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What Matters?

March 26, 2017

Dear Reva,

I went to a friend’s funeral today. An older friend, but not much older. Young enough, let’s say, for his death to come as a major shock.

This particular friend lived well, in every sense of the word. He travelled the world, had a huge circle of friends, loved his family, and did incredibly important work that changed lives. He burned brilliantly, if for far too short a time. He left behind him a legacy of activism, fellowship, and love.

The older I get, the more I appreciate how little we control in this life, including when we leave it. That realization has made me more mindful about my priorities. In fact, I’ve begun to think about my life in much the same way that I think about the programs of the various boards I sit on. What’s the overall mission? What are the strategic priorities? And how does any given activity align with them?

If this sounds hilariously corporate, I won’t disagree, even though my professional life has moved into a non-, even anti-corporate, phase. But successful boards, and businesses, are focused on where they want to invest their time, and they reject any project that falls outside their priorities. And I want to do the same, because that’s how you create a meaningful life and, dare I say it, legacy.

A dear friend of mine says that he no longer reads books to the end if he isn’t enjoying them. Why? Because he’s past middle age and he knows that he has a finite number of books left to read. And he won’t waste a minute on one that doesn’t excite him.

All of this is a roundabout way of saying that my priorities right now are, broadly speaking, my children, my family (including my beautiful new dog), my friends, my own health and wellness, and my writing. And anything that falls outside of those priorities has to be extremely compelling to get my attention these days.

In that vein, it feels great to say that my novel – the product of two years of work – is coming out on May 30. It wasn’t easy to write, but it was worth the struggle. Writers I respect are saying very generous things about it, my publisher is thrilled, and perhaps most importantly, I’m really, really proud of it.

Lots of love,

Kate

Pen Pal Project, Recent News

Next step

January 8, 2017

Dear Reva,

What a year 2016 was. And I don’t mean that in a good way.

I started writing to you several times, most recently the day after the US election. Like so many women I know, I sat glued to the television, elation fading to faint hope fading to despair. Where women are concerned, it turns out, it’s not enough to be smarter, more prepared, more principled, or – let’s just say it – better in every conceivable way. But I guess we knew that already. We were hoping it wasn’t true, but we knew.

And so many people died! So many touchstones of our generation lost. It made me feel old. But then, so did the plantar fasciitis and the adhesive capsulitis, and the other itises that denote a body in middle-aged decline.

I wanted to write about all kinds of things that were happening this year – relationships and divorce and parenting teenagers in particular – but all of the issues I wanted to tell you about were private, not just to me, but to other people, and that’s one of the lines I try not to cross. And so I thought about you, but I didn’t write.

I measure out my life in to-do lists, which I keep. They end up providing an extremely granular picture of my life, from the small (‘pick up prescription’) to the large (‘finish book edits’). I leafed through my 2016 daybook this morning. And I could see that even when I was in survival mode, putting one foot in front of the other day after day after day, I was still making progress. I didn’t finish where I began. I grew.

Someone said to me recently, “You’re lucky to be such a kind person. That’s a nice way to be in the world.” And I said, “I work at it. It’s a choice.”

We don’t get to choose everything. But we choose more than we think. We choose our intentions. We choose our behaviour. We choose our priorities. And with these choices, we guide the direction of our incremental, daily steps, however heavy they may be at any given time. There is freedom in that.

Happy New Year, darling.

Love,

Kate

Follow the Pen Pal Project here.

Pen Pal Project

Love, Unexpectedly

August 1, 2016

Dear Reva,

I have so many conversations with you in my head that don’t make it onto paper.

Sometimes it’s because life intervenes, and intervenes again. But recently it’s been for a different reason entirely. I’ve been feeling shy. Our letters are public, and while there are conversations I might have with you privately, I’m not always willing to have them publicly.

Which is why I haven’t told you that I’m in love.

This is wonderful, obviously. It is a sensation I never imagined experiencing again and it is glorious.

It is also terrifying.

For starters, I’m out of practice. The last time I fell in love was close to twenty years ago, and we all know how that worked out. And then there are all the complications. Logistical ones: Dependents, responsibilities, schedules. Emotional ones: My shit. His shit. New shit that we are creating by combining all of our old shit together.

