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Jan Lilien, Humanitarian

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 22 seconds
Jan Lilien

By Climbing the Second Mountain Jan Was Able to Inspire and Empower Others

How does one become a humanitarian? Is it in our DNA and Humanitarians are born that way? Is there a curriculum they study to earn a degree as a humanitarian? Is it the job where you work? Is it because of the times in which one lives? Is being a child of the sixties make one a humanitarian?

Having spent a lifetime striving to be a humanitarian and living with one for the last forty-eight years, the answer to all of those queries is no. One becomes a humanitarian by choosing to live and specifically which mountain they decide to climb.

Reading The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life by David Brooks provided me with the clarity to understand how Jan Lilien became a Humanitarian and why I am on the correct path. 

Mr. Brooks writes about how we often “meet people who radiate joy—who seem to know why they were put on this earth, who glow with a kind of inner light.”

Jan radiated joy as she and I both knew why we were on this earth. Her happiness, passion, commitment, and love of life are displayed in this video that our son Mike prepared for his Mom’s shiva.

Jan Lilien, the love of my life!

I remembered that this is how I see the world. But it is not how everybody sees it. I had a sense that this was my lens.

Jan Lilien, April 9, 2021

Far too often, people choose to climb the first mountain because they are unaware of the second option. Their goals on this first mountain are the ones our culture endorses: to be a success, to make your mark, to experience personal happiness. But when they get to the top of that mountain, something happens.”

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Neither Jan nor I even attempted to climb the first mountain. Instead, we choose to climb the second mountain.

On the second mountain, life moves from self-centered to other-centered.” Life becomes interdependent, not independent, and it becomes a life of commitment, not one that is only about us.

Mr. Brooks “explores the four commitments that define a life of meaning and purpose:

Union County 2018 – Women Making History Jan Lilien

Mr. Brooks looks “at a range of people who have lived joyous, committed lives, and who have embraced the necessity and beauty of dependence. He gathers their wisdom on how to choose a partner, how to pick a vocation, how to live out a philosophy, and how we can begin to integrate our commitments into one overriding purpose.”

He could have included Jan in that list of people!

All we were missing as far as commitments when we met was each other. Our love and support made us better people and gave us the strength to climb the second mountain. Without her love, I do not know who I would be or where I would be today.

Get the world together and work on one goal.

Jan Lilien, April 9, 2021

Our love for each other provided the missing link and allowed us to climb the second mountain.

Jan climbed to the top of the second mountain because of our love and became a humanitarian. I am still climbing that mountain and learning from her. Her spirit is with me every day and guides me to climb the second mountain and continue the work that we spent our life doing. 

Sharing Jan’s Love, Because Love Never Dies. 

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Let Us Descend: A Novel

Read: November 2023

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Let Us Descend: A Novel

by Jesmyn Ward

Today, I started reading Let Us Descend: A Novel by Jesmyn Ward. She is a two-time National Book Award winner, the youngest winner of the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction, and a MacArthur Fellow. The book is a haunting masterpiece that is sure to become an instant classic. It tells the story of an enslaved girl in the years before the Civil War.

The book’s title is from Dante Alighieri’s Inferno: “‘Let us descend,’ the poet now began, ‘and enter this blind world.” Let Us Descend is a reimagining of American slavery, beautifully rendered yet heart-wrenching. The novel takes us on a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation.

Annis is the reader’s guide through this hellscape, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her. As Annis struggles through the miles-long march, she turns inward, seeking comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother. Throughout the journey, she opens herself to a world beyond this world, one teeming with spirits: of earth and water, of myth and history, spirits who nurture and give, and those who manipulate and take. While Ward leads readers through the descent, this, her fourth novel, is ultimately a story of rebirth and reclamation.

Let Us Descend is a magnificent novel that inscribes Black American grief and joy in the very land of the American South. Ward’s writing takes you through the rich but unforgiving forests, swamps, and rivers of the South, making this novel a masterwork for the ages.

The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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How to Read a Book: A Novel

Read: May 2024

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How to Read a Book: A Novel

by Monica Wood

I started reading Monica Wood‘s “How to Read a Book: A Novel” today. It’s a heartfelt and uplifting story about a chance encounter at a bookstore—the novel delves into themes of redemption, unlikely friendships, and the life-changing power of sharing stories. With Monica Wood’s characteristic heart, wit, grace, and understanding, the novel illuminates the decisions that shape a life and the kindnesses that make life meaningful.

The story revolves around three characters: Violet Powell, a twenty-two-year-old from rural Abbott Falls, Maine, who is being released from prison after serving twenty-two months for a drunk-driving crash that killed a local kindergarten teacher; Harriet Larson, a retired English teacher who runs the prison book club and is facing the prospect of an empty nest; and Frank Daigle, a retired machinist who is struggling to come to terms with the complexities of his marriage to the woman Violet killed.

Their lives unexpectedly intersect one morning in a bookstore in Portland, Maine. Violet buys the novel she read in the prison book club before her release, Harriet selects the following title for the remaining women, and Frank fulfills his duties as the store handyman. Their encounters set off a chain of events that will profoundly change them.

How to Read a Book“ is a candid and hopeful story about releasing guilt, embracing second chances, and the profound impact of books on our lives.

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Everything's Fine

Read: June 2023

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Everything’s Fine

by Cecilia Rabess

I started reading Everything’s Fine by Cecilia Rabess today, a stunning debut introducing a talented new author. However, I found it easier to decide to read it after reading in the New York Times that some reviewers on Goodreads criticized the book’s premise without reading it. It’s unfair to criticize something after experiencing it first-hand.

