More Insightful conversation with Janet Grace Riehl

Photo shows Janet Grace Riehl with her father, Erwin Thompson.

Today, I have the pleasure of continuing yesterday’s conversation with Janet Grace Riehl author of Sightlines, a Poet’s Diary, and the audio book, Sightlines, a Family Love Story in Poetry and Music.

JMH: Janet, as I listened to your audio book, I was impressed with the way you tell your family story in poetry, music, and casual conversation. It is uniquely honest and touching. You and your father found a way to confront terrible grief as well as to enshrine the memory of your beloved sister, mother, and a way of life that is unfortunately disappearing. Your poems have helped me process losses of my own.

"Scribbler," in which you describe joy you found as a child in your father's writing is one of my favorite poems from you book. How has his influence rippled into your adult life as a writer?

JGR: Completely. It was hard when I was an English major because my father’s writing is pretty straight-ahead story telling. But, as a Recovering English Major, I can now see, once again, how good his writing is. We’re starting to get some of his 40 books into print.

His lack of self-consciousness is what allowed him to be so prolific. During the time of writing “Sightlines: A Poet’s Diary” it was that same lack of concern about how the book would be received by the literary community that allowed me to be so productive in a short period of time.

Last year we read together for the Alton High Creative Writing Club annual meeting. He’d co-founded the club. We’d just found and replicated an early edition of their magazine. He read first. For my turn, I read “Scribbler” in homage to him and his influence and encouragement.

JMH: In “String Bridles” (p. 42 in “Sightlines) your father tells a story about his relationship to the Bluff House, a place that remains a source of refuge and solitude for you. What does the Bluff House mean to each of you?

JGR: For Pop the Bluff House was a working chicken house for Spring, built to get the early warmth of the sun’s rays. The Bluff House was designed as a passive solar building before anyone spoke of such a thing. He also used to play there with simple toys he made. The poem is slightly adapted from a letter to his mother who lived at a distance in Rushville, Illinois. Pop wrote this letter when he was 13 in 1929. His mother died the following October the same day the same day the stock market crashed, both crushing blows to the family. The naturalness and clarity of his voice in the poem show his writing talent at an early age.

Seventy-six years later when Pop and I were taking care of Mother, he told me this spot on the property could be mine. I took old furniture down there. It was a place to rest in solitude for reading, writing, and contemplation. It was a place separate from the family’s activity which I sorely needed at that time. My brother cleared a path to it and hacked out a view of the river down the bluff. We mucked it out and trimmed back scrub trees grown in the cracks of the cement floor. By that time the chicken-green house had been vandalized, with all the glass long gone.

JMH: Do you see your childhood differently as a result of writing these poems and returning to the Midwest?

JGR: Certainly. The decision to be directly involved with the family struggles and be in contact with Midwestern culture brought my entire life into stronger, clearer focus. I’d spent many years living in California. Two different worldviews could not be found. I could now see how my family viewed my life there. By being in my childhood home and working with my parents in a new way in a different role, made me confront certain illusions and delusions I’d held. My father and I forged a more mature relationship. I saw my Mother differently as she became more fragile and a transformed person in her illness.

JMH: You include two poems written from your great niece's point of view. I lost my beloved grandfather at the same age that your grand niece Amelia lost her grandma Julia. The loss was treated very differently. When I was eight, the death of my grandfather was never talked about in my presence. I was not allowed to attend his funeral. Thus I had no way of understanding and processing it.

In the poem "Amelia's Double Rainbow" (p. 16) Amelia says, “the more I talk about her, I'm crying less." I believe it is vitally important that children be given a framework in which to process and talk about their own feelings and memories. I'm thankful that your grand nieces were. It seems to be more acceptable to talk about these days than it was in the fifties, when I first encountered the loss of someone I loved. I just wanted to thank you for including poems for Amelia in your memoir. What were some of the things you did to support your great nieces Amelia and Margaret in their loss of their “Grammy”?

JGR:  I cared for my two great nieces for four days after Julia's death. That story is told in "Just Like You and Me” (p. 13).

I wrote condolence notes to both children. After my sister’s death I began to become expert at writing these notes. I developed a style that broke the usual template to become more clear and direct.

