Sophia Bonnie Wodin

“Everything is held together with stories: That is all that is holding us together, stories and compassion”  Barry Lopez from an interview in Poets and Writers March/April 1994 I am an inveterate used-book junkie.  Anywhere I go I seek out used book stores and can spend hours in them.   I may come away with a treasure or leave satisfied but empty handed. While visiting a dear friend I noticed for the first time not one but two used bookstores in her neighborhood.  In the second one I found a volume by a favorite author that had as its dedication the Barry Lopez quote that begins this blog.  Like so many tidbits of wisdom, it struck me as both simple and true.  Yes, we all have stories.  Some of our stories chronicle our adventures and are the spice of our lives.  But some others of our stories step in and take over our lives.  Check out the 3-part series I did about Story in February and March of 2014. Some stories are teaching ...

Some of you know that I travel between my current home in SW Ontario, Canada and the family home in Massachusetts.  Time was when I did that quite a lot, but recent years have found me more settled in my Canadian home, only traveling for family occasions or to take care of my land. So when Monday morning found me hopping into my car and ‘flying low’ down the New York State Thruway I was somewhat surprised at the fierceness of my response. A beloved friend’s cancer had metastasized and another friend’s mother had gone into hospice. I made the trip in record time. Sliding into my former life was immediate.   Part of me can barely understand that I live a whole different life elsewhere. I remember and wonder about that old story of someone who woke from a dream to realize that they didn’t know which was their real life and when they were dreaming.   Were they the butterfly dreaming of being a human or a human dreaming of being a butterfly?   Sometimes I ask ...