“You think your pain…”

I’ve been trying to think of a way to explain my absence from the blog for the past month, without going into specifics that I’m not comfortable sharing. This morning, while reading a book on reading instruction (Nancy Atwell’s The Reading Zone), I came across a quote that I wanted to share to get myself back into blogging. It doesn’t explain the specifics of my pain, but then again, I don’t think I need to. If all I say is I was sad, and it was hard to get through each day, and slowly now I’m getting better, reading a bit of Salman Rushdie’s Joseph Anton every night, revising the novel I’m writing, and planting tomatoes, I think everyone will understand.

Here’s the quote I found:
“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecendented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.”
– James Baldwin

It reminded me immediately of this quote from the first author who gave me that connection:
“We read to know we are not alone.”
– CS Lewis

We are not alone, and I look forward to continuing to share my blog with you. Thank you.