What does it mean to be a creative soul in a challenging and often uncreative universe?
How can we tackle those challenges to embrace our inner creativity in whatever form it takes?
To inspire you on your journey, here are some hopefully helpful snippets and contemplations from my life as a writer, activist, and wannabee musician–the good, the bad, and the ugly, but mostly stuff I’m grateful for!
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Soon after the presidential election in 2016, I told myself complacency was no longer an option. This “mantra” became my modus operandi as I struggled to figure out what I could do to stop the nightmare. I had taken a break from political activism in the proceeding years, prioritizing writing in the small spaces I had left after my demanding day job. But all of a sudden I was thrown into reading all the political pundits I could get my hands on, searching for some tidbit of info that would tell me what we needed to do to stop the MAGA agenda. There had to be some magic formula–and those folks who were smarter and more in the thick of things had to know what to do.
But, alas, no easy recipes. Everyone–activists, super-activists, previously dormant activists, and non-activists–much as we railed about the state of affairs, seemed clueless about how to put a stop to it.
Since complacency wasn’t an option, I tried to do what I could. I went to dozens of political meetings and started, with the help of my daughter and son-in-law, a weekly call-to-action blog called “3 NoTrump,” which highlighted three simple civic actions people could take in response to unfolding events. I called my MoCs almost daily; I went to countless demonstrations. And while I appreciated myself for not being complacent, none of it seemed very useful.
A year or two later, things fell more into place with my personal activism. While our 3NoTrump blog folded after we never got much traction and no longer had the energy to keep it going, I joined a larger team that wrote for Rogan’s List, another call-to-action site that has recently reached its 50,000th subscriber. And I was able to join with an affinity group of like-minded people who were devoted to immigration justice. Together we went to a children’s detention center in Homestead, Florida, and to the Brownsville/ Matamoros border, each time sharing stories about what we had witnessed in community presentations and written media. These two focuses became the foundation of my current activism. And while we still didn’t stop everything, I’d like to think we made at least a small difference in raising awareness and inspiring people to action.
Refugee Camp: Matamoros, 2019. Photo by D. Dina Friedman
By the time of the 2024 election, I was still active in both these efforts, so I didn’t have to worry about complacency. But I had a new enemy: hopelessness.
In addition to many good reasons to feel hopeless (which I don’t have to depress people by outlining) I’ve figured out that my personal hopelessness is exacerbated by my general lack of patience. Heck, I get impatient if there’s someone ahead of me in line or if the computer takes more than five seconds to reload. My partner Shel always says he retains his optimism by seeing how much progress has been made over the years, despite backlash and pushback–MLK’s long arc bending toward justice. But patience is a mixed bag and it’s also good not to be too patient, IMHO. While many campaigns for progress (abolition and civil rights, for example) were eventually successful, they were also excruciatingly long and many people were hurt or killed before change happened.
I think that’s why it’s hard to conjure up patience. The stakes are too high, and, just like in 2016, what I really want is to find someone who can “fix it.”
But ultimately the only one who can “fix it” is me. You. All of us.
Deportation Plane, Brownsville, TX, 2019. Photo by D. Dina Friedman
And we can’t fix anything by being hopeless.
Thinking about hopelessness also brings me back to our trip to the border in 2019–how the people we talked with, thousands of them waiting months for an appointment at a tent court where only 1% would be granted asylum, didn’t lose hope. They stayed in the squalid and dangerous tent camp waiting and hoping, because to return, for many, would mean death–for themselves and their families.
Hopelessness wasn’t an option for them. It can’t be an option for me.
Refugee Camp, Matamoros, 2019. Photo by D. Dina Friedman
Today is my favorite Jewish holiday, Tu B’shevat, The New Year of the Trees.
Why do I like this holiday so much? It doesn’t have a back story about war and destruction or about celebrating a so-called “victory” after taking sides. It’s simply about celebrating trees. And I have a thing for trees.
Nine years ago on Tu B’shevat, my friends and I gathered to have a 100th birthday party for the tree in my front yard, which we know was planted in 1916 when our house was moved several hundred feet by horse and winch from where it previously stood. It’s definitely an elder now and we watch it every year with loving care. We’re glad it’s still standing.
