IF NEVER THE DREAM IS FULFILLED ...

  Carolyn Kaufman: Dreamer, Healer, Friend

 

I was stunned to hear that Carolyn Kaufman--a gifted psychologist and author--recently died on September 7th from an aneurysm.

I knew Carolyn only from her work on Querytracker and from her Writer's Guide to Psychology, a wonderful reference for writers. 

Patrick from QT wrote a touching tribute to her here. You can learn about her wonderful book here on her website.

 She was a writer, of course, but she was also a talented photographer and artist, a doctor of psychology and a college professor. 

Yet somehow she found the time to blog about her writing experiences and, as she put it, “help writers become authors.” 

Although she never fulfilled her dream of publishing a novel, she did publish books to help other writers  

(such as the Writer’s Guide to Psychology, http://www.archetypewriting.com.) 

But are all of us deceived?

We focus on the dreams of life when it is the company of fellow travelers that is the true wealth, the true meaning to our struggling.

As novice authors, we strive, we jockey for position, we burn to get our novel "out there" and ride the surf of rising sales ranking.

But will we leave the legacy of friendship, smiles, and healed lives that Carolyn left?  

Her spirit hovers over the published works of so many authors she touched with her warmth and wisdom.

In all our striving to succeed as authors, let us remember Carolyn who succeeded in being a catalyst for healing and wholeness.  

Let us pause to bend down and pick up a fallen comrade, too winded to ask for help.  Let us not be too busy to help.

Carolyn never let the goal deter her from the wisdom that the journey is the true wealth because of the friends we make along the way.  

Remember Carolyn and her example in the pursuit of your dream.

Carolyn, the world is 

emptier and colder

without you in it.

  “Whenever someone who knows you disappears, you lose one version of yourself. 
Yourself as you were seen, as you were judged to be. 
Lover or enemy, mother or friend, those who know us construct us, 
and their several knowings
 slant the different facets of our characters like diamond-cutter's tools.
 Each such loss is a step leading to the grave, where all versions blend and end.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Ground Beneath Her Feet


In a fitting note of history:



The American poet Adelaide Crapsey was born on this day in 1878.

Crapsey died of tuberculosis in her mid-thirties,
and almost all of her poetry was published posthumously,

but her experiments with rhythm and meter have given her a place in literary history
as the inventor of the controlled-syllable cinquain,
and an innovator in rhymed couplet.

On Seeing Weather-Beaten Trees

    Is it as plainly in our living shown,
By slant and twist, which way the wind hath blown?