Later, I made a book for Maggie, then three, who was afraid she was losing her memories of her Grammy. We titled it “Maggie’s Deep Well of Memory” with each memory starting with the prompt: “I remember the times….” She’d dictate these to me and I wrote them down. I made these into a lovely bound book with illustrations.

Last year after we buried Julia's ashes, I wrote Maggie a letter using a similar form telling Maggie how I’d always remember her at that ceremony and ending with: Grammy Julia’s world is the world of love and it is the world of yes! That world lives in you, Maggie.

It’s been a pleasure to know you through the years as a result of our Women Writing the West connection. Thanks for this insightful interview.

JMH: Thanks, Janet. The pleasure is mine as well. I feel as if you are a true sister. I guess it’s the sisterhood of “Janet.”

As I announced yesterday, Janet’s internet tour continues July 10^th on Susan Gallacher Turner’s http://sculpturepdx.blogspot.com and Mary Cunningham’s WOOF! (Women Only Over Fifty) on July 15^th. Her guest post will discuss how to use collaboration to reach your dreams as an over-50 woman. http://www.woofersclub.blogspot.com/

And don’t forget to participate in the drawing to win a copy of Sightlines: A Family Love Story in Poetry and Music?Watch the featured video of the week.  Leave a comment underneath the post.  Janet will run a drawing among the comments.

 

 

 

Conversation with Janet Grace Riehl

I'm honored to have Janet Grace Riehl as my guest today and to be included in her blog tour as she discusses her audio book, Sightlines: A Family Love Story in Poetry & Music. You can find a complete list of Janet’s tour on her blog. The previous post on the audio book tour was at Molly Lundquist’s Lit Lover book club site. There Janet posted a regional recipe of scrapple, a guest blog useful for both individuals and book groups, tips on how to appreciate both book and audio book together, and a review of “Sightlines” audio book.

Following a family tragedy, the death of her beloved older sister, Janet Grace Riehl returned to her childhood home in the Midwest. Her book, Sightlines, a Poet's Diary, came into existence as she confronted and processed the pain of this great loss and reconnected with her family, her ancestral home and family, and herself through story poems. Her father joined her in the collaboration of the audio book, reading his own poems and adding his music. Janet, it’s a pleasure to discuss your book, and audio book, and what lie behind their creation with you.

JMH: One of the main themes running through your 90 poems, Janet, is the gap between the memories you carry from your childhood of your family's home place, and what you find before you upon your return so many decades later. I can intimately relate to this theme, as I left my family home in my early twenties, returning many years later to nurse, first my father, and later my mother, in the final months of their lives. I'm sure many of our readers have experienced this gap between memory and a new reality of place and relationship. Tell us how this felt and how it crept into your poems.

JGR: One of the over-arching themes of Sightlines: A Poet’s Diary was how ephemeral, changing, and transient our lives are. Buddhist call this “Impermanence,” and include this principle as one of the four noble truths.

During this period of time impermanence showed up in several ways: Julia’s sudden death; my parents aging; my mother’s vulnerability in her illness that required constant care; the fragile and fractured family system; my displacement from the place I’d called home in Northern California back to the place of my childhood.

I’d visited the homeplace often in the gap after I left for part West in 1979. But, that’s not the same thing as living there. Life and circumstances and the physical identifiers on the Homeplace had moved on.

All of these changes and signs of impermanence were unnerving, but useful in illustrating this powerful principle.

JMH: As a writer of children’s fiction, I often borrow from my own and my children's childhood experiences in order to express the natural emotions and responses to life-like situations through my characters. Thus I am especially interested in how your childhood influenced the woman you have become. What part did your childhood experiences play in the way you chose to confront the grief of the tragic death of your sister?

JGR: In childhood my parents emphasized self-sufficiency. I often roamed the woods. They also emphasized hard work, being stoic, moving ahead, achievement, a life of service, and the deep importance of family and heritage. My Buddhist training and intuition led me to go into the small retreat around my birthday at the end of 2004 which gave me the leading to write the book.

The hard work, moving ahead, achievement, and life of service came together in making the book. My motivation for writing the book was a prayer that it be useful to others. This wish shaped the form of the story poems as the narrative vehicle. Moving ahead, achieving, and working hard were all needed in completing the project.

