Author: Wendy Kennar

Gardening and Writing

Posted on by Wendy Kennar

The other day, I spent an hour working in my garden. Pruning, plucking, and even pleading. (Me: “Please don’t eat the plant. It’s not food.” Squirrel: No comment. But it did stop eating and stare at me for a long moment before scampering away.)

While I was marveling at the many plants that are getting closer to blooming, I realized something — gardening and writing have a lot in common.

They both offer the promise of something different — something more, something bigger, something more colorful — than what you started with.

A small green plant with a card sticking out of its moist soil labeling it a kalanchoe. A stack of white printer paper, standing at attention, just waiting for me to type some words on the computer and press print. 

I turn to both of these endeavors with hope and optimism. I water my plants, doing my best to make sure I’m watering a Goldilocks-not-too-much, not-too-little amount. I strive to find just the right spot, with just the right amount of sunlight, for each plant. I trust in the process and hope I’ve done all I can so my kalanchoe will bloom its yellow flowers. Likewise, I open up a new Pages document on my computer and begin. I only have twenty-six letters to work with, but, again, I trust in the process. I’ve done this before. Just get something down — a word, a vague idea, a quote. Something to get me writing, and keep me writing.

And then you see it start to happen. The plant looks a little taller, a bit fuller with more leaves. A tiny bud appears. The screen on the computer is no longer full of ramblings. I’ve found the line that I was writing my way to. The line that leads to a paragraph, which leads to multiple paragraphs and multiple pages.

But it’s not done yet. My kalanchoe does bloom its small, happy yellow flowers. And I continue showing my plants love, in the form of my pruning and plucking. So, too, it is with writing. After I have printed several pages of my personal essay, I know I’m not done. My pages need some love, too. I review, revise, and rewrite.

Of course there are others involved. All the people responsible for getting my plants to the garden store. My husband for being my personal I.T. person. 

But in the end, I did it. 

I pause and savor and appreciate. 

Then I do it all again. 

Lollipop Trees

Posted on by Wendy Kennar

“I had painted ‘lollipop trees.’ At least that’s what my elementary school teacher said.

“Our assignment was to paint watercolor landscapes. I painted trees with round tops, modeled after the pruned trees I saw as I walked to school each morning. I liked my painting; my teacher did not. She said my trees looked like lollipop trees; that they didn’t look like real trees, although they looked like the trees I knew.

“Mrs. E picked up a paintbrush and painted over my trees to make them look the way she thought trees should look.

“For the rest of my school years, I never voluntarily took an art class.” 

Those words are taken from a piece I wrote that was published in the Christian Science Monitor back in 2004. 

I thought of that essay the other day while on a walk. I am supposed to keep moving and not let my pain stop me from walking each day. So I try. I park the car near my son’s high school with plenty of time before the dismissal bell rings, so I can take a leisurely walk in the surrounding neighborhood. 

The other day I noticed the tree in the photograph above. And that’s when I thought back to my “lollipop trees” and this essay.

You can read my essay, “Too often, teachers extinguish a student’s spark,” by clicking here.

Write On, Sisters!

Posted on by Wendy Kennar

Write On, Sisters!: Voice, Courage, and Claiming Your Place at the Table by Brooke Warner is more than a writing book. It’s also a look into the uneven playing field that women encounter in most careers and fields. It’s a close-up look at the ways in which women often hold themselves back, and not just when it comes to writing. 

I’ll be honest — the first half of the book has a lot of statistics and was rather slow reading for me. But the second half of the book has quite a few nuggets that were worthy of my sticky notes.

Here are a few:

“Writing is self-expression, and as such, when we write we give voice to what we think, what we care about, and who we are. When we read a book —or even a post —we take a walk inside the innermost recesses of the author’s mind, welcomed into a place so private that the words we read on the page may be words the author has never uttered aloud. How powerful — and intimate — is that?”

“To put your voice out into the world is to both believe and demand that what you have to say matters. We are our best selves when we assert our independence and self-reliance, our strength and toughness. The very qualities our culture values least in women are the ones women need to succeed.”

