Just Say Yes to the Nothing Left Unsaid Workshop Because I’m in the Fire of Love and Loss And I Said Do It.

Zoom

Saturday, April 18th

10 AM - 1 PM PT

$100

Hi.

When my brother Sam died 24 days ago, I went to the history of my voice mails to see if I could find his voice.

That dude was not a phone guy.

I had to go on Facebook and search for the video where he was talking about “hahd shell lobstahs”. I haven’t been able to find it yet. I stopped searching, to be honest, because I prefer to think it could be there to knowing it’s gone.

I have brief messages on my phone from my mom and my dad, and I’ll keep them forever. They weren’t about the knowing that time is short and precious. They are things they said to me when I did not answer the phone. “Hi, Love, it’s Mom. “Hi Anne, it’s Dad.” I long for more. “Keep talking,” I want to say to the recorded voice “Tell me everything. Please don’t go quite yet.”

When I recorded my book You Don’t Look Adopted at Cybersound Studios in Boston, the process felt sacred because in my mind, I was whispering into my daughter’s ear: I’m here. I love you with all my heart. It wasn’t about what I was saying. It was that I was leaving the home of my voice for her if she ever needed or wanted to visit.

I’ve been hungry for my mother’s voice ever since she died. I wished she had done an Audible version of her book Louisa Catherine: The Other Mrs. Adams, so I could fall to sleep listening to her read.

I’d always wished my first mother had done some sort of recording for me so I have her voice with me. What I am telling you is that this hunger for voice thing is a lifetime yearning, and I’d love to get more people on the bus of leaving their voice behind.

Kathy Delaney-Smith, a hero of mine and countless others, just submitted the reading she did of her book Grit and Wit to Audible at Cybersound. (I read the quotes from her players and others that talk about Kathy because she can talk shit with the best, but she did not want to read nice things others said about her. So that was fun for me, back at Cybersound, talking into that mic, deeply present, loving language and the ways it lets us connnect). I LOVE Kathy’s voice. It is gritty and deep and so her. She’s less fond of it, and so I had to use all my willpower to get her into the studio and get the recording done. I was bound and determined that she was not going to leave this earth (and she better not leave for a LONG time—good thing she exercises like a maniac and has great life hygiene) without leaving her voice for those who need it to hold onto when we want to remember her and what it means to be a courageous, hilarious, dynamic, loving, challenging, generous, brilliant human being.

I decided to create a workshop so people could write a hello/gooodbye letter or essay or list or word puddle to someone specific or to their world of beloveds. Remembering what you love about life and others and yourself can be a powerful reset. So much is dark and scary in the world right now, and swimming in love soup for a few hours on a Saturday where you remember what is important to you is worth the resources, is what I’m arguing.

You don’t have to like to write. You just have to like other people. And if you don’t even like yourself, never mind other people, maybe we’ll be able to find a splinter of light for you to get a glimpse of joy and meaning during our time together. If nothing good happens, you can always ask me for a refund.

I have invited my brother Jyre to participate. He’s in hospice, and although when we were growing up I spend most of my time telling him to shut up, now I’d love to hear what he has to say. But I still might tell him to shut up if he goes off on some topic I don’t want to talk about. Older sisters can be total assholes to the very end, or at least I can. Telling someone who is alive to shut up can be such a luxury. They can still hear you. They can still ignore you and keep talking!

Listen, even if you know you can’t go to the workshop, sign up. I’ll send you an outline of what we did, and you can do the work and email it to me and get a deep feeling of accomplishment (or not, not under my control, but I’ll try my best), a recording those who love you will be able to listen to on repeat in case you leave this mortal coil before they do.

I have been deep in the fire of loss, and I’m more committed than ever to living as authentically as possible and letting those I love know just how spectacular I think they are, and how much they are loved, always, even when times are dark and things feel hard.

It starts, I think, with me loving me, and then the love spirals out. If you don’t tell people, if you don’t get specific and tell stories and memories, maybe they won’t know how much they mattered. Maybe they won’t know why you loved them, or how.

Anyway.

Come on.

Do it.

You can save your spot by emailing me at anneheffon@gmail.com. I’ll do my best to make the workshop rock.