How Grief Changed My Reading

Books have been my companions since childhood. The books, the stories, the characters all woven into my life. When my days had been full of people and when I’ve been alone. I grew up with my nose forever in a book. I was in Great Books in elementary school, majored in English Literature in college, kept a dream inside of me that one day I too would be a writer. 

I was also the ultimate books snob. It was only a book if it was made out of paper. I studied Thackery and Faulkner and Chaucer and Joyce. All the great white men of literature. As I grew and sought out new stories I fell into a more diverse selection. Maxine Hong Kingston, Sandra Cisneros, and James Welch. I lovingly discovered Barbara Kingsolver, David James Duncan, Gloria Naylor, Gabriel Garcia Márquez. I cultivated my list of books to read from Orange, Booker and PEN/Faulkner lists. 

Somedays it’s hard for me to remember that person anymore. 

In 2011 my mom died from lung cancer. She lived with us, me, my husband, my two little kids and soft goofball dog. She was diagnosed on June 9th, my sister’s birthday and died twenty-one days later. I took care of her in our home through her battle. Each day felt like falling off another cliff, until there were no more to fall off of and she left this world.

Those early days after her death are not the hardest to remember. Special relatives were in town. I dropped my daughter off at pre-school under a crisp-blue, summer sky. At work I spoke to people as if a limb hadn’t just been ripped from my body. 

But months later? So much is a blur to me. That first year especially. 

How does one cope?

One of the ways I’ve always coped during difficult times in my life, by surrounding myself with wonderful books. When my family uprooted from Colorado to move to Ohio during my sophomore year in high school. The first time I moved to L.A. by myself and encountered true loneliness. As a newlywed in a new-to-me, tiny Southern town with no friends. When I became a mother and had not one clue what I was doing. No matter the circumstances surrounding me in life, I have always made time for reading.

Only, after my mother’s death, many books couldn’t keep my interest. Around the same time I developed a chronic eye disease, which, when added to my already rotten vision made it difficult to read print books unless it was during the day in bright light. Grief affected my physical body as well as my emotions.

I don’t remember the meals I cooked, or what I wore, or whether I even went to work as that year stretched out. But I do remember the books I read.

Suddenly I didn’t want things so esoteric anymore. Maybe because I didn’t know how to handle my own grief, let alone decipher literary tomes.

My e-reader became my best friend, because I could instantly make the font bigger for my aching eyes, and romance novels my comfort. I first discovered Kristen Ashley around this time along with Penny Reid and Lauren Gilley. I wanted emotion, warmth, and comfort, vulnerable, well-developed, quirky characters. I wanted love and heat and conflict that ultimately ended in happily ever afters. I wanted to gasp and cry and then, smile through the happy tears. 

My attention span or broken heart couldn’t contemplate a classic like Bleak House or Moby Dick. Well, to be fair, my brain never liked Moby Dick. Poor, poor Ishmael. 

It wasn’t that I was denying my emotions. Rather, I wanted to feel them all. And I wanted the happy ending. Perhaps because I didn’t get one in real life. 

Maybe real life is just a combination of happy endings and tragedies cycling around each other.

And then I remembered in my past, during times of grief or sadness or painful loneliness, I have always sought the comfort and pleasure of reading books flooded with emotions, especially great romances. 

When I felt invisible in my new high school, writing papers on The Scarlett Letter and Heart of Darkness, at home I read Amanda Quick, Brenda Jackson, and Danielle Steel. Falling into my mother’s footsteps who read romance after romance. 

When I attended design school in downtown L.A., which felt like a different planet to me, I drank hot tea and re-read Coming Home by Rosamunde Pilcher.

After spending my mornings alone in my writing loft in Jasper, Georgia, I’d visit the library and check out bags full of Nora Roberts. So many fabulous romances by Nora. 

I still love a great literary novel, if it can grab my attention, but romance has become my preferred genre to read, along with mouth-watering food essays (food is my real obsession.) What else does one need besides fabulous books and great food? 

Well, love. One needs love. Isn’t it the thing we all seek? To be loved. To find love.

I know some criticize these reading choices, but to me, so many romance novels allow me to get lost in a character’s journey, to feel the emotions and to witness true love. If an author can gift me with all those, I will surround myself with their books. I will always want to read about love.

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Sara Ohlin is a writer with her heart in the Pacific Northwest. She is the author of the romance novels, Handling the Rancher and Salvaging Love (coming in Dec.) Her essays can be found at Anderbo.com, Mothers Always Write, The Good Mother Project, Feminine Collective, The Manifest Station, Chicken Soup for the Soul, Literary Mama, theSame and the anthologies, Are We Feeling Better Yet? Women Speak About Health Care in America, and Take Care: Tales, Tips and Love from Women Caregivers. You can read more about her at www.saraohlin.com.

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HANDLING THE RANCHER

FROM EXCITING ROMANCE AUTHOR SARA OHLIN

Book one in the Graciella series

What’s a sexy rancher to do when an uptight accountant falls into his lap?

Already reeling at having inherited the family farm on his father’s death, photojournalist Cruz Brockman returns home to the Oregon town of Graciella to receive another blow—accountant Miranda Jenks is there to audit the books because the IRS suspect his late father of tax fraud. To their astonishment, sparks fly between the passionate Cruz and the career-focused Miranda upon first meeting and the heat rises with every encounter.

Threatened with losing everything his family has worked for, Cruz has no choice but to be completely open with Miranda, something that doesn’t come easily to him, just as focusing on her own needs is foreign to her. She’s put her own desires last all her life, but the longer she spends with Cruz, the more she wants to dive into a passionate affair with him.

An intense, toe-curling physical connection is one thing, but exposing their hearts is another. As Miranda finishes her audit and the clock counts down to her leaving, can the reluctant rancher and the shy accountant conquer their fears and fight for their love?

 

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, How To and Tips