“Most of what I write is memoir, which is a harrowing genre, but I have no choice in the matter. It’s what I have always been called to write.
People often ask, ‘WHY do you write about yourself, your bumbling mistakes, your occasional epiphanies?’ They ask this with a certain tone, as one might ask a mountain climber why he scales a dangerous peak in the middle of winter. ‘WHY did you climb that mountain…in January, all alone??’ And the climber says, ‘Because it’s there.’ And that is the only answer I have: I write because it is there; it is this life we are living—this confusing, splendid, sordid, glorious, despairing life. I am called to write about it. I would rather write a book about knitting, or a cookbook, but no, I’m called to the mountain where I struggle with unresolvable human and divine issues. If I am stuck as I write, it’s usually because I am trying to resolve an unresolvable mystery. That’s when I turn to a quote I have tacked on the wall above my computer. It’s by one of my favorite authors and meditation teachers, Pema Chodron. I read it; I sit up tall; I reclaim my birthright: We don’t deserve resolution. We deserve something better than that. We deserve our birthright—an open state of mind that can relax with paradox and ambiguity.”
—Elizabeth Lesser, author of Marrow: A Love Story (Harper Wave, 2016)
Photo credit: Dion Ogust