loudly joked about this to reassure my dad, just in case he could hear us.

He had deeply hurt and betrayed all of us. I had witnessed these women’s pain. As his daughter, I shared their pain.

None of those dark products of my imagination actually happened.

Instead, my dad’s ex-wives — my mother and stepmother — his daughters and long-time girlfriend all beautifully worked together to help him survive and recover. Then we celebrated with a big turkey dinner in the middle of February.

Each of these women acted out of graciousness, kindness and love. They became the heroes of our family story.

The “graciousness at the heart of creation” as Fred Rogers put it to Tom Junod, was a bright, shining light in my family that night.

I witnessed my mom, stepmother and Stephanie all working together in Stephanie’s small kitchen, preparing a meal for our family. No catfights. The impossible became possible.

That experience changed our whole family for the better. It changed our dad. It changed me, helped heal me. That’s my truth.

And since we all long to know about that graciousness, as Fred Rogers’ words confirm, I’ll keep sharing this and lots of other love stories.

Love at the Core

I started writing about it, almost immediately. I’ve been a writer since I was a kid, but telling this story was my first real attempt at writing about my own life instead of the lives of other people, or scientific findings, politics, fishing communities, small town government, environmental issues or business trends.

These ThanksgivinginFebruary.com stories explore many themes: Gratitude, family, gathering, friends, pain, turkey, estrangement, apple pie, step-mom-hood, grief, divorce, making peace as we pass the dinner rolls and sweet butter, falling in love, making a new family.

Failing to make peace and finding hope to try again later. All of that stuff of life.

Yet — love is at their core. Love is their essential fiber, and stitches them together.

‘If it’s about love …’

Long ago, as I was just starting this work, I was on a bus trip in Montana, chatting with a group of writers and their spouses about my urge to write about my experience of my family healing over a turkey dinner.

“Does anybody care?” I asked. “Would anybody read that story?”

A woman answered me: “I would,” she said. “I’d read it if it was about love.”

I’ve never seen her again. I don’t remember her name. Just this: “I’d read it if it was about love.”

‘You are loved, just the way you are.’

To be clear: I’m not Fred Rogers. For one thing, I’m not as kind (but I’m working on it). I don’t have his vision and I talk way too fast to children. (I’m working on that, too.)

But I do believe in my bones that no one else has my stories and can tell them the way I can, because I had the good fortune to grow up knowing I was loved.

And that I can be brave, tell my stories and keep working to share the most important message of all: You are loved, just as you are.

This is true. Mr. Rogers told me on TV.

In these times, we face darkness on our planet, in our country and in our families. As I write, news alerts pop up on my phone about another shooting, today in Pensacola. I can’t pretend all of that way, nor can I fix it.

I can pray. I can speak. I can vote. I look for and tell love stories. They surround us.

We can love each other through the darkness. One gracious moment at a time. One friend, one neighbor helping an imperiled turtle, wounded soul and broken family.