“… you don’t need to heed warnings from the jaded that failure is imminent or inevitable. It is. The work is in getting back up on the horse, rising from the fall, and the way you handle the fall.”

“Few events are more life-changing and soul-affirming than offering up your work in the form of a published book. The act of creating a story, honing your words into a message that matters to readers, or honoring your truth by recording your experience in memoir form is a way of telling the world, I am here. I have something to say. I have something to impart. I want to share with you a story, a message, a truth. You are passing feelings from one human heart to another.”

Bound by Love and a Zip Code

Posted on by Wendy Kennar

Nine years ago, my essay “Bound by Love and a ZIP Code,” was published  in the Los Angeles Times L.A. Affairs column.

I regularly read these columns and am always surprised/delighted/amused by the many different ways we search and find, or lose, love.

You may find it surprising that for quite a while I really didn’t think I had a romantic story to tell. In fact, it took me a while to see what was in front of me the whole time — the way my husband and I met and fell in love was pretty extraordinary.

This week, I’m pleased to share the essay with you. If you haven’t read it before, you can click here to read “A boundless love contained in a single ZIP code.” (Note – the digital title varies slightly from the in-print title.)

The Bodyguard

Posted on by Wendy Kennar

I wanted the first book I read, start-to-finish, in 2023 to be a book I knew I would adore. 

That book was Katherine Center’s The Bodyguard. 

Last year, I was lucky enough to win an advanced copy through a Goodreads Giveaway. I already knew the main characters, the plot, the setting. 

Did that diminish this year’s reading in any way? Absolutely not. 

(By the way – I bought the hardcover version of The Bodyguard from Ms. Center’s favorite local independent bookstore because she signs them!)

Did I find this second read of The Bodyguard enjoyable?

Definitely!

Was The Bodyguard the reason I stayed up later than planned just so I could read one more chapter?

Yes indeed.

Here are just a few of my favorite passages:

“People who want to be famous think it’s the same thing as being loved, but it’s not. Strangers can only ever love a version of you. People loving you for your best qualities is not the same as people loving you despite your worst.”

“Was I lovable? I mean, are any of us really lovable if you overthink it?
“It was tempting to chicken out.
“But then I thought of Jack going bwok, bwok, bwok, and then I wondered if having faith in yourself was just deciding you could do it — whatever it was — and then making yourself follow through.
“So I decided something right then: Every chance you take is a choice. A choice to decide who you are.”

“I kept pushing. ‘You can’t control the world — or other people. You can’t make them love you, either. They will or they won’t, and that’s the truth. But what you can do is decide who you want to be in the face of it all. Do you want to be a person who helps —or hurts? Do you want to be a person who burns with anger —or shines with compassion? Do you want to be hopeful or hopeless? Give up or keep going? Live or die?”

“Maybe love isn’t a judgment you render —but a chance you take. Maybe it’s something you choose to do —over and over.
“For yourself. And everyone else.
“Because love isn’t like fame. It’s not something other people bestow on you. It’s not something that comes from the outside.
“Love is something you do.
“Love is something you generate.
“And loving other people really does turn out, in the end, to be a genuine way of loving yourself.”

It’s Not the Final Answer

Posted on by Wendy Kennar

“After a year and a half of talking with one doctor after another, it was Dr. W, a rheumatologist, who explained my mystery illness.

‘It’s an autoimmune disease called Undifferentiated Connective Tissue Disease. UCTD,’ he told us.

My husband and I had no idea what that meant except for one thing. My gut instinct told me that not knowing those letters, not immediately recognizing the name Undifferentiated Connective Tissue Disease, was a good thing. If UCTD was truly bad, it would have been a familiar term. A term you hear about a lot in relation to walk-a-thons and fundraisers. Multiple sclerosis. Muscular dystrophy. Even if I didn’t know the specifics of those illnesses, I knew their names. I knew they were complicated. UCTD sounded okay.”

The paragraphs above are from my personal essay, It’s Not the Final Answer. I’m pleased to share that my essay was selected for publication in Please See Me, Issue #12: Diagnosis. You can read the essay in its entirety by clicking here.

