10 Comments
Jul 23, 2022Liked by Elissa Altman

Elissa I can’t really formulate what I feel when I read your writing. It makes me laugh and it makes me sometimes draw my arms around my chest to protect my most intimate feelings that I can’t really share with most people. You are a shamanistic wordsmith. Never stop writing!

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Jul 24, 2022Liked by Elissa Altman

I had conversations out loud with my father for 2 years after he died. Good thing I was a rural carrier,& could cry & rant & rave on my route. No one could hear me except us. I am better now, but I still catch myself talking to him occasionally. He passed in 1998. It takes a long time to come to terms.

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I have been following threads to figure out when this happened to me as well. I am smiling spontaneously today. Part of the bread crumbs to follow. Gratitude.

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Jul 22, 2022Liked by Elissa Altman

Another beautiful post, cooking is a barometer for me, too. Losing interest or forgetting skills, red flags. Grief is sneaky and robs us with such stealth we can be shocked to find ourselves on the other side of it and see it for the first time.

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Jul 22, 2022Liked by Elissa Altman

Thank you for this. I went "Huh". Several times.

I have my humour back (extra Canadian 'U' still intact) after a pretty dark period where I just about drank myself to death. Glad to be on the other side, and still on the sunny side of the earth-carpet. I, too, had a very very funny father, who had a super great sense of humour. I would have been devastated to see him lose it - it permeated his being. He didn't stop laughing even up to the night he was dying, and kept us laughing with him, for which I have gratitude and great memories. As for the grim times, I wouldn't have pegged my loss of laughter as central to why it was so bad... your essay has clarified for me that I had lost much more than laughter, I had lost some of my will to live.

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Jul 22, 2022Liked by Elissa Altman

Well...that burned up roast chicken looks exactly like my latest roast chicken (which made me laugh out loud) because I was mixing glazes and totally forgot about the dumb chicken. Now I shall boil an egg. Thank you for the much needed beautiful essay. Tough times.

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Funny is a genetic inheritance in our family, and boy do we need it. Thanks for this and all of your other affirmations. I love your newsletters. I tear them open.

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Jul 22, 2022Liked by Elissa Altman

I , too, had lost friends on 9/11. This was so beautifully written it made me reexamine my thinking in a new way.

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Jul 22, 2022Liked by Elissa Altman

Thank you for writing such a beautiful post

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