This is the description of the episode:

On this episode of the Hidden Gifts of Loss podcast, Phyllis Unterschuetz shares her story of hidden grief and healing. At 21, while in France to do service for her religious community, Phyllis found herself unexpectedly pregnant. Faced with overwhelming shame and fear of disgrace, she opted for an illegal abortion and suppressed the experience for years. The buried grief led to various emotional struggles throughout her life. It wasn’t until a breakthrough with a therapist that she began to acknowledge and form a relationship with the lost child, named Ruhi. This journey also led her to reconnect with her younger self, significantly aiding her healing process. Phyllis is now writing a memoir to share her story and inspire others to confront and process their own hidden grief.

Phyllis Unterschuetz was selected from eighty applications received from writers across the U.S. and overseas. This fellowship had to be historically accurate, and tell a compelling story, could take a variety of forms, including memoirs, autobiography, biography, history, journalism, and even drama and poetry. Phyllis will receive a two-week residency at the Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow.

Linda Leavell, the sponsor and one of the judges said, “The judges for the fellowship were unanimous in their enthusiasm for Phyllis Unterschuetz’s application. Her autobiographical writing sample is a superb example of narrative nonfiction. It tells a poignant coming-of-age story that is vivid with sensual detail and emotional candor..”

Phyllis’ residency will take place September 9 – 21 and will include a presentation for residents of Eureka Springs. For more information, visit the Colony’s website

“And the Trees Shall Hold You” is a gorgeously written, vivid lyric essay! . . . I teared up a bit! We all loved it! You’re a talented writer and this piece in my heart forever.”

Interview by Crystal J. Casavant-Otto

Congratulations to Phyllis Unterschuetz of Lithia Springs, Georgia and to all of the other contestants and winners of the WOW! Women on Writing Quarter 1 2024 Essay Contest!

Today I’m excited to interview Phyllis Unterschuetz. Before we get to our interview, make sure you check out her essay, “And the Trees Shall Hold You.” Then come on back!

WOW: Phyllis, I loved your essay submission but even more so I enjoyed an opportunity to get to know you better! You are so open and honest – qualities I admire in a friend! I’m sure readers will agree, you are a gem! Let’s get down to it; what were you wanting readers to gain from “And the Trees Shall Hold You”?

PHYLLIS: I hope my readers will think about how they might tap into the power of connectedness when they find themselves in challenging situations. I believe we humans are dual-natured beings—souls who are temporarily associated with physical bodies. We thrive when we are able to draw strength from our connections to each other, to the earth, and to Spirit, including the souls of those who have passed on to the spiritual realm. My experiences at the cemeteries felt magical and mysterious, but they were also very concrete. I grew physically stronger when I imagined myself connected to the trees’ root systems. I’d be thrilled if my readers can have similar experiences.

Read the full interview here

A poem in celebration of International Women’s Day ~ published in Middle-Pause

I began as a genderless soul - 
a point of light that yearned, 
from its moment of creation, 
to return to its Creator.

I was given a fertilized egg to care for,
to protect and cheer for,
to accompany
for an unknown stretch of earth-time.

I was adorned with the attributes of God, 
instructed to nurture them, 
use them to guide my companion-body 
through its life of darkness and light.

I watched as my body grew a uterus, 
as female hormones flooded its unformed brain 
and bubbled through its tiny network of
electrical circuits and fluid-filled tubes.

I didn’t yet know what this would mean.

I saw my companion thrust squalling from her soft warm womb-home
into the hard cold glare of the world she would travel.
Afraid.
Confused.

I hovered above her head, 
squeezed into her belly, 
hummed a sweet melody into her ear.
“I’m here,” I sang. “We’ll be fine.”

“It’s a girl,” said the doctor.

“It’s a girl,” sighed the mother. “Thank you God.”

Photo by 愚木混株 cdd20 on Unsplash

The first round of reading for the International Amy MacRae Award for Memoir has been completed, and the longlist is here! These 33 writers have been selected from the 330 stories that were submitted to the contest.