Me, stoic? Not so much. Rather the opposite. But, my father is, and that influenced the understated, simple way I revealed emotion. If I was overcome with emotion, I cried upstairs into my pillows or went out into the woods to wail and keen.

Self-sufficiency was essential because the situation I found myself in was rather isolated, with minimal support.

Emphasis on family and heritage is clearly one of the major themes in Sightlines.

JMH: Your father's music is an integral part of your audio book. Was music a big part of your childhood?

JGR: Music was part of our lives, big time. My father’s music is part of his heart’s blood. Other than his family, music is no doubt the thing in life Pop is most passionate about. We sang in the car together. We went to square dances where I learned to waltz standing on my father’s steel-toed work boots. Each of us children played several instruments and joined music groups at school.

My father’s greatest grief is that he had to give up playing music while we were kids and well into his middle-age because of family demands. It’s a joy to see him doing that again now.

It’s only because singing and playing were a natural part of life that I felt I could sing by myself at my talks and on the audio book. I have at least as good a voice as Garrison Keeler, I reckon! That gave me courage.

JMH: I have a few more questions for you, but since this is getting a bit long, I’ll limit myself to one more today and continue with a few more important questions tomorrow.

You have described your childhood as "anachronistic." I think I can see this in your poetry in Sightlines. Could you tell us more about what you mean by "anachronistic childhood?" How did such a childhood affect you as the person and writer you are now?

JGR: My parents came from families that were wedded to their land. We lived on land in the family for generations. We carried a sense of legacy and stewardship.

Our main goal as a family was to save up enough money that each of us children could go to college, with everything paid for. Mother made Pop promise this as they walked away from the altar. This meant that we worked like serfs raising and putting up food on our land and my grandparents on my mother’s side.

Living in the country we were socially isolated. While my friends lived in suburbs just stirring in the 1950s and ‘60s, we lived outside time within our own family culture. They had Barbie Dolls, training bras, make-up, the newest fads, new clothes, and TVs when they first came out. We did finally get a TV so we wouldn’t be next door watching it there.

I read books from the late 1800s and early 1900s, scouring our bookshelves for what I’d missed. I wore clothes mother cut down from Julia’s. Mother knitted me this beautiful outfit, but it was so incomprehensible within the context of current fashion, that everyone laughed at me when I wore it. That happened a lot—being laughed out and excluded—because I was out of touch with the times—not modern—and a thoroughly odd duck.

This gives you a sense of my childhood. There were losses in this way of life, but gains as well. I’m sure I wouldn’t have shaped such an idiosyncratic life if I’d grown up more conventionally bounded by conformity. As a result of my upbringing I’m stronger and make my own choices, with less outside influence.

JMH: Thanks for your time and in-depth answers, Janet. I look forward to continuing our discussion tomorrow with more questions about childhood influences on your poetry as well as some about your grand nieces. 

Janet Riehl’s internet tour continues July 10^th on Susan Gallacher Turner’s http://sculpturepdx.blogspot.com  and Mary Cunningham’s WOOF! (Women Only Over Fifty) on July 15^th. Her guest post will discuss how to use collaboration to reach your dreams as an over-50 woman.  http://www.woofersclub.blogspot.com/

Want to win a free copy of  Sightlines: A Family Love Story in Poetry and Music?Watch the featured video of the week.  Leave a comment underneath the post. Janet will run a drawing among the comments.

Life's changes

There are times in life when we feel as if the world is a sunny garden, planted for our enjoyment, and we will flourish, no matter what. Our possibilities are endless. Then something shifts to rock our world, and we must adjust. How we do so depends on our inner resources to cope. We may process and move on or we may peacefully accept the circumstances we are given. 

Change is never easy, yet life without change is stagnant and unproductive. Perhaps it's when a major event nudges us from our comfort zone that we search our innermost selves and find what we need. Looking through my poetry, I found a few poems that, though written some time ago, strike a resonate chord when I feel I'm facing an hour of decision or when I hear of a major life-changing event in someone's life. 

(Iris, by Stan Hill, Photographer) 

I'll share three of them: "Time," "Life," and "Death," which could also be titled "Accepting Mortality." (Scroll down for all three.)

Be sure to join me on the 8th of July for a conversation with Janet Riehl, author of “Sightlines: A Family Love Story in Poetry and Music,” about how she coped with a traumatic life-changing experience.