And five years ago, on Tu B’shevat, I was at the Brownsville/Matamoros border, leading writing workshops for women and teenagers who were stuck waiting in Mexico for a months or years to be called for a tiny number of daily asylum appointments. As a prompt for the workshop, we read a book called Somos Como las Nubes, (We Are Like the Clouds), a collection poems by young people about their journey north and their hopes and dreams of a better life.
These children (and the adults that accompanied them) may have thought they were like the clouds. But they were also like trees. Rooted in an unshakable hope. Then and now, I am amazed at their steadfastness and resilience, especially as I think back on the stories they told me of the violence they faced. I continue to be haunted by the pictures on their phones they showed me of loved ones covered in blood.
Friends, these are the stories of many of the people who are being rooted out, separated from their families, shackled and put on planes, or sent to places like Guantanamo Bay.
It breaks my heart. And while it doesn’t minimize the impact of the wrongs being done, I take small solace that trees are still standing.
In fact, when I start feeling anxious and fearful about the end of democracy, I think of the trees all over the world who have lived through wars, genocide, dictatorships…
How do they do it, and what lessons can I learn from them?
It’s only been in the past few years that I read that trees communicate with each other through a complex underground network of fungi to warn each other against insect attacks and other dangers. Somehow, I don’t think they discriminate about which trees to warn and which not to warn, which to welcome, and which to keep out.
Trees, like humans, need community. And tonight, I will celebrate Tu B’shevat tonight in community, where we’ll eat different kinds of tree products (fruit and nuts) and talk about the cycles of life and the seasons. But mostly what I’ll celebrate is that trees are still here–and we’re still here, which I’ve learned has become a theme song on many people’s “getting through dark times” playlists. As a total luddite when it comes to pop culture, I’m not even sure which I’m Still Here song is getting all the play. But here’s a rap I found that I like by Lathan Warlick; and here’s a Holly Near favorite with the slightly altered title of We’re Still Here.
Let’s keep on being here–warning each other against danger, and taking care of each other.
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I haven’t been writing much lately. Between family health care issues and a full-scale constitutional crisis, aka coup, I’ve been thrown into what feels like a cyclone of political organizing. One could say I’ve been writing like crazy, but it’s all calls to action, newsletter updates, emails, and carefully constructed agendas–left brain stuff that speaks to my skill set, but doesn’t quite feed the hungry monster inside who only likes the juicy, creative stuff.
And yet, the questions came up once again this morning in one of my Zoom writing groups:
Ted Eytan/Flicker/Creative Commons, nhpr.org
As someone who embraces the dual identities of writer and activist. These are questions I’ve struggled with all my life.
Back in my 20s, I lived briefly in a social change community in Philadelphia, learning facilitation and organizing skills, studying theories of nonviolence, and engaging in personal growth initiatives, which included being frequently challenged on my choices and attitudes. I remember one person from the community saying something like, There’s no point in writing all these poems about your feelings. You can get counseling on those. Write poems about the state of the world that matter.
I know that all writers store hurtful comments that lodge like ear worms in our brain. This was one of mine. It probably took thirty years before I could hear it in my head without feeling reactive.
No one should dictate what we should write, even when people are being well meaning, such as the numerous times a friend or acquaintance has said to me, you should write a story about ______________.
No, I always say. You should write that story.
Ask me, if you need my help, to write an article, a flyer, or a delicate email. Ask me for feedback or editing on your story. But when it comes to poems, or fiction, or essays, I’ll choose what I want to write about–thank you very much.
This doesn’t mean the questions above are invalid–only that each of us needs to answer them for ourselves. In the last ten years, I’ve been motivated to write more things that might be considered “political,” but this is because I’ve figured out a way to approach them from a personal angle. For instance, my poem, Evening, recently published in Collateral, a journal that defines their mission as “publishing literary and visual art concerned with the impact of violent conflict and military service beyond the combat zone,” layers reflections on the Gaza War as I’m playing with my grandchild in the backyard.
Whether or not our writing becomes an overt call for action during these dark times, it still matters. There are countless articles on the Internet on the role of art not only as a political catalyst, but also as a force that heals–both the person who creates it and those who read, or view, or listen to it. I remember shortly after the 2016 election, when many in my community were caught in a tizzy of fear and disorientation, a close friend who is a visual artist said to me, “The best thing we can be doing right now is our creative work.”