On Jess’s first day at Goldman Sachs, she’s disappointed to learn that she’ll be working with Josh, a white conservative she used to argue with in college. Josh enjoys playing devil’s advocate and can be challenging to deal with.

But when Jess realizes she’s the only Black woman on the team and is being overlooked, Josh offers his support in imperfect but meaningful ways. As they develop an unlikely friendship with undeniable chemistry, it eventually becomes an electrifying romance that shocks them both.

Despite their differences, their attraction brings them together, and Jess starts to question whether happiness is more important than being right. However, as the cultural and political landscape shifts in 2016, Jess, who is just discovering herself, must decide what she’s willing to compromise for love and if everything is excellent. This poignant and sharp novel by Cecilia Rabess asks if they will and if they should.

The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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Surfacing

Read: July 2021

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Surfacing

by Margaret Atwood

Surfacing by Margaret Atwood was a book I picked up on a random walk around the house. I had read The Handmaid’s Tale but was not ready to read The Testaments.

This book is a detective novel as well as a psychological thriller. A talented woman artist goes in search of her missing father on a remote island in northern Quebec. She had grown up on the island, and the journey includes her lover and another young married couple. When they arrive, the isolation and obsession of the artist shape all of their lives in unexpected ways. The marriage begins to fall apart, violence and death lurk just beneath the surface, and sex becomes a catalyst for conflict and dangerous choices.

Goodreads describes the book as,

Surfacing is a work permeated with an aura of suspense, complex with layered meanings, and written in brilliant, diamond-sharp prose. Here is a rich mine of ideas from an extraordinary writer about contemporary life and nature, families, and marriage, and about women fragmented… and becoming whole.

I also found myself captivated by the many layers of the book the search for her father, and the psychological impact on all four of them.

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The Unfolding

Read: October 2022

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The Unfolding: A Novel

by A.M. Homes

The Unfolding by A.M. Homes is a darkly comic political parable braided with a Bildungsroman that takes us inside the heart of a divided country. The Unfolding is an alternative history that is terrifyingly prescient, profoundly tender, and devastatingly funny. Will this novel help me to understand how we became a nation that no longer shares the same definitions of truth, freedom, and democracy, much less a shared vision of the future?

Although I understand more clearly the crisis facing the US, I highly recommend this novel.

Ms. Homes has written a must-read book that compliments the January 6th Committee report and should make us all more vigilant.

The characters are so well defined that at the end of the novel, I wanted to continue to read about them, especially Meghan.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview,

The Big Guy loves his family, money, and country. Undone by the 2008 presidential election results, he taps a group of like-minded men to reclaim their version of the American Dream. As they build a scheme to disturb and disrupt, the Big Guy also faces turbulence within his family. His wife, Charlotte, grieves a life not lived, while his 18-year-old daughter, Meghan, realizes that her favorite subject–history–is not exactly what her father taught her.

In a story that is as much about the dynamics within a family as it is about the desire for those in power to remain in force, Homes presciently unpacks a dangerous rift in American identity, prompting a reconsideration of the definition of truth, freedom, and democracy–and exploring the explosive consequences of what happens when the exact words mean such different things to people living together under one roof.

In her first novel since the Women’s Prize award-winning May We Be Forgiven, A.M. Homes delivers us back to ourselves in this stunning alternative history that is both terrifyingly prescient, deeply tender, and devastatingly funny.

The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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The School for Good Mothers

Read: February 2023

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The School for Good Mothers

by Jessamine Chan

The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan is a searing page-turner that is also a transgressive novel of ideas about the perils of “perfect” upper-middle-class parenting; the violence enacted upon women by both the state and, at times, one another; the systems that separate families; and the boundlessness of love, The School for Good Mothers introduces, in Frida, an everywoman for the ages.

Although it has been forty-two years since I became a parent, I still remember the anxiety of being a father. What if I could not be a good dad? Fortunately, I never had a bad like Frida. or lived in an age where parents would be sent to “a Big Brother-like institution that measures the success or failure of a mother’s devotion.”

Reading The School for Good Mothers was a reminder that solutions like this are possible unless we are willing to invest in families so that the skills and support are there to resolve any issues in the home. As a widow, I found Frida’s inner dialogue comparable to the early stages of my grief journey—the total isolation and fear of failing dominated my first months of mourning.

The School for Good Mothers had been on my book list since the middle of last year. I recommend it without reservations! Jan would have already read it, and we would be debating its fine points.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview,

In this taut and explosive debut novel, one lapse in judgement lands a young mother in a government reform program where custody of her child hangs in the balance.

Frida Liu is struggling. She doesn’t have a career worthy of her Chinese immigrant parents’ sacrifices. She can’t persuade her husband, Gust, to give up his wellness-obsessed younger mistress. Only with Harriet, their cherubic daughter, does Frida finally attain the perfection expected of her. Harriet may be all she has, but she is just enough.

Until Frida has a very bad day.

The state has its eyes on mothers like Frida. The ones who check their phones, letting their children get injured on the playground; who let their children walk home alone. Because of one moment of poor judgment, a host of government officials will now determine if Frida is a candidate for a Big Brother-like institution that measures the success or failure of a mother’s devotion.

Faced with the possibility of losing Harriet, Frida must prove that a bad mother can be redeemed. That she can learn to be good.

Using dark wit to explore the pains and joys of the deepest ties that bind us, Chan has written a modern literary classic.

The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.

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