One love story at a time.

~~~

The world needs love stories. To share mine with you is a great joy, honor and privilege.

A few, recent posts:

Blessed & Grateful: When Wishes Come True — Meeting my Super Hero

Over Christmas, 1999, I was lucky to share the peace I’d long sought with my dad, among the spectacular beauty of the Maine coast. As we both worked hard to heal old, painful family wounds, that visit was a gift that still brings me comfort, peace and hope — my wish for you.

Just south of Bath, Maine, the road leads out from town and trees to an opening of big blue sky and water as it makes a sweeping curve over a bridge, around an ample cove on the western shore of the mighty Kennebec River. When I lived alone in an in-law apartment near the bridge, the spectacular beauty of that teeny place called Winnegance brought me peace every day.

Great blue herons fish the cove’s exposed mud flats at low tide on the salty, river side of the bridge. On its other side, a small freshwater lake. Two men who lived across the cove from each other raced every year to be the first to light a small Christmas tree on the edge of the cove.

My mornings began with a short walk, cup of coffee in hand, down the lane, past the captain’s house, and an old rusty shed to the shore of the river. I would settle on an overturned skiff — a small wooden rowboat — and watch the tide move in or out a bit more with every small wave, looking up to take in the full expanse of blue sky and blue water stretching out to the pines across the river.

Watch. Think. Breathe.

Not a bad way to start the day. Then a longer walk along a path through the woods beside the river, across the road toward the lake to the woods, all threaded with trails. I had a favorite little spot on a log beside the lake. Brisk walk home, then off to work.

The Hard Work of Rebuilding

Over Christmas 1999, I shared that peaceful place with my dad. In the years to come, we would draw on those powerful moments when we needed quiet comfort. I still do.

We were rebuilding our relationship then, both working hard toward a place of peace that had long eluded us. I was angry with him for a long time for hurting our family. Our conversations were few, far-between and strained. To his credit, over those 10 years my dad never let go or stopped calling. Then it was time for me to begin to forgive, and focus on the good he had done and could do.

About four years into our rebuilding, as Christmas approached along with the stress of traveling and balancing visits with long-divorced parents, I decided to spend the holiday in Maine. I would see my mom and most of our extended family on an upcoming vacation. Dad had just started visiting me in Maine, where I’d settled after leaving home 10 years prior for college. He decided to drive out from Ohio for Christmas.

The Ice Skater

On that bitter, single-digit cold Christmas Eve, dad and I walked my routine loop over the packed snow, and had almost reached “my” log beside the lake when we saw the ice skater.

A man glided on the lake’s frozen surface with a hand-held power drill, stopping to measure the thickness of the ice, presumably to determine whether skating would be part of the festivities.

The skater looked up from his task and spotted us watching him from among the trees on the shoreline. He waved to us, and called “Merry Christmas.” We returned the greeting. “Merry Christmas,” we called, and waved.

Dad already sounded wistful, his voice registering that the moment held significance though we couldn’t fully understand it then.

Something so wonderful about those intense moments of peace during a good visit stuck with both of us — because years later dad would say: Remember that Christmas in Maine? Remember that ice skater?

There was also a bearable dose of chaos and tension between us.

My apartment was two stacked rooms — living downstairs, where dad slept on a pull-out futon — and my sleeping, laundry and studio space in the room upstairs. From the second-floor, I could spot the herons fishing the river cove or the sunset over the lake.

Making Order

I have never been a neat freak. But I do need a certain order: a clear kitchen counter, dishes done, the sofa blankets folded and pillows arranged. Tidy.

My dad was boyish, charming, funny — and like Pigpen from Peanuts. Messy. He traveled within a certain swirling flotsam of clutter, a challenge to the order in my apartment.

One evening before Christmas Eve, I’d just cleaned up and cleared the kitchen counter, pausing to appreciate that small patch of welcome order when his radar picked up an empty spot. He walked over and dumped his pockets full of crumpled scratch lotto tickets, books of matches, receipts and loose change all over the counter.

I squawked at him — which was a score for him, because he’d riled me up. He was like a little kid, eager for attention, taunting, teasing.

I could ignore him for only so long. Eventually he’d set me off, and then celebrate his small victory. It was tiring.

Better Get Started

When dad arrived a couple of days before Christmas, he’d demanded to know where he could find the apricot, almond, white chocolate biscotti I made for the holidays. Since the blade of my food processor had cracked, I could not make the addictive cookies he loved to dunk in his coffee.

I came home from work one day to find a new food processor on the kitchen counter. Dad had scratched enough lotto tickets to win some cash, and went right to the store.

There, he said. You can make biscotti now.

“Dad,” I reasoned. “That takes several hours. You have to bake it twice, and cool it completely after the first bake.”

“Well, you’d better get started then.”

Sweet Lift

What I most remember of that visit is a sense of peace my dad and I desperately needed together, to help us heal. Walking through the woods. Seeing the ice skater. Cooking Maine lobsters for Christmas dinner.

That Christmas Eve, we drove through the dark night toward those tall pines on the other side of the river, to a candlelight service at my neighbors’ tiny church.

A soprano exquisitely sang O Holy Night, her crystal clear voice perfectly piercing the darkness, rising into the peak of the simple wood ceiling, lifting us all toward the stars.

Every family has a story. They seem to all have some pain, tension and disappointment — all often cutting sharper and deeper over the holidays.

My Peace I Give Unto You

But there is peace, beauty, joy and light, too. All around us. All of it in abundance every day.

My wish for everyone is to fully experience all of that goodness, for the holidays call our attention to it. To take it in may simply require a pause — or perhaps a long road of healing.

Better get started. One step. Then the next. The sweetness and peace will be worth it.

When my dad was sick and dying and I wanted to calm and comfort us both amidst tremendous pain and fear, I’d remind him of the ice skater and our Christmas in Maine. I think it helped some.

Whenever I hear O Holy Night, I’ll pause, listen closely, and tear up. It’s never sounded quite the same as on that Christmas Eve, when it lifted my dad and me, among a small group of people bundled and huddled against the cold.

My peace I give unto you, especially at Christmas.

Wishing you all wonderful, holiday joy. If you liked this post, please consider sharing! ~ Lisa

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