Here are some of the things you don’t do when you fall in love at our stage: stay up all night talking about the relationship (nothing is improved by losing a night of sleep); express every feeling you have every moment that you have it (no one at our age needs this kind of drama); make elaborate plans about the future (because you never know, do you?); overlook the other person’s flaws (they aren’t going anywhere); avoid hard conversations (they aren’t going anywhere); and imagine that you and he are going to change substantially from the people you are today (you made that mistake once, and the results were disappointing).

On the other hand, here are some of the things you do when you fall in love at our stage: have excellent sex as often as possible (because life is short and everything still works); get a nice boost from seeing yourself through the eyes of your new partner (interesting! funny! sexy!); talk about yourself as a person with individual preferences and interests, just like you did when you dated in your twenties (and discover that many of those preferences and interests remain the same, which is oddly comforting); and learn a staggering amount about all of your aforementioned shit.

I know what you’re thinking. That doesn’t sound very romantic, does it?

But strangely, it is. It’s about seeing past the fantasy to what is real. It’s about being equally present in Italian hotel rooms and in hospital rooms. It’s about knowing that there are no guarantees, and this might not work, and you might be humiliated, and still deciding that you’re all in. And it’s about being loved for who you are, with all the cracks and dents and imperfections that you would change if you could, but can’t.

It’s not a Disney romance, for certain. But what is it? I’ll have to keep you posted.

Lots of love,

Kate

Pen Pal Project

Enjoy the ride

March 22, 2016

Dear Reva,

Between your travels and mine, it has been a month since you had a letter from me. It reminds me that the weekly back and forth is better, because there is too much to cover!

I loved your glam photos from Washington. Actually, I love everything about this new Canadian government. Watching the US political scene only intensifies my love of country. It is trite to say it, but entirely true: we are lucky here.

Speaking of the US, I’ve been travelling to promote my book, and was in NYC at the end of February. I was racing to catch a train to Greenwich from Grand Central Station, on my way to give a lecture at the Greenwich YWCA on the topic of midlife creativity, and it occurred to me that I was doing exactly what I had always dreamed of doing.

This gave me pause. I don’t make a lot of money, and I still have all kinds of day to day stress, and there aren’t enough hours in the day, and my editor doesn’t always give me a gold star, and I have more domestic responsibilities than I ever did, but I’m doing exactly what I’ve always dreamed of doing.

Do you remember your letter about celebrating our achievements instead of moving the goalposts with every success? I am a chronic goalpost-mover. Every new skill I master, in every period of growth, makes me hungry for a fresh adventure. I get restless. When it’s time to celebrate, I’m usually too busy working on my next project.

I often think of Tennyson’s wonderful poem Ulysses. I learned it as a teenager, and these lines still resonate for me:

I am part of all that I have met;

Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough

Gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades

Forever and forever when I move.

That day in New York I was worried – worried about the lecture I was about to give and for which I felt unprepared, worried about the next day’s meeting with my American editor, worried about making the train. I was worried about everything that lay out on the horizon in front of me.

And then I remembered a convocation address by Neil Gaiman, in which he describes the best advice he ever received and never took. It was from Stephen King, who said: “This is really great. You should enjoy it.”

But he couldn’t. He ignored the advice.

Instead, he says, he worried about it: “I worried about the next deadline, the next idea, the next story. There wasn’t a moment for the next fourteen or fifteen years that I wasn’t writing something in my head, or wondering about it. And I didn’t stop and look around and go, this is really fun. I wish I’d enjoyed it more. It’s been an amazing ride. But there were parts of the ride I missed, because I was too worried about things going wrong, about what came next, to enjoy the bit I was on. That was the hardest lesson for me, I think: to let go and enjoy the ride, because the ride takes you to some remarkable and unexpected places.”

I’m not Neil Gaiman, of course. Not even close. But that’s the point, really. You just never know. And the horizon will keep moving as you do. And you have to figure out how to enjoy the ride.

Love,

Kate

Follow the Pen Pal Project here.

