I haven't posted much lately because I've been busy doing other things -- painting, traveling, reading, gardening, meditating, chanting, canoeing, getting a new novel ready to publish, and sewing a myriad of doll clothes and other things for my beloved grandchildren.
But this morning, I have to write because I am fighting tears. I learned today that a woman I've known for many years as a writer and editor and friend passed away quite suddenly at the age of 74. I realize this morning that I never really told this woman, Marilyn Davis, just how much respect and love I had for her.
I met Marilyn when I started submitting poetry and prose to a fabulous on-line literary blogsite called Two Drops of Ink. She always received my work with enthusiasm and placed beautiful images alongside my writing.
The miracle is that all of that ended. She went into recovery and shortly afterward, at a recovery meeting in Georgia where she lived, she had a mysterious encounter with a Native American man named Grey Hawk. He revealed to her that while in a sweat lodge in Virginia, he had had a vision that he had to "quit his job as a counselor, pack his belongings and go to Gainesville, Georgia, where he would find the woman who would open a house of healing for other women."
That woman was Marilyn Davis! The night she met him, during a recovery meeting, she was walking away when in a booming voice he said, "You, wait!"
"Although I turned around to look at him, I didn't believe he was talking to me...There he stood, pointing in my direction...I finally stammered 'Are you talking to me?' He smiled and said, 'Yes, I have looked for you for twenty years, do not go now.'...I replied that he must have me confused with someone else - that we did not know each other. He laughed and told me that we did..."
She was dumbfounded.
"I sat there, not knowing how to respond...How could he know me? Why did he think I had anything of value to give to other people to help them heal from their addictions? I was only ten months into recovery."
It took a lot of convincing.
Well, to make a long story short, Marilyn Davis opened that house of healing in 1990 and managed it until 2011. North House went on to become an award-winning facility.
Marilyn reconciled with her parents, and her daughters. She became a grandmother to four grandchildren.
And she went on to have a rewarding writing life. She had two very popular blogs, Two Drops of Ink, and From Addict 2 Advocate. Besides Finding North, she published a TIERS Recovery Manual and the Memories to Memoirs Workbook.
But her most important work was giving hope and support and wise advice not only to thousands of recovering addicts, but also sharing her creativity with a huge writing community, of which I was fortunate to be part.
Dear Marilyn, I'm holding your book in my hand this morning, crying, hearing your wonderfully-raspy voice in my head. Most of all I am feeling such great love and respect for you in my heart. I am so so grateful that I was part of your amazing life!
P.S. Thank you ever so much for publishing my son Noah Kirsch's poem, "Spider," in January, 2022
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