Lorna Crozier, our 2023 judge, will read these longlisted stories and choose a shortlist and a winner. We will announce the shortlist in early October and the winner at the end of October.

Congratulations to EVERY writer who submitted work to this contest — and cheers to our longlisted writers!

Even though I don’t know who he is. ~ published in The Memoirist

It’s odd  –  and a little startling  –  to have a thought for the very first time in your life, especially when your life has been going on for many years and you’re one of those people who thinks obsessively about everything. But the truth is that I’ve never had this thought before, probably because I haven’t allowed myself to think about it until this year.

This is the year I’m writing my story of having an abortion when I was young. I’ve done a fairly good job of keeping this story a secret for over five decades, and now here I am, writing it down for all the world to read. It’s a hard story, and sharing it feels risky. Some days it feels terrifying, and I get paralyzed. Yesterday was like that. But other days, like today, I have enough distance and healing  – or maybe grace  – that I can write.

What I’m going to write about now, before the impulse vanishes, is the thought I had today for the first time: I hope the father of the child I aborted is having a good life.

I was an overweight teenager in the 60s. I grew up believing my value was determined by whether or not boys found me attractive. But I couldn’t lose weight, no matter how hard I tried, so I never made it into the “attractive” category. As you can guess, I never felt valuable.

When I went to France at age 21, I found, much to my surprise and delight, that French boys and French men found me attractive in spite of my weight. They didn’t seem to care. I was female; apparently nothing else mattered. To this day I am shocked by how quickly my longing to be desirable outweighed what I thought I believed - that good girls wait until they’re married to have sex and only bad girls are promiscuous.

A therapist once told me I had experienced sexual abuse at the hands of the boy-men I had sex with. Maybe that was true. I was never forced, but I was certainly coerced and emotionally manipulated. My good-girl self said no every time, only to be pushed aside by the self who craved validation.

There were many I did refuse, including the father of the two little girls I nannied. However, there were several who easily overcame my feeble protests. One of them got me pregnant

Of course, there is much more to this story that won’t be told here. The condensed version is that I panicked, had an illegal and very traumatic abortion, went immediately into deep denial, and spent the rest of my life alternating between suppressing and trying to heal from that trauma.

It didn’t matter who the father was because on the rare occasions when I allowed myself to feel any emotion, I hated them all.

It wasn’t until I started writing my memoir in earnest that I experienced something beyond healing. I think I would call it welcoming. The grief, regret, and pain I’ve been trying to escape all my life will probably always be with me. The difference is that now I give these feelings space to exist.

Something unexpected has happened as a result - the hatred and rage lost their cohesion and floated away. Their departure left me with a peace of mind I thought I’d never know. With that peace came the ability to look at things in a new way.

Today is also Father’s Day in France., so I’d like to send good wishes to the father of my child who lives in the World of Spirit. In spite of all the bad decisions, the suffering, guilt, and remorse, there was one good outcome. A soul was created. Even though he never had a chance to live in this physical world, nonetheless he exists.

I gave him the name Ruhi. He is helping me write our story.

So far no one has asked me if, given the chance, I would make a different decision. I’m sure once my book is published I’ll hear that question a lot, and I need to figure out my answer by then. What I do know is that I’m awfully glad my life turned out the way it did. I wouldn’t want to change anything about it.

I have three children who live in this world. They are also helping me write my memoir, and they wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for my husband. So I want to end this story with a message of gratitude to him.

Dear G, You learned my secret early on in our marriage and you responded with compassion, love, and unconditional support. That has never changed in 52 years. Even when I’m grieving, or short-tempered, or paralyzed like yesterday, you are there for me. When I spend day after day closed up in my writing room, coming down only for food and then falling into bed at 3 a.m., still you understand. I couldn’t do this without your blessing.

Happy Father’s Day.

Photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash

“A simply wonderful and difficult piece, this is the definition of personal essay. It’s done what great CNF does to me, and has made me think about it a little bit every day ever since I first read it. Truly remarkable.” ~ Chris Sowers, Publisher

Read her story here.