I’m glad this is another ear worm that has also stuck in my brain, inspiring me to keep doing the work.
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The day I arrived in New York to help deal with my father’s medical emergency, they were repairing the sewer pipe under my parents’ house.
The onslaught of noise was deafening as workers cut through an entire square of concrete then lowered themselves into the cavernous maze of underground pipes to search for the blockage. It took them two days to find the troubled spot, which had already plagued my parents for a week: no showers, no laundry, minimal dishwashing, and a directive to flush the toilet only when absolutely necessary. And after all that noise and digging, the blockage turned out to be not in the area where they’d dug at all. They found the problem in the sad little brick-enclosed square of dirt my parents call the “front yard”–under a rosebush that had already been reduced to small rootball and a few aspiring fronds.
The next day, when my father was officially referred to hospice and people rained all that “death is a passage” stuff on us, I thought about that sewer pipe–also a passage. And I also thought about the Dylan Thomas villanelle and its repeating haunting lines: Do not go gentle into that good night … Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
It isn’t that I want my father to fight against the reality of his dying. I feel grateful that he is not–and has never been–an angry or vengeful person. Even in his compromised state, while depressed about what is happening, he continues to exude kindness and express love and gratitude to those around him.
But I feel like raging. Not at the inevitability of my father’s death, but at the sadness of seeing him so frail and unable to do things for himself–the “dying” of my image of my 90+ year-old parents as timeless icons of longevity.
And I feel myself raging against the barely flickering “light” of my country. Yet this rage feels like a fruitless kick-the-floor-and-flail-my-arms temper tantrum. Pundits tell us to keep breathing and find joy. The sun is brilliant on the half-inch of freshly fallen snow today. But where is the balance between digging and doing what we can and totally abandoning ship, closing our doors and taking out whatever might constitute our modern-day “opium pipe” to lose ourselves in a stupor of disempowerment and apathy.
I’m forever grateful to Bishop Marianne Edgar Budde, who was able to channel her rage into a calm and quiet plea for mercy, focusing the whole time she spoke, toward whatever light might be left that’s still shining on who we could be–individually and collectively. And I’m wondering if that’s the kind of light that flashes before our eyes as we near the end of our lives in addition to reliving all of our life’s significant moments. I’m wondering what my father, an Emmy Award-winning journalist, is thinking as he sits hooked up to his oxygen machine with the New York Times spread on his lap, trying to stay awake long enough to get through more than a paragraph and make sense of all that’s happening around him.
Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.
While we all have to accept death, as hard as it is, we mustn’t go gentle into this dark time, or accept the numerous attacks on our Constitution as the legitimate prerogative of a new leader. I feel grateful for the many in our community who are joining together and channeling their quiet rage into action. Death may be a lonely endeavor, but raging can be a community enterprise. I’m grateful to the many who are standing up to support immigrants, transgender people, the environment, and the many other important issues that are under attack.
In fact, what keeps me finding joy is knowing I have community–both to support me during this difficult personal time and to work together on keeping the light shining.
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More than forty years ago, when my grandfather died, my father, who was sitting next to me at the funeral home, gestured to the person giving out the prayerbooks and said, “That man has a walk-on in my life.”
As usual, he was going for the one-liner, squeezing the humor out of a sad situation by taking a step back and focusing instead on a random absurdity.
Even now, at 93 and in the end stages of his life, as he drifts in and out of moments of confusion, he’ll claw his way to clarity by finding a joke. When my mom gave him back his wedding ring, which had to be removed when he was treated in the hospital for swelling due to congestive heart failure last weekend, he put it on, looked into her eyes, and said, “I do.”
It was another sweet moment in their 72-year marriage, a number my mother proudly managed to work into the conversation with all the “walk-ons” of the past week: the doctors, the nurses, the hospice intake workers… I think she would have even told the insurance people, if she hadn’t asked me to make the phone call for her.