Read Reva’s last letter here.

Pen Pal Project

Brave New World

November 17, 2015

Dear Reva,

You’ve been on my mind all week, since I learned of your arthritis diagnosis. In the same week, a dear friend lost her sister to cancer.

A couple of letters ago, I talked about the shiny upside of midlife, the ushering-in of a life stage rich in professional opportunity and success. Here, though, we have the dark side of the midlife coin, where things start to go wrong with kids, marriages, aging parents, and our own surprisingly fragile health.

You will, of course, address this challenge with your characteristic grit. But I so wish that you didn’t have to. I know you will tell me if there is anything I can do, at any time, to help you.

I have news of my own. I’ve started…dating.

I was never very adept at dating, truthfully. In fact, I managed to avoid dating entirely in high school, then Macgyvered a few university hook-ups into relationships, and then went to law school and married a classmate. And now I’m going out for coffee with strangers, and remembering why it was easier to do this in university, surrounded by packs of friends and fortified with bad beer.

It is also, I have to say, a total paradigm shift to date without any objective other than companionship. I’m not looking for a father for my children (they have one, and I’m done birthing babies). I don’t need a financial partner. And I’m not trying to assess potential, as we all had to do back in our twenties. We’re fully formed adults now, most of us having been through at least one brutal life experience. We know who we are.

And we’re online.

My god, Reva, the brave not-so-new world of online dating, that has such people in it! I am learning so much, about myself most of all. Because I am an extremely nice person, I will say no more than this: it is a whole book of its own.

And it would be a shame to waste good material.

With lots of love,

Kate

Pen Pal Project

Election Day

October 19, 2015

Dear Reva,

The fall is racing by in a blur of turkey dinners and Halloween decorations and soccer games and homework and karate lessons and puberty and literary events. And political chatter, of course, because today is the Canadian election. Have you voted yet?

On the subject of the election, I’ve obviously aged into a new demographic in the past four years: I know a statistically significant number of people running for office. As I commute across the city every day, I see people on lawn signs that I knew in law school, or in university, or in a previous career. Other friends are holding fundraisers or running campaigns.

We’ve arrived. We are officially entering our professional power years. So, what are we going to do with them?

This was, I recall, one of the reasons we started The Pen Pal Project. I haven’t spent much time talking about my career in these pages, not because I haven’t been focused on it, but because I’m superstitious about work-in-progress, and because other life events seemed more letter-worthy. But you asked in your last letter about how I write, how I keep the threads of the story from unraveling in my head when real life is grabbing at the ends and pulling.

So it seems like the right time to mention that my second novel is due at the beginning of December, and it appears that I will hit my deadline. This means two things. First, that I am writing furiously and am displaying frequent hermit-like behavior, with an occasional exception made for the aforementioned literary events (I still feel like a fan-girl, but not like an imposter, which is progress). And second, that amid all of the personal chaos of the past year, I have managed (almost) to write a book.

It occurred to me recently that the crux of identity is in the doing. That is to say, we are what we do. I’ve spent more time than I’d care to admit over the course of my life asking the question Who am I and what is my purpose? Lately I’ve had very little time for that kind of reflection, and have been fixed on present-tense questions, such as How am I going to get through this? Different.

The interesting thing that happens when things fall apart is that your life boils down to certain essentials. You see a much smaller circle of people, you participate in a much smaller range of activities, and you engage in a narrower set of intellectual pursuits. You do not have the energy to perform. You are doing only what is essential for your survival, and it reveals an incredible amount about your identity without any effort on your part.

I’m a writer. I discovered this because even in the worst moments of my life, I kept writing. Characters pushed themselves into my imagination, and even when I was too tired to write their stories, I could still find the energy to write my own, here in these letters to you. So I’m electing to spend my power years writing. What are you going to do?

Love,

Kate

Pen Pal Project

I Can See The Moon

October 6, 2015, my office

Dear Reva,

I passed a big milestone this weekend.

It’s been a year since my husband told me he was leaving. At the time, it came as an extremely unpleasant surprise, and today it still remains something of a mystery.