Time

 

When all is said and all is done

and when the race is over,

Will we be happy that we’ve run?

Will we wish to do it over?

 

Time marches on without a care

about what we are doing.

It bothers not with when or where

or what trouble is ensuing.

 

We may be bored; we may be stressed.

We may be steeped in sorrow

But time keeps plodding as if pressed

to reach the next tomorrow.

 

If in the end we have regret

for the things we didn’t do

we’ll be reminded if we forget

that there’s no use to rue

 

the time that’s gone will not return

and useless are excuses.

For if nothing else we learn,

know time bears no abuses.

 

Every second, minute, hour

is the same to every man.

It is within each person’s power

to do with as she can.

Life

Life is too short to be little

Life is too dear to deny

Life is too precious to squander

By living an emotional lie.

Follow your heart, find your center

Leave conformity and pretense alone

Be only  yourself when you enter

Live a life that is truly your own.

Be not afraid of your feelings

It’s really okay to cry

Express the indignation inside you

Be honest with life ‘til you die. 

Don’t assume to make other’s decisions

Nor let others make choices for you.

Do what for you is important

And unto thine own self be true.

Death

A woman died today.

Suddenly

unexpectedly

without notice.

A man lost his wife today

Suddenly

unexpectedly

without notice.

Parents lost their only daughter today

Suddenly

unexpectedly

without notice.

It challenges my belief

About mind

Over matter

Willful control.

I thought the mind

Always leads

Body follows.

Not so.

It makes death sadder

that I know

it can happen

against one’s will. 

I’m sad for the woman

Who died

her husband

and parents

I feel my own mortality

For a moment

disappointed

betrayed.

My belief, though juvenile

and subconscious

was pervasive

my own. 

Of Death Do We Speak? Helping children cope with death of a loved one.

My paternal grandfather died when I was eight years old. I cried as I watched my parents and two older siblings drive away to attend the funeral.  I was not allowed to go to the funeral. I guess my parents felt I was too young and it would be too hard on me. Or maybe they were just so steeped in their own grief to think of my need for closure. I loved grandpa. I did not want to be left out of anything that involved him. And I knew I would never see him again.

Grandpa's death was never talked about in my presence. Maybe no one talked about it. I think in those days, people, at least in our family, hid their grief. If anyone cried, they did it privately. Death, like sex, was a subject children should never hear or speak of. So what did I do with my grief at age eight? I guess I stuffed it somewhere deep down and out of sight, adding death to the many mysterious evils that I was to fear, but not to question. 

I think—hope—it is generally different today. Children who experience the death of a peer,  a parent, or anyone close to them are often taken to a therapist for grief counseling. And therapists often use books or stories to help children better understand the feelings they are experiencing. When children read of a character with whom they relate and see that character experience the same feelings they suffer, they can better accept that they are not alone, and that their feelings and reactions are not wrong. 

Because death is natural, inevitable, and universal, it has found it's way into many of the children's novels I have written. It is my belief that children who have suffered or will suffer the death of a beloved person or pet will be better prepared for sorrow that threatens to overwhelm them by reading about a character who is going through the same grief. 

Janet Burroway, in her book, Writing Fiction, wrote, "Literature offers feelings for which we don't have to pay." Kids will find it easier to articulate their own feelings when they can relate them to those of a character in a book. 

Characters in my books who, each in his or her way, have each dealt with loss of a loved one through death are Danny in Danny's Dragon whose father is a casualty of the Iraq war, Kyleah in Kyleah's Tree whose mother died, and her father, and brother, with whom she is separated. Miranda, who lives with her grandparents in Miranda and Starlight, knows nothing of her father until she gets a letter from him and an explanation of the accident that resulted in his missing at sea and presumed death in Starlight's Courage. In Starlight Comes Home Miranda loses a mentor who is like a grandfather to her. Kids and adults alike like these books for the emotions, happy and sad, that they experience when reading them.

For other books, both fiction and non-fiction, written to help kids deal with death, I Googled "books to help children cope with death." One site that gives a nice list of books, most of which I confess I have not read, is:  http://www.leeanne.com/grief/

Although I still encounter parents, librarians, and teachers who would "protect" children from "sad" topics in books, I also find that kids like to have their emotions touched, and their favorite books are the ones in which the characters feel deeply about life's problems that they may also face.

