Dear Friends ~

I hope this message finds you waking to the spring that is surely coming, in spite of all humans have done to disrupt our planet. We’re here. Still. And we too are rousing. I am heartened by the students and their allies flooding the streets and raising voices against gun violence this spring and by the heightened political engagement I meet everywhere I go.

It’s been a while since I have written to you here—November 15, 2017,  to be exact. The post-election period sent me into a prolonged time of political organizing. As part of a city-wide campaign to Democratize Philly at the level of the  Committee People, the most local offices in the Democratic Party, with the support of my friends at Neighborhood Networks I have been coordinating a campaign in my ward to recruit and train new candidates to run for these offices. We aim to invigorate Philadelphia politics with justice-oriented candidates who want to engage with their neighbors around the important issues that effect their lives, people  who will work vigorously to get out the vote for progressive candidates at election time. Ballot Access Petitions have been circulated, signed and filed. Before the primary campaign season begins, I take a good long breath and to write to you.

Democratize Philly Press Conference, Philadelphia City Hall, January, 2018

Alongside the political work, a Winter Writing Circle continues in my kitchen. as I engage in the urgent, adrenalizing work of the political arena, this gentle process of  listening, writing and sharing with others is a practice of slowing down and opening—to the subtler rhythms and the quieter voices humming through all creation. Whatever else I am doing, Friday rolls around and we come together around my kitchen table to write. This Friday circle will open to new members in April and continue through the month of May, and I will add a Thursday circle too in the Wissahickon Park. See the Upcoming Events on this page for information about these and other writing related events this spring.

In the personal realm, my winter has been rich with family celebrations, including the wedding of a nephew in Boston and the ninetieth birthday party of Wendy’s mother. But the winter has been rocked, too, with grief. On February 2, weeks after her triumphant birthday celebration, Eva Galson, my spouse Wendy’s brilliant and beautiful mother, my mother in law of forty two years, died. The hole she left is huge.

Shiva
In memory of Eva Charlotte Galson (1928-2018)

When such a mother dies,
when a life-time lover, birther, careful
tender of living flesh, leaves and
tears your world apart, you gaze
into the hole, the gape she left.
You finger the sad hanging threads,
notice the tatters of everyone
still walking in her circle of care—
no one to mend them.

You walk about the house,
her home forever altered, this place
in which she breathed, baked,
ate her cereal, nourished and watered
her thriving plants. You walk about
in rags—wanting nothing,
nothing but the feel of the fibers
she left behind, however torn,
you want the filaments of her
touching your skin for all time.

She is gone. Her threads
are your threads now.

by Susan Windle

We finger the threads, noticing which of them are ours to carry forward now. Eva was an exquisitely attentive listener and observer, one of the finest I have ever met. I think that thread is mine—maybe other threads too. I pray to do her honor in the years I have left to live.

I have more to share from the realm of grieving—more thoughts, more poems—but I’ll leave them for another day. Or two. Or three…

I will be back here soon.

With love,

Susan