I’m not going to say that my house burned down and now I can see the moon (as the saying goes). No one wants her house to burn down, and you can see the moon just fine by stepping outside once in a while (except when there is a rare and beautiful eclipse, in which case you can’t see it at all). I don’t think that change, even necessary change, requires a catastrophe to bring it about, nor do I believe that every catastrophe is for the best, necessarily.

But if your house/life burns down, the process of rebuilding is intensely conscious. The life you had before the disaster took shape organically, over many years, and it reflected both the compromises of partnership, and the preferences of your younger self. The life you now contemplate will express your present identity. So what should it look like?

Adversity isn’t identity, and no one would want it to be. We are infinitely greater than the sum of our negative experiences. But it is human nature to reject the idea of pain without purpose. I think that our sense of a true self, of an identity, often comes into focus through our attempts to understand painful events. (On this topic, I was very moved by Andrew Solomon’s thoughts on how the worst moments in our lives make us who we are.)

When you emerge from the shell of your former life, you feel as you imagine a newborn must feel: dependent, disoriented, frightened, and battered by overwhelming emotions and sensations. But then, as your agency returns, you begin to observe your own actions with interest. Freed of patterns and routines, how do you choose to spend your time? With whom? Which activities do you anticipate with pleasure, and which ones with dread? And from these basic cues, you can begin to build a life around your identity, instead of crafting an identity to fit your life.

I wouldn’t have chosen the fire, but it has generated a new life that is wholly mine. Because if your house burns down, why content yourself with simply looking at the moon? Why not shoot for it?

Yours,

Kate

P.S. God, yes, it’s messy.

P.P.S. Really looking forward to seeing you in person (!) at the International Festival of Authors party. Both of us in the same room at the same time: an event almost as rare as a lunar eclipse. We will need photographic evidence.

Follow the Pen Pal Project here.

Read Reva’s last letter here.

Pen Pal Project, Recent News

Say please

September 9, 2015

My office

Dear Reva,

Someone recently described these letters as ‘earnest’ in conversation. The conversation was, in fact, about something else, but I can’t remember anything about it other than this one comment. I don’t think he meant it as a criticism, even. But I am not very good with criticism, which is a huge problem if you tend to see it everywhere.

(To my friend, who reads my letters, and innocently chose the word ‘earnest’ to describe them: THIS IS NOT ABOUT YOU. Although one of the great differences between this friend and me is that he wouldn’t actually think it was about him, first because he knows me; and second, because he is a man; and third, because he is not a pleaser, which I most assuredly am.)

The point of this story is mysterious, I know. Maybe I just wanted to warn people off referring to me as earnest in the future. But because I’m an English major, I’m good at pretending to have a point, so here goes: at the halfway mark of our Pen Pal Project, I wonder if I have fallen into the trap of trying to make everyone like me in what was supposed to be a really honest conversation.

Don’t get me wrong. I am, in person, extremely likeable. You know that, because you’ve met me, but it’s important to me that other people, the ones who read these letters but haven’t met me, think so too.

There, you see? It’s like a tic.

For me, September has always felt like the start of a new year. It’s a time for resolutions and promises of self-improvement. And this year, I’m going to become less concerned with pleasing others, and more concerned with pleasing myself.

Is that okay?

Love,

Kate

P.S. It’s odd how often our minds are on the same topics, however scattered they may be (not adult colouring books, necessarily, but refugees and Ashley Madison for sure). Thanks for your last letter. And for your piece in the Huffington Post today on how communities can start to shake off the sense of helplessness and rage that we all feel about the refugee crisis, and channel it into positive action. Well done.

P.P.S. Okay, that was earnest. But it’s in a post-script, so it doesn’t really count.

Read Reva’s last letter here.

Follow the ongoing correspondence here.

Pen Pal Project

Time flies

August 24, 2015

My office

Dear Reva,

Time is indeed flying by. The evenings are getting cooler, I’m ordering school uniforms and lunches and registering for fall programs, and my book deadline is getting closer week by week. What a summer, though! Such long stretches of glorious weather. We’ve been lucky.