I could write about more about my father and about my own struggles with sad moments, of which there have been far too many this week–in my own life, and in what’s happening to our country, and I’m sure I will in weeks to come. But what I really wanted to write about in this post was the idea of “walk-ons” in writing: how to use what could be considered extraneous details and incidents to our advantage.
One big difference between real life and writing, whether it’s fiction, non-fiction, or even poetry, is that anything one chooses to include in a piece of work needs to matter. Real life is full of irrelevant happenings like the man giving out the prayer books at the funeral, but readers don’t want the minutia unless the minutia means something. The objects, metaphors, place descriptions, and incidents we choose to include in our work need to create an layer of meaning that resonates, adding an extra glow. So, it’s helpful to ask ourselves when writing (regardless of whether it’s fact or fiction) what a particular image or set of details adds to a piece. Is it worth including, or does it simply bog down the pace?
Take the case of the man handing out the prayerbooks at the funeral home. If I describe a heavy man lumbering down the aisle under more prayerbooks than he can comfortably carry, I’m setting a different tone than if I’m describing a man with a nervous tick who grins at everyone as he hands them a prayer book and tells them to have a nice day. Either of these could add to the weight of a story or essay. But if I simply say, “a man handed us a prayerbook,” I’m wasting words with a flat sentence we don’t really need to hear.
Or, as in the case of my father, the point of a “walk-on” might be how one of your “characters” reacts to it–especially if your character is relatively quiet, the way my father is. Sometimes you can do a better job bringing people to life by emphasizing the smaller moments in a scene, rather than the larger ones. And showing people in action, rather than simply writing about them, is nearly always more effective in showing who they really are.
It’s those smaller moments I’ll remember about my father. As well as what they convey about the essence of his character: how he used humor to sidestep difficult emotions, and yes, like all of us deep-secret attention-seekers, he thrived on our laughter and appreciation of his jokes.
So I’m glad to have the memories, and glad for the opportunity to make scenes out of them, as I’m sure I will as the weeks and years unfold, letting the stories tell themselves and hopefully, through those stories, enabling him to live far longer than the time he has left.
Last Friday, on the 3rd anniversary of my brother’s death, I found myself alone in the woods, singing to a fallen tree.
I hadn’t intended to do this, or anything else to mark the day, even though I was keenly aware of it. But in the middle of our daily woods walk, my partner, Shel, turned around to hurry back to a meeting, and I continued on… to the rarely traveled old growth pine forest below the more popular trail that leads to the top of Mt. Holyoke, where three years ago, I’d sat by a large fallen tree and spent a few moments contemplating my brother’s life and death.
My brother, Danny, and I did not have an easy relationship, and he did not have an easy life. At 15 he had a schizophrenic breakdown and never fully recovered. The early years of his illness were rife with outbursts of often violent psychotic episodes at home, punctuated by short stays at locked institutions where they zombified him with thorazine. Later, as treatment for psychosis evolved, he became more functional, but never mastered the stress of holding a job or living on his own, even though he didn’t need 24-hour supervision and could travel alone to visit family. But these drugs took a toll on his physical health and by the time he died (from an imploded port whose repair surgery was delayed due to the COVID crisis) he was struggling with severe kidney disease.
One of the things we shared–from the time we were teenagers–was a love of singing. Danny didn’t have a particularly pleasant voice, or a strong ability to hold pitch, but if he knew that, he never let it bother him. And through the years, when the grandchildren were asked to perform on their musical instruments at family gatherings, Danny always wanted to sing a song.
So in memory of Danny, I sang a song to the same tree where I sat three years ago–Carole King’s You’ve Got a Friend. Danny always liked the James Taylor version, and it’s been one of the songs I’ve been working on in my voice lessons, where I’ve discovered that while my higher range voice is still pretty weak and wispy (though slowly improving) my lower range is strong and getting even stronger.
In the cold and quiet January woods, I belted it out, even though through most of my life, I wouldn’t have considered Danny my friend–just an (often secret) albatross I had to deal with.
I’m forever grateful that a few years before he died, I decided that I needed to go through the process of forgiving him for several abusive incidents that had made me cringe with disgust and an underlying edge of fear every time I was around him. This process was not easy or quick. It involved exposing, through writing and talking to people, many details I preferred not to think about. But, in the last few years of his life I was able to feel more caring and compassion when I saw him.