Releasing Suppressed Emotions/Healing with True Fiction

Perhaps it's because of a childhood experience that I empathize with a child separated from his or her parents—and why I write and publish books that express the trauma such children experience. It is my hope in publishing these books that readers will understand and accept their own feelings and know they are not alone. Too often, kids think that their feelings are wrong and that they are somehow to blame for the situation that has left them bereft. From the feedback I have received from kids reading these books, I know my hopes are realized. The books touch a sympathetic chord in the reader. The trouble is, these books are not popular with the adults who supply books to their children. They worry that True Fiction books will make kids sad—and that being sad is a bad thing. The truth is that tears are not only healing, but necessary in resolving emotional pain. If you wish to know how this process works see the "path of tears" to "emotional healing" at http://www.cyquest.com/pathway/3step_process.html

Books based on real emotion brought on by situations real kids face, which I call "True Fiction" are designed to help kids break through the blocks that keep painful emotions inside. When I was growing up, emotional blocks were put in place by the grown ups in my life who were given these messages when they were kids: Crying is for sissies, don't get mad, don't scream, and for heaven's sake, don't cry! Though it may not be as commonplace today, I think these messages are still being instilled in some kids.

I was nine years old when I got my first "job." I was thrilled and very proud of my prowess. I got to ride for neighbors, keeping tabs on a herd of dairy cows during the day, so that they could graze the grass growing along the quiet country road that ran by their house. After milking in the morning, Frank would let his cows out. An hour or two later, I'd saddle up one of his horses and ride out to see that they hadn't strayed too far. If they had gone more than 4 or 5 miles from home, I'd get them headed the other direction. I'd get on the horse and go check on them every hour or two.

Even though we lived only five miles from my employer, arrangements had been made for me to stay overnight. That way, no one had to drive over to pick me up and then take me back every day. It made sense, and I was fine with the arrangement—at first. There was one place along the country road that I could look across the river and the railroad tracks to see my home in the distance. As I sat on my horse and looked longingly at home, I wondered what my parents and siblings were doing and whether they missed me, I was overcome with homesickness. I wanted to be with my family. Each day, the sadness grew as I sat on Frank's horse and stared homeward. By the time I'd been away about two weeks, I felt I couldn't stand it anymore. The grief of missing my family overwhelmed me. That night, when the boss's wife, Lois, as was her habit, came into the bedroom I shared with their four-year-old son, to check on us, I produced an audible sob, rather than pretending to be asleep as I usually did. She asked what was wrong, and I told her. She phoned my parents who were already in bed, sleeping. "Tell her to go to sleep. We'll come get her tomorrow." Oh how I wish I'd been satisfied with that, but I thought I'd die of grief if I didn't go home that night. My employer and his wife bundled up their sleeping son, started up their old pickup truck which had no headlights. Lois held a flash light out the window as Frank drove. They saw me to the door where we woke my tired parent's again. The reunion was not the glad welcoming I had envisioned. Mom and Dad were embarrassed and outraged at the trouble I had caused the kind neighbors. I'll never forget the concern in my little sister's voice when she asked, "What's wrong with Janet? Is she sick?" and the scorn and disgust in Mom's when she replied. "No. She's just homesick" and ordered me to bed.

That incident further reinforced what I'd already been taught. Only sissies cry, and selfish feelings are not acceptable, so keep them hidden if you have them at all. What I learned later in life, however, is that emotions suppressed in childhood affected every aspect of my life as an adult. Years of therapy have helped me know intellectually, that permission to feel and express emotion is healing. How I wish every parent would encourage their children's expression of what is going on inside them and let them know something I didn't learn until I took child development in college: that it is okay to cry.

As I said in the beginning of this blog entry, the books I write and publish have a mission. Their purpose is to allow the reader to feel what is inside them by portraying the same feelings through true-to-life characters and events. Tears are healing. Unless children can confront his true feelings they will remain suppressed, and suppressed feelings are the source of inner pain, self abnegation, and a lack of self-esteem that keeps them from realizing their full potential.

The Miranda and Starlight series, through engaging characters, portrays the feelings of loneliness and abandonment of a young girl whose mother has left her to live with grandparents and go to a school where she feels unaccepted.