Phyllis’ story was included in a collection of essays, entitled Tell Your Story, published on August 6, 2023

But I will make a few concessions. ~ published in Crow’s Feet

There’s something special about a bike ride. It’s the wind in your face, the feeling of wild freedom, the sweet ache in your thighs the next morning. It’s the hum of your tires on a long, flat bike path as you whiz past the walkers, ringing your little bell and calling out, “On your left!” It’s the closest thing to flying without actually leaving the ground.

The Beach Ride
One year we spent the winter at an RV park in Melbourne Beach, Florida. Right outside our door was a paved path that ran for miles along the Atlantic Ocean - the perfect way to spend a day! I bought a used bicycle for $30, slathered my pale self with sunscreen, and set out on a balmy afternoon for a long ride.

Which way to go? Maybe left toward Cape Canaveral where I might see a rocket launch. But I was drawn in the other direction, so I turned right and headed south.It seemed effortless. I picked up speed and flew down the path, barely pedaling. Apparently, I’m fitter than I realized, I thought. Look at me go!! Mile after mile I rode, pleased and surprised at my endurance.

The Reality Check
I finally decided I’d gone far enough. I pulled over to the side, got a quick drink of water, turned my bike around, and started back to the RV park. I could barely move. I shifted into the lowest gear but managed to go only a few feet. It felt like I was trying to ride through a wall of cotton. That’s when the gravity of my situation hit me. I wasn’t actually very fit, and I did not have superhuman endurance. I’d had the wind at my back, and now I had the wind in my face for real.

After 15 minutes of fruitless effort, I called my husband to come to get me and my bike with his truck.

The Last Ride
During the pandemic, I figured what better way than biking to get exercise? You’re automatically socially distanced on a bike. Plus there’s no need to mask up if you’re moving faster than the virus. So on a gorgeous afternoon in late spring of 2020, I donned my helmet and rode out of my garage and down the driveway. Just to be safe, I’d decided to avoid the park and ride around my little subdivision.

The problem was the inclines. Well, that was one problem. The other problem was my aging body. I got halfway up a hill that was considerably steeper than it looked, and I ran out of steam. When I stopped, I lost my balance and fell over, landing on my butt in the street with the front wheel of my bike in my lap.

You know what they say about horseback riding - if you fall off, you have to get right back up on that horse so you don’t lose your confidence. It probably applies to bike riding as well, but I didn’t heed the advice. I walked my bicycle up the hill and into the garage, where it sat, unridden and unloved until I gave it to my daughter when we moved a year ago.

Yes, I lost my confidence. Even though I longed to ride again, I felt too insecure to try. If only there were tricycles for adults, I thought.

The Obvious Solution
But wait! Of course, there are tricycles for adults! A quick search on Google revealed three-wheelers of every possible size and configuration. How come I didn’t know this already?

I shared my discovery with my family members, who pooled their resources and bought me a tricycle for my 74th birthday yesterday. It arrives next week. It has seven speeds, a seat with a backrest, and two large baskets for carrying a picnic lunch. And I can fold it to fit in my trunk. A 15-minute drive will take me to the Silver Comet Trail, a wide, paved, flat bike path with frequent toilets and benches. It stretches 60 miles from just outside Atlanta to the Georgia-Alabama border, though I probably won’t be riding quite that far.

I’ll still feel like I’m flying, just a little more slowly than before. I’ll ring my bell and call out a heads-up to pedestrians as I pass. I will once again be wild and free.

Getting old may require some adjustments, and someday I may have to graduate from a three-wheeled bike to a four-wheeled chair. But until then, I ride.

Photo by Brad West on Unsplash

When the Black kids jumped in, all the other White mothers pulled their kids out.

My story takes place in the summer of 1951 in Austin, a Chicago community where my grandparents lived. It’s the story of my very first interracial experience. Maybe it’s what inspired me to work for racial justice later in life.