You asked if I was motivated to write The Hole in the Middle by an anxiety about the passage of time. In short, yes, I was. I had a disconcerting sense, as my 40^th birthday approached, that I was spending my precious time on the wrong things, professionally speaking. I was in a job that was very senior and challenging, but my work was largely invisible. My role was to contribute to the individual legacy of my boss, and to the overall reputation of my institutional employer.

I began to feel that I was hiding in some way, and was in danger of never realizing my full potential. And I remembered that I had always wanted to write a book. And I asked myself if I still intended to keep that promise to myself, and if so, when.

Five years later, my life is transformed. I’m a professional writer with a bestselling book that will come out in the US in January. I’m halfway through the writing of my second novel. I’m not married anymore. I’ve moved. I’ve lost friends. I’ve gained friends. I have a pen pal. My boys are old enough to be proud that their mother wrote a book.

As for my favourite quote about the passage of time, I give you Robert Frost:

Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf’s a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

Much has been written about this deceptively simple poem, but my own interpretation is that a life fully realized – fully lived – includes loss, change, and grief. And perhaps, understanding that reality, we can embrace change with less fear and less regret?

Yours,

Kate

Read Reva’s last letter here.

Follow the Pen Pal Project here.

Pen Pal Project, Recent News

I Am Titanium.

July 28, 2015, my office

Dear Reva,

Your last letter got me thinking (again) about emotional health, and specifically about resilience.

I am, as it turns out, a remarkably resilient person. I suspected this, but hadn’t really been tested until this past year. And in fact, one of the true benefits of surviving an emotional trauma is discovering that you can.

A divorce, I appreciate, is a garden-variety trauma in the big scheme of things. But, for example, I know a person whose daughter was abducted, raped and murdered, and who then had to relive the experience in court ten years later when the murderer was finally identified and prosecuted. Without question, she has survived one of the worst things, if not the worst thing, that could possibly happen to a person. And yet, she is one of the most inspiring, joyful and interesting women I have ever met.

What do we make of this? Why is it that some people who experience negative, even horrific, life events manage to bounce back from them, while others never do?

My own view about the past is that it is not something we ‘get over’, but something we integrate, and in that sense it is always with us. Resilient people seem to be able to integrate past experiences into their present sense of self in a healthy way.

To some degree resilience seems to be innate, but research suggests that it can also be learned and nurtured. The Canadian Mental Health Association has a list of 11 mental fitness tips that boost resilience: daydream, ‘collect’ positive emotional moments, learn ways to cope with negative thoughts, do one thing at a time, exercise, enjoy hobbies, set personal goals, keep a journal, share humour, volunteer, treat yourself well.

Do you know what struck me about this list the first time I read it? How many of the tips I would have thought were ‘flaky’ five years ago (everything except exercising, setting personal goals, volunteering and sharing humour), how many of these strategies I now use regularly (all of them except keeping a journal, although an argument could be made that this correspondence is a form of journal-keeping), and how well they work (incredibly well).

(It is interesting here to note in passing that the study of positive psychology – focused on human strengths such as resilience – is a relatively new field. Apparently, up until twenty years or so ago, psychology was entirely focused on human dysfunction, an admittedly large tent. All of which is to say that even psychologists themselves have struggled with the notion of taking positive mental health seriously.)

Coincidentally, when I found this list, I had just started ‘collecting’ happiest moments of the day, inspired by this Elizabeth Gilbert clip. I wondered what my collection would reveal over the course of a week, and if it would square with my beliefs about what makes me happy. And you know what? It did. Here’s my week:

Cuddling my kid while watching Green Lantern cartoons.
Watching my kid open his birthday present and knowing I got it absolutely right.
Laughing with my mom and my sister.
The satisfying mental ‘pop’ of figuring out a plot problem with my book.
Watching my kids play pirates with water guns and inflatable boats.
Listening to my kid read a bedtime story to his little cousin.
Having a long conversation with a girlfriend over dinner.

What’s the source of my resilience? It’s all right there on the list: family, friends, creativity, connection and belonging. Good to know.

Yours,

Kate

Read the Pen Pal archive here.

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