A woman who will talk to children and the men who fear her

I wanted a diagnosis and cure desperately, but I didn’t entirely mind the solitude of pain and sleepless nights that I had to endure

Jan 06, 2022

The pages inside are yellowed with age, the cardboard binding is battered but the cover illustration of playful green frogs against a background of orange and purple on this notebook seems as fresh as ever.

‘To do whatever you want with, Natasha,’ reads the message from my friend, Dawn, on the first page. It is dated April 1995.

As I browse through it, I find a record of my handwriting through the decades. The colour of the ink varies between blue, red, green and purple. I have filled up piles of diaries with reporting and workshop notes, but this one notebook in which I have transcribed minimal quotes that spoke to me or startled me when I stumbled upon them, has remained my constant companion. Every now and then something reminds me to find it and search for connections in its pages again.

“I have traversed many kinds of health, and keep traversing them… And as for sickness: are we not almost tempted to ask whether we could get along without it?” reads a quote from Nietzsche. The next sentence is written in all caps on the page:

‘ONLY GREAT PAIN IS THE ULTIMATE LIBERATOR OF THE SPIRIT’

When I read this now, I also see the person who had copied this here. I was in my twenties and had been living with a recurrent, unexplained stomach migraine — bouts of pain that would often debilitate me for two days, keeping me up through the night, alone with myself and my books. Friends would feel sorry for me and look on helplessly. I would struggle to articulate that while I wanted a diagnosis and cure desperately, I didn’t entirely mind the solitude of pain and sleeplessness that I had to endure. Whatever I managed to read in that vulnerable interlude touched me more deeply. Sometimes I wrote poetry. Being cut off from the noise and expectations of everyday life was a fertile ground for other experiences. Learning to cope gave me perspective and I was richer for it.

Another line in my diary defines great health as rare humour, valour and the resilience of the spirit. My body was in pain but my spirit was healthy and these words validated that. My friends did not understand yet, but in the writings of a philosopher I knew nothing else about, I had found that pain can have a purpose.

In a book of short stories by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, I found the cure that endless visits to doctors’ clinics and hospital OPDs could not offer me. “…play music for her, fill the house with flowers, have the birds sing, take her to the ocean to see the sunsets, give her everything that can make her happy... no medicine cures what happiness cannot.”

Indulge yourself with beauty and art, I noted for myself. It will heal you.

It is the default design of a life well-lived that there will be milestones of gut-wrenching loss, rejection and break-ups. A few months ago, I was beginning to mourn another instance of moving on in life and letting go of a team I had been nurtured by. It didn’t take too long before these words copied out from a newspaper article on the break-up of the Beatles came back to remind me to kindly not take myself too seriously.

The quote is attributed to John Lennon: “It’s just natural, it’s not a great disaster. People keep talking about it as if it’s the end of the earth. It’s only a rock group that split up, it’s nothing important. You know you have all the albums there, if you want to reminisce.”

I say these lines to myself in my own version of Lennon’s accent and they always work like magic to snap me out of self-pity.

On another page, a quote from an Anais Nin essay reads: “The woman of the future… I imagine she will be very tranquil about her strength and her serenity, a woman who will know how to talk to children and to the men who sometimes fear her.”

On the same page is a sentence from one of the final pages of ‘The Colour Purple’ by Alice Walker, “Celie’s quest is not so much to straighten out her relationship with her Mister, but to develop her relationship with the universe.”

For the young adult who copied these lines in her diary, they were a revelation. You will not be defined by how others relate to you. You have permission, like Celie, to become your own person, connected to the wider world. Cultivate serenity, it will be your superpower.

On a lighter note, there is this ageless conversation between Pooh and Piglet:

“When you wake up in the morning, Pooh,” said Piglet at last, “what’s the first thing you say to yourself?”

“What’s for breakfast,” said Pooh. “What do you say, Piglet?”

“I say, I wonder what’s going to happen exciting today,” said Piglet.

Pooh nodded thoughtfully.

“It’s the same thing,” he said.

Happy New Year, dear reader. May your breakfast and 2022 be equal parts exciting and tranquil for you.