Here’s a short poem I wrote about the process:
ABLUTION
“To love is to chew; to forgive is to swallow”
—Mark Nepo
Two days before new year, and I have forgiven you,
let the thick glop between us dissolve
like a face in fade-to-black. To forgive
is not to swallow, but to spit, let the saliva glide
on the foam of a cool wave. Forgiveness is faith
in salt, in the movement of water against rocks
as they wear down to a black shine,
so slick you can slip right off—
turning your legs into mermaid tail,
your breathing lungs into gills. I have surrendered,
filled my bones with ocean. This forgiveness is cake.
It is love and I chew. It is cream with chocolate curls,
and it is green and clean, like a crisp, sharp leaf.
(Originally published in Dash, June 2021)
A few days ago, after my rendez-vous with the tree I came across this quote from Jacoby Ballard, from a series of journal prompts I’ve subscribed to from Kripalu Yoga Center on the theme of Choosing Love.
Feeling the emotions of grief, disappointment, betrayal, sadness, and anger are all prerequisites for forgiveness. If these emotions are not fully felt before one turns toward forgiveness, it can erode the process and compromise its authenticity.
How true. It took a LONG time to confront the sadness and denial and face the grief head-on. But I’m glad I got through this before it was too late, thoroughly enough that I could now sing my heart out to a fallen tree.
Then, as in Jewish tradition, I found a rock to place in the spot where the tree had been uprooted and headed home.
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Each year since I’ve started this blog, I’ve included an end-of-year submission stats post, just to shed some light on the nitty-gritty of this murky game. Here’s what happened for me in 2024.
POETRY:
20 Journals/Anthologies accepted 34 poems. I also got 91 poetry rejections.
Of the 34 poems accepted, 7 were taken on the very first go-round; 8 poems were previously rejected 1-3 times; 7 poems were rejected 4-7 times; 4 were rejected 9-12 times; 3 were rejected 15-20 times, and 1 had been previously rejected 31 times! (The other 4 poems were previously published, so I didn’t track that stat.) This surprised me, as usually my poems circulate more before someone picks them up. I’m wondering if I might be getting better at selecting poems I send out and matching them to journals.
Another thing of note is that of the 20 journals that accepted my work, 8 of them had previously published something of mine in the past, so I may have been more of a known quantity. But this is a great point for anyone playing the submission game. Establishing relationships with journals and editors who like your work can be extremely gratifying and also help soften the rejections from some of the more competitive journals on your reach list. And as long as the journals you’re published in put out a good quality product, who cares that they’re not the creme de la creme in the journal world. Your work is still getting read and appreciated!
FICTION AND CREATIVE NON-FICTION:
My fiction stats are a bit more depressing. I offered stories and essays to 23 journals, and only 1 got accepted: an op-ed in my local newspaper.
Some analysis on this:
–Stories and essays are often harder to publish because they take up more room in a publication. (5-10 pages vs. a 1-2 page poem).
–Most of my better stories were already published in my collection, IMMIGRANTS, so I’ve been only circulating a few newer ones. Before the book was published I did manage to publish around half of the stories it contained in various places, but it was slow going.
–I still tend to feel overall more confident in my fiction, and therefore I submitted to a greater number of “reach journals.”
AWARDS:
I’m personally very mixed on the “awards/contest” game for books because it seems like mostly a way of collecting a lot of exorbitant entry fees just to say your book won an award, but my publisher and I did submit to a couple of the more known ones. I was pleased to get a finalist designation (first runner up short-story and all category short-list) for the Eric Hoffer Awards, and a finalist designation in the short story category for the Independent Authors Network.
I also received two Pushcart Prize and two Best-of-the-Net nominations from various journal editors.
And I did not win a few other notable things, like an IPPY Award.
LARGER PROJECTS:
It was a thrill to have my poetry book, Here in Sanctuary–Whirling, which drew heavily on my witnessing trips to the border and the children’s detention center in Homestead, FL, come out in early 2024. With the upcoming administration’s about to take over and put their extreme deportation plans in gear, this book feels even more relevant right now, and I’m continuing to look for ways to publicize it.