Through Danny's Dragon, kids relate to the loss of a parent who has died. They experience Danny's feelings as he deals with the denial, guilt, isolation, and anguish that are the natural stages of grief. Kids who have suffered the loss of a parent, close friend or even a pet are comforted to know they are not alone, their feelings are natural, and the loss is not their fault. Kids who haven't yet experienced the death of a loved one are better able to sympathize with those who have and better prepared for it when it does happen. Kids who are holding feelings of loss and grief inside will find a way to let the healing tears flow when they read this book.

Kyleah's Tree and Kendall's Storm (coming next year) bring to life the feelings and hardships associated with separation not only from parents, but from a twin or close sibling. Vicariously, kids who are orphaned or separated from loved ones for any reason will be able to experience and understand their own feelings. Tears will flow, but there will also be joy and satisfaction in the adventures and triumphs of the wisdom and growth they see in Miranda, Danny, Kyleah and Kendall.

Jenna MacDonald, An Inmate's Daughter, and her brother suffer not only the loss of a parent, but also the stigma that hounds them wherever they go, forcing them to keep a guilty secret and feel shame that is not rightfully theirs. With millions of children in the same boat, this book should be flying off the shelves and into the hands of kids who could find comfort in knowing they are not alone and that there is hope for them. Most of these millions, statistics say, will follow their parent's footsteps and become incarcerated themselves later in life. Why? Because no one takes gives them a chance. Intervention, it is shown, can make all the difference. Books like An Inmate's Daughter go a long way in helping. Every school and library should have one. Every child who has a parent in prison should read it. Every child who knows a child with a parent in prison should read it to understand and empathize with those who do.

Children who have read these books report that they love them because they can relate to the characters. They want to read more like them. Adults who think they are protecting their children by only getting them books that help them escape reality may be depriving them of books that will change their lives by evoking healing tears.

If you know of children who could benefit from True Fiction stories like those mentioned here, let them or their parents know about them—or better yet, give them one for Christmas. They may be found in book stores, Amazon.com, or from the publisher. (click here to order.)

True Fiction for child victims

No matter how one feels about the war in Iraq, all must surely agree that the children who are left behind are the innocent victims. As I watched news clips after the invasion of Iraq, I felt deep empathy and sorrow for the children pulled from the arms of a mom or dad, and in some cases, both, after a prolonged and tearful goodbye. I listened to a mother left behind with three preschool age children who at first missed their father. When he did not return right away, they refused to talk about him, for it was easier to forget him, than to suffer the pain of his "abandonment." When a new boy started school with my grandchildren, I learned that he had come to live with his grandparents when both his parents were deployed to fight in Iraq. 

How does that feel? I asked myself. But I knew, just from agony of homesickness I suffered from a two week separation from my parents when I was nine. And they were not that far away. Just multiply that experience a hundredfold or a thousandfold, and I'd have an idea. What if they never came back? was my next question. How could I know what that was like? I had recently lost my mother and five years before that, my dad. I know the ache of missing them. But I'm an adult. My parents were in their eighties and their deaths were not unexpected. I could only imagine how painful it would be for a nine year old to lose a parent. 

But imagine I did, getting into the heart and mind of Danny, a fictional nine-year-old boy, as best I could. He is a rancher's son, and very close to his father. They worked and played together, and when Danny asked for a horse of his own, his dad could not refuse him. The horse, Dragon, becomes Danny's pride and joy and constant companion until the day his father dies. Then he can't look at him anymore, sure that it was the expense of the horse that forced his dad to join the Air National Guard, go to Iraq, and die in a fiery plane crash. Blaming his horse and himself, he withdraws from everything. 

The story continues as the loss is compounded on his family, (himself, his mother, and older sister) each dealing with his or her grief privately. Financially unable to hold on to the mortgaged cattle ranch, they move to Denver to live with Danny's grandparents. 

Can Danny adapt? Will he survive this additional loss of everything he has ever known. Will he get his "Dragon" back? Will his family, torn apart by deep personal sorrow, ever regain the happy unity they once shared? When Danny confronts the "enemy," an Iraqi classmate in the Denver school, will blame and hatred overwhelm him?   

The answers may be found in "Danny's Dragon" by Janet Muirhead Hill in book stores or online at www.ravenpublishing.net.