best of 2009 Challenge. Something that really made you grow this year. That made you go to your edge and then some. What made it the best challenge of the year for you? [Mahala's note: Not all challenges have the rush of excitement and the thrill of the pushing the limits. Sometimes the edge looks over an abyss. This growth can be beautiful, transformational, but also painful and lonely. Here is a love note for those at their edge.]

healing cell © 1990 Mahala Mazerov

For the first few years after my accident, I thought everything that was wrong or hard in my life was because of my brain injury.

Needing something more than numbing rehabilitation therapy I took a freeform watercolor painting class, with normal people.

We would touch paint filled brushes to paper soaked in water and watch the colors feather out in magical patterns. There was no attempt to paint recognizable objects. We could guide the images but not control them.

Along with the play of water and color there was companionship as each of us spilled our stories onto D’Arches paper. One woman spent the first four weeks of the class painting sheet after sheet with brushstrokes of nothing but black. Another’s work mirrored her own painful sense of self as she labored over each with mounting frustration and tossed the finish painting on the floor when she was finished.

In the paintings and in evolving conversations we told our stories we offered small details of our lives.

I discovered clearly and quite stunningly that my brain injury, which seemed to sever my connection to the world at large, had in fact connected me in the smallest most intimate and true way to nothing less than humanity.

In the face of life-crushing despair I also discovered the seeds of unflinching compassion. You do not have to pretty up your life for me. No matter what you are facing, I can stand beside you. I may well cry with you, but I don’t have to run away.

healing flower deva © 1990 Mahala Mazerov

I send this out as a tiny love note to all of you going through hard times. You may feel isolated, but I promise you are not alone.

Your tears and your courage do not go unrecorded.

I went into that class filled with grief and despair. The accident had shattered my life and the losses where still continuing. I could barely navigate through my days. My nights were filled with nightmares. I understood the woman who was painting only black, exorcising deeply buried secrets. I thought it was a genius idea and I was tempted to emulate her.

Yet when it came to putting color paper what I needed was to create beauty. I needed a palette of light. Not in denial of my fear or loss.

In recognition of the inexplicable luminosity that needed an outlet even more than the pain.

Best of 2009 Book. What book – fiction or non – touched you? Where were you when you read it? Have you bought and given away multiple copies?

© 2009 Mahala Mazerov

I start this post with a confession. I haven’t read a book from cover to cover in over 20 years.

It’s not that I can’t read. It’s that I can’t read.

Some of my first rehabilitation after my brain injury (sustained in the preschool classroom where I was teaching) was reading the front page of a newspaper with my therapist and trying to remember even a small piece of news 10 minutes later. I failed miserably. For years.

My short-term memory has improved mightily since then. But still not enough to read a chapter, put it down for a day, and pick up where I left off.

I buy books so I can have them forever, and especially so I can underline in them. Underlining doesn’t help me remember. When I pick up a book every word is new. I’m touched by the brilliance and the language and the poetry. I swoon over the magnificence of the written word. Why haven’t I read this book before? Then I come across a thin trail made with my mechanical pencil. Oh. I have been here before.

I’ve never finished a book. I dive in and come away with one precious thought that I try to hold onto until it slips away or is replaced by the memory of the moment. It’s just the way it is.

There is a book I have read and recommended across the years. I’ve dipped in repeatedly enough that some words and stories are finally familiar. They’ve made the precipitous leap from short-term to long-term memory. So here is a recommendation of sorts: Writing For Your Life: A guide and companion to the inner worlds by Deena Metzger.

One of my favorite stories is the one that closes the book. It tells of a young man required to interview someone as part of a university course. The assignment required him to choose someone very different from himself with whom he would not normally speak. Apparently he lived such an insulated life he was having difficulty finding a subject and almost dropped the course. However the day the paper was due, he arrived in class ecstatic.

“I was at my wits end,” he said “when it occurred to me to interview our Guatemalan housekeeper. Naturally, I was very nervous because I had never really spoken to her, and it was rather late at night. But as I had to do the paper, I went to her room and knocked at her door. When I entered, I explained my need, asking if it would be a terrible nuisance for her to tell me something about her life. She looked at me quite strangely and my heart sank. After what seemed a very, very long time, she said quietly, ‘Every night before I go to sleep, I rehearse the story of my life, just in case someone should ever ask me. Gracias a Dios.‘”

Twitter, blogs, and blog comments are my books. They’re the places I rehearse the story of my life, and manageable enough for me to learn the story of yours.

It’s night and there’s a knock on the door. Will you kindly tell me something about your life. Here? Now?