I did not spend a lot of time circulating my music memoir or any of my novels. But I did receive three rejections (aka non-responses) from agents, and one non-response from a small press where I sent one of my older kid-lit novels.) So this might be an area ripe for New Year’s resolutions in 2025.
Nevertheless, I easily crossed the 100-rejection threshold (91 poetry rejections, 22 fiction/CNF rejections, and 4 agent/small press rejections) for a grand total of 117!
Onward to 2025!
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As we lit the Chanukah menorah on the first winter at our new house twenty-six years ago, my ten-year-old wanted to know if people could see the lights from the road. I think she was sensitive to ours being the only house in the neighborhood that wasn’t strung with Christmas lights and blinking Santas.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Let’s go see.”
We removed the curtain, placed the menorah in the front window, then bundled up and went outside. In the New England snow, our house, on top of a small hill next door to a farm with a Star of Bethlehem on the silo, looked gorgeous with the small menorah light twinkling at the window. I just wanted to stay out there forever under the amazing mass of stars.
We got in the car and drove down the hill, then turned so we could pass the house from below. “There it is!” I pointed. But to see our little menorah would clearly involve knowing that it was there, and a questionably dangerous maneuver of looking up at the house when you should be looking at the twisty road.
My children were not persuaded. “I want it to be like the star on the silo,” my six-year-old insisted as we pulled back into the driveway. “I want to see the menorah from far away.”
“It doesn’t matter. We can see it,” I tried to convince them. And then I had an idea. “Hey, let’s put menorahs on all sides of the house, and then we can walk around and see them, and the neighbors can see them, too!”
We lit three more menorahs, bundled back into our coats and boots, and crunched all the way around our snowy yard. One of the kids started to sing, and we all joined in: “Chanukah, oh Chanukah, come light the menorah/Let’s have a party, we’ll all dance the hora/every day for eight days, dreidels to spin/crispy little latkes, tasty and thin… When we got to the slope at the back of the house, the children stopped singing and flopped down dramatically, rolling all the way to the bottom of the hill. I felt my heart catch, but only until I heard them laughing.
This was so much fun that we did it again on the second night of Chanukah, and the third, and the 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th. Each time we got to the back of the house, the kids would engage in a dramatic fall and roll down the hill. Some nights were bitter cold with wind-chills below zero. Others were slick with ice. It didn’t matter. Going out to see the Chanukah lights became a test of our resolve and our fortitude. A tradition was born.
Photo: D. Dina Friedman
Photo: D. Dina Friedman
There’d be quiet as we waited. Sometimes we’d have to call a second time, or a third, but then we’d hear a rumble in the distance, as out of the dark he’d come bounding back, jumping on all of us over and over again as if giving an exuberant thank you for his special Chanukah present.
Lefty died in 2011, the same year my youngest left for college. My older child had already graduated and was living in New York City, so on the first night of Chanukah that year, the nest was truly empty. After Shel and I lit the Chanukah candles, I insisted on going out despite the fact that it was four degrees and the grounds were covered with a solid glaze of ice. We took ski poles and crept carefully down the ice-coated steps. At the front window, the small light of the menorah exuded warmth, the blanket of stars above us, magnificence, but I felt sad. I missed the kids, even though they were coming in a couple of days to celebrate Chanukah over the weekend. I missed the dog even more.
“We can walk the other way around the house,” Shel said. “It’s less steep.”
I knew the kids would have rebelled at any break in tradition, but I humored him and our old bones. We sang the song. At the end of the last line, I added “Lef–ty!” Like, “Play ball,” at the end of the Star Spangled Banner, the words just belonged there. I even looked across the field, half expecting to see him running toward us, but no Chanukah miracle.
When the kids came that weekend, they insisted on walking in the direction they’d always walked, and stopped, as usual, at the back of the house to dramatically roll down the hill. We sang the song, and of course, they too added, “Lef–ty!” to the last line—as we’ve done every year since then. At least one night every year, we still celebrate Chanukah with the children, their long-term partners, and now, a grandchild. But I still find myself looking across the field, waiting for that moment of rumbling and the speck of distant movement to get larger and clearer, our joyful dog coming back to us.
Originally published in Chicken Soup for the Soul, The Wonders of Christmas, 2018.
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