When Grandma and Grandpa moved there in the mid 1940’s, Austin was still almost exclusively White. But when Black families started moving in, many White residents fled westward to the suburbs. That’s where I grew up, in a town where over 99% of the population was of European descent.

On this particular summer day, my mom put me into some kind of child restraint device — I think it was a blue canvas chair that hung on the car’s front passenger seat — and drove the 20 miles to visit her parents in Austin.

The table fan in their apartment gave little relief from the oppressive heat of Chicago’s summer, so we spent the afternoon at the neighborhood swimming pool in a little park right next to the train tracks. I was 2½ years old.

We must have gone there when I was older too, because I have very vivid memories of playing in the water while the train roared by and looking up at the embankment to count the cars. The following events, however, happened when I was too young to remember them. I’m recounting here the story as my mom told it to me.

At first everything was peaceful. The pool was filled with happy (White) children laughing, splashing, and doing all the things kids do in a swimming pool. I was sitting in the shallow end, where the water was just up to my armpits, looking all cool and cute.

I don’t know what Chicago’s pool policies were in 1951. Racial segregation in public places became illegal in 1954, but some cities had already made efforts to integrate swimming pools years before that. Chicago may have been one of them.

Whether or not it was legal, on this day several Black families came together to the little neighborhood pool to swim. Mom said the adults looked really nervous, but the kids just ran ahead and jumped into the water.

Then all hell broke loose. The horrified White parents snatched their children out of the pool, as if the water had suddenly become boiling hot. The way Mom told it, you’ve never seen dozens of adults move so fast and with such collective purpose.

Within minutes, all the White kids were standing in the grass, looking very confused, while their parents hovered protectively over them.

All of them, that is, except me. I continued to sit in the shallow end of the pool, where the water was just up to my armpits, surrounded now by happy Black children who were shouting, splashing, and doing all the swimming pool things.

My mother — God bless her beautiful soul — stood near me with her arms crossed and her expression resolute. And I stayed in the water and played until it was time to go home.

I won’t write about why White people feared being in a swimming pool with Black people, because the stupidity is too infuriating. This is a story about my mom standing up for what’s right, and I want to keep the focus on her. Wikipedia has a good article if you want more information.

Every time Mom told me this story, I asked what the other White parents said to her. She always claimed she didn’t remember, but here’s what I imagine: a White woman shouted, “Your child is marked for life!” and my mom shouted back, “I hope so.”

I also try to imagine what those Black parents must have been feeling. I doubt I would have the courage to do what they did. How devastating to have to weigh your desire to take your kids swimming against your fear for their lives.

I don’t know about you, dear reader, but I’m the kind of person who assigns big meaning to events whenever possible. I like to think that on a summer day in a swimming pool when I was very young, I was inoculated against some of the more toxic strains of racism.

Or maybe it was more like a baptism — I was dunked into water filled with laughing Black children and thereby welcomed into the human race.

Although I was too little to recognize it at the time, my mom’s refusal to pull me out of the pool was an act of fierce resistance. She always thought of herself as timid and insecure, and I think that prevented her from recognizing her own strength.

I came to see it clearly though. Throughout her life, my mother intentionally sought out friendships with people of diverse backgrounds. She served her community and promoted the oneness of humanity until six days before she died at age 93.

Now that she lives in the world of spirit, I call on her to help me stand against injustice. Sometimes, when I’m the only White girl in the therapy pool at the Senior Center, I imagine she’s smiling.

Photo by Ben Vloon on Unsplash

For 15 years, my husband and I traveled around the U.S. and facilitated workshops and dialogues about racial justice. We made detailed notes and regularly updated our materials based on the questions people asked. Over and over, in every part of the country — in workshops, over coffee, in emails and phone calls — we heard White people asking some version of this question:

What should I do about racism?

It was expressed in many different ways:

• “I want to help, but I don’t know how.”
• “I want to help, but my life is so complicated/I’m too old/I don’t get out much.”
• “This is all new to me; just tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”
• “What do you/they want from us anyway?”