Bomb Shelter

Posted on by Wendy Kennar

I don’t think I can say enough good things about Mary Laura Philpott’s memoir Bomb Shelter: Love, Time, and Other Explosives. 

Back in February of 2020, I had written a blog post about her first collection of essays, I Miss You When I Blink. (In case you missed it, you can read that blog post by clicking here.) In that post, I wrote: “And I got lost in this story. I saw myself on page after page.”

I feel the same way about Bomb Shelter. It’s not just what Ms. Philpott is writing, but how she’s writing it — the words she has chosen to express herself. 

My copy is full of sticky notes and marked passages. I’ll share a few of my favorites:

“Every joy, every loved one, every little thing I got attached to, every purpose I held dear — each one was another stick of dynamite, strapped to the rest.
“The longer I lived, the more I loved, the larger this combustible bundle grew. I walked around constantly in awe of my good fortune and also aware that it could all blow up in an instant, flipping me head over heels into the air, vaporizing everything.”

“The nursery song I sang to my baby — ‘never let you go’ — had been a lie. But it wasn’t a cruel lie. It was a hopeful one. It was a lie to me as much as to him. It was a loving work of fiction to let myself enjoy those warm, snuggly evenings without thinking about the fact that one of those times would be the last time.”

“Everybody has something. That’s one of the things John and I began saying to the kids. We meant it as a way of normalizing what our son was going through — like, hey, nobody’s without some medical adventure. Having a body means taking care of yourself in all the usual ways, plus whatever extra way might be required by your particular thing. You go to the doctor. You take your medicine. You do what needs doing, so you can go on with your life.”

“If I can scrape up some evidence of a thing made beautifully or a gesture made kindly, then I can believe, for a few seconds, that this world is careful and kind. And if I can believe that, I can believe it is safe to let the people I love walk around out there. It’s my own attempt at foresparkling, seeking out hints of good, even planting them myself, so I can believe there’s more good to come. It might all be superstition, just mental magic, but why not try?
“So I say yes for things that offer some pleasure. Yes for people who choose to be friendly. Yes for any glimmer of light through all the darkness. I mean that yes. I need it. Seriously.”

“It’s a glass-half-empty, glass-half-full kind of thing: Better to believe the world is at least half-full of decent intentions than to focus on how it’s also half-full of assholes.”

“It’s goofy, I guess, to think of myself as a still-growing child, but it’s also thrilling to remember that although it has been my job for so many years to help my children grow up, I am still growing up, too. I am becoming someone, still and always. I enjoy setting my own timing for a reset every year. It helps me look at life less like one ending after another and more like a series of starts.”

“It’s true: There will always be threats lurking under the water where we play, danger hiding in the attic and rolling down the street on heavy wheels, unexpected explosions in our brains and our hearts and the sky. There will always be bombs, and we will never be able to save everyone we care about. To know that and to try anyway is to be fully alive. The closest thing to shelter we can offer one another is love, as deep and wide and in as many forms as we can give it.”

My Illness Does Not Define Me

Posted on by Wendy Kennar

“My illness does not define me.” 

I recently came across that statement in The Healing Journal: Guided Prompts and Inspiration for Life with Illness by Emily Suñez.

I’ve read that sentence before — in other books, in other posts. For some reason, though, when I read it this time, I really lingered on that page. I just couldn’t stop thinking of those words and what they mean. Maybe it’s because we’re in this in-between time of reflecting on a year that is rapidly coming to an end while daring to look ahead with hope to the new year. 

“My illness does not define me.” 

It’s true. I don’t think anyone who knows me well would use words like ill or disabled to describe me. And that’s probably because I spend an awful lot of energy trying to act like my illness is not front and center in my life. 

But, I don’t think that’s particularly helpful either. I try to ignore my autoimmune disease, push it aside and out of the way. But it’s still there, demanding attention, and though I don’t often admit it, it’s also demanding compassion.

I’ve never written that before. 

Probably because, in all honesty, that’s the part I’m just starting to become aware of. 

“My illness does not define me.” 

But it is a big part of me.

Monthly Book Highlights of 2022

Posted on by Wendy Kennar

As we approach the last week-and-a-half of 2022, I find myself reflecting on the year and thinking about the books I have read. As of this post, I have read 50 books this year, though that is short of my Goodreads Reading Challenge of 57 I had optimistically set back in January. 

This week, rather than focus on the books I didn’t read, I’m going to highlight one book from each month of 2022.

January

The first book I finished this year was Claire Cook’s Life Glows On. I felt like I was starting the year on the right foot, reading about creativity — the ways we demonstrate creativity, the reasons why we need to dedicate time and energy to creative endeavors.

February

During the shortest month of the year, I read Moms Don’t Have Time to Have Kids: A Timeless Anthology edited by Zibby Owens. As I wrote in my blog post: “I found myself relating to so many of the authors. The specifics may differ (where we live, how many kids we have, the ages of our kids) but the emotions are universal.”

March

In March, I read First Lady Dr. Jill Biden’s memoir Where the Light Enters: Building a Family, Discovering Myself. I loved reading about Dr. Biden’s passion for teaching, because I know that passion.

April

I picked up Just Haven’t Met You Yet by Sophie Cousens because I wanted a fun, entertaining read. This novel was that, and more. (Which reminds me, I still haven’t read her other novels.)

May

Jane Goodall’s The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times was a powerful book with a powerful message.

June

We’re a basketball family. And while our team will always be the L.A. Clippers, we respect and appreciate many players on many different teams. The “Greek Freak,” aka Giannis Antetokounmpo of the Milwaukee Bucks is one such player, and why I was interested in reading Giannis.

July

Brighter By the Day: Waking Up to New Hopes and Dreams is the third book I have read by Robin Roberts. The book feels like a pep talk Robin Roberts is sharing with you, simply because she believes in you and just wants the best for you.

August

Weather Girl by Rachel Lynn Solomon is much more than a rom-com. Plus, there’s that exciting feeling knowing an author you have recently discovered has written other books you have yet to read.

September

Jean Meltzer’s Mr. Perfect on Paper was such a great read. I love that Ms. Meltzer writes books featuring a protagonist who is not only Jewish, but who also lives with an invisible chronic illness. (Be sure to also check out her first novel, The Matzah Ball, perfect for reading during Hanukkah.)

October

Love and Saffron by Kim Fay was a story told through the letters two women write to each other during the 1960s. I was instantly intrigued because I have a pen pal. We have been exchanging letters for almost thirty years!

November

Book Lovers by Emily Henry is a special book, for a couple of reasons. First, I bought it during our family trip to Maui. And secondly, it earned five stars on my Goodreads review. 

December

Jasmine Guillory’s Royal Holiday was an entertaining holiday romance. It was a fun escape to be able to open the book and slip into this other world.

Readers, feel free to share some of your favorite books that you read during 2022!

Royal Holiday

Posted on by Wendy Kennar

I don’t know about you, but there are times when I just want to briefly escape from reality. Not in an unsafe, drug-induced sort of way. But in a slip-into-someone-else’s-life kind of way. Which is one of the reasons I enjoy reading.

And sometimes, I want to read a book where I know everything is going to work out okay in the end. 

Jasmine Guillory’s Royal Holiday fits that description.

It was a fun, fast read that made me smile on several occasions. 

This passage, while not necessarily one of the most important in the novel, was one that I marked. One I needed to read:

“She shook her head. ‘I don’t know why. Life gets busy, with so many things that aren’t actually important but feel important. And there are plenty of weekend days where I could decide to forget my to-do list, spend a few hours at the beach instead, but I’ve only ever done that if there’s a special occasion.’ She looked at him and smiled again. ‘Life is short. I need to stop waiting for special occasions in order to treat myself.’”

And there was this:

“Vivian drove up to her house and smiled at the bouquet of yellow and orange and pink flowers in the passenger seat of her car. Their bright colors had cheered her up immediately when she’d seen them in the grocery store, and she’d bought them on an impulse. Why didn’t she ever buy flowers for herself? Just looking at them made her feel content and helped reassure her that no matter how much it rained, spring would come.” 

Readers, have you read Royal Holiday? Or any of Jasmine Guillory’s novels?