Often this question was asked of us or another White person in the room who had experience with anti-racism initiatives. We had lists of many different ways to engage, based on a person’s circumstances.

Sometimes this question was directed to a Black participant in the workshop. Their answer depended on a number of things; the sincerity of the person asking, the feeling in the room, and the quality of the relationships were important factors.

Mostly the answer depended on how that particular Black person felt about the question.

Often they were tired of teaching White people about race.

In this case, they might say something like:

• I shouldn’t have to be the one to tell you this. Ask another White person.
• I’ve been telling White people what they need to do for my entire life, and no one’s listening. I’m done.
• I’m exhausted by this question.
• I feel exploited by this question.
• Not today.
• Haven’t you been listening for the past two hours?
• Google it.

If you’re Black, do these responses seem familiar? Do you have any others to add?

If you’re White, do these responses seem frustrating or unhelpful?

Do you want to respond with “How am I supposed to know what to do if you won’t tell me?”

If you are a White woman, maybe it will help if I share what I do when I don’t know how to react to something a Black person has said. I take race out of the picture for a minute and pretend it’s about gender. In the above example, I would frame it like this:

I’m engaged in an open, honest conversation about sexism, chauvinism, and misogyny. I’ve been triggered several times by people’s comments. I’ve shared my own experiences with oppression and discrimination. At some point, a man (it has to be a White man for this to work) asks me, “What am I supposed to do?”

My response is likely to be, “Really? You’re kidding, right?” Not very gracious or helpful. But I know me, and that’s probably what I would feel like saying.

So the truth is, as a woman who has been hurt by sexism my whole life, I understand why a Black person would respond unsympathetically to a question like that. And how I react to their response is the same way I would want a man to react to me. I would want him to say, “Oh. I get it. Okay. Thanks.”

Sometimes they were willing to teach a White person about race.

Maybe the question was asked of a Black person who was ready to offer suggestions. When that happens, dear White readers, PLEASE TAKE NOTES!

And now I’ve come to the main point of my story and the reason I wrote it in the first place.

Here is an explicit answer to “What should White people do?” It was shared following the Charleston church massacre, described as follows by the website This Day in History:

“On the evening of June 17, 2015, a mass shooter took the lives of nine African American people at a Bible study at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. The massacre at a historic Black church deeply shook a nation already jaded by frequent gun violence and heralded the return of violent white nationalism in America.”

Three days later, a Black friend, Dr. Phillipe Copeland, wrote a Facebook post in the form of a thank-you letter.

June 20, 2015 
“To those of you out there who demonstrate on a daily basis that there are #ManyWays2BWhite I want to say thank you. To those of you who fiercely speak up, stand up and act up to counter white supremacy I say thank you. To those of you who demonstrate in action a deep and abiding love for black humanity without apology or equivocation I say thank you. To those of you who put your privilege to work to dismantle the system that unjustly grants it simply because of your skin color I say thank you. For those of you who welcome and honor black grief and rage no matter how bad it makes you feel, I thank you. For those of you who struggle for justice honorably without fear of loss or desire for reward, I thank you. You offer living proof that neither demography nor history are destiny. You are the kind of white people this world so desperately needs. Thank you for being who you are. It does not go unnoticed.” ~ Phillipe Copeland (quoted with the author’s permission)

What you choose to do with Phillipe’s message is, of course, up to you. As for me, I copied it onto my phone, with specific phrases bolded:

• fiercely speak up, stand up and act up to counter white supremacy
• demonstrate in action a deep and abiding love for black humanity without apology or equivocation
• put your privilege to work to dismantle the system that unjustly grants it simply because of your skin color
• welcome and honor black grief and rage no matter how bad it makes you feel
• struggle for justice honorably without fear of loss or desire for reward

This is what White people should do. This is how we can help. These actions are as vital now as they were in 2015. Consider how you might share them with others who are not sure how to show up in the struggle for racial justice.

Gratitude to Phillipe Copeland for his potent words and his friendship.

************

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash