Nomahegan Sunrise

Dream Walking

My Meandering Mind Helped Me Live Fully!

Estimated reading time: 1 minute, 43 seconds

Since I was a young child, I have been dreaming not at night but during the day.

Most, if not all, of my childhood dreams never came to fruition.

However, since Jan died, my walking has increased in both the distance and the creative dreaming I do.

As Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, “Only ideas won by walking have any value.”

After sleepwalking thru the last two weeks of hospice and the first month or so after Jan died, my perambulations have intensified my brain’s default mode of mind wandering.

As Shane O’Mara‘s In Praise of Walking describes, mind wandering is “the repeated interrogation of autobiographical memory and a focus of attention from the immediate environment.”

On my early grief walks, my mind focused on doubts about Jan’s love, not the truth.

Walking sans headphones, I was able over time to accept that Jan’s love was transformative and that my only way forward was to share her passion as Merrit Malloy‘s poem Epitaph commands us,

Love doesn’t die,
People do.
So, when all that’s left of me
Is love,
Give me away.

One step at a time, the vision of Jan’s Memorial Garden formed in my mind, and bringing Jan’s spirit with me became a reality.

Neither my thoughts nor my footprints will be long remembered once I am gone.

But if, in some small way, they help keep Jan’s name alive and help repair the world, my meanderings will have been worth the thousands of steps I have taken.

I will always walk daily, and Jan’s love will never die!


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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A Future Walking With Jan’s Spirit

My sound test on Zoom is a simple chant.

I test the microphone by saying, "I love Jan! I miss Jan!"

The message proves the microphone works and adjusts my frame of mind, so I am ready, willing, and able to host the Zoom call.

Yet, the change in the atmosphere does not fill the gap left in my heart since Jan died.

The OMordy Quotes help me put into perspective my circumstances,

What's destroyed can still be rebuilt, what's lost can still be found, what's broken can still be mended, an end is not always the end, it can also be a basis for a new and better beginning.

My life with Jan has been erased, and I cannot simply mend my brokenness.

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Nomahegan Sunrise

Day Dreamers

My Meandering Mind Helped Me Live Fully!

Estimated reading time: 1 minute, 43 seconds

T. E. Lawrence‘s quote explains the difference between dreams of the night and the day and has helped me to accept that I am a daydreamer.

“All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible.

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Intimacies: A Novel

Read: March 2022

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Intimacies: A Novel

by Katie Kitamura

Intimacies: A Novel by Katie Kitamura is about an interpreter who has come to The Hague to escape New York and work at the International Court. A woman of many languages and identities is finally looking for a place to call home.

Intimacies: A Novel is the second book by Ms. Kitamura that I have read this year. The multiple intimacies of the novel overlap and at times seem confusing, but in the end, it makes sense even if it is unclear how or where she will live the next phase of her life. A Separation is also written hypnotic, making it difficult to stop reading.

I not only highly recommend Intimacies: A Novel but have become a fan of Katie Kitamura and look forward to reading more of her books.

Goodreads summary provides a good overview.

She’s drawn into simmering personal dramas: her lover, Adriaan, is separated from his wife but still entangled in his marriage. Her friend Jana witnesses a seemingly random act of violence, a crime the interpreter becomes increasingly obsessed with as she befriends the victim’s sister. And she’s pulled into explosive political fires: her work interpreting for a former president accused of war crimes becomes precarious as their relationship is unbound by shifting language and meaning.

This woman is the voice in the ear of many, but what command does that give her, and how vulnerable does that leave her? Her coolly impassioned views on power, love, and violence, are tested, both in her personal intimacies and in her role at the Court. She is soon pushed to the precipice, where betrayal and heartbreak threaten to overwhelm her; it is her drive towards truth, and love, that throws into stark relief what she wants from her life.

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The Outrun: A Memoir

Read: October 2022

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The Outrun: A Memoir

by Amy Liptrot

The Outrun: A Memoir by Amy Liptrot is about her return to Orkney after more than a decade; she visits the Outrun on the sheep farm where she grew up. Approaching the land that was once home, memories of her childhood merge with the recent events that have set her on this journey. My current grief journey is not like Amy Liptrot‘s, but I learned from her struggles as we all need the support of family and friends.

Amy’s long walks, detailed description of bird watching, and life on a small island were very moving. I might have moved from one apartment to the adjacent one, but I learned from Amy’s journey and feel more confident facing life’s uncertainties.

I highly recommend this memoir.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview,

Amy was shaped by the cycle of the seasons, birth and death on the farm, and her father’s mental illness, which was as much a part of her childhood as the wild, carefree existence on Orkney. But as she grew up, she longed to leave this remote life. She moved to London and found herself in a hedonistic cycle. Unable to control her drinking, alcohol gradually took over. Now thirty, she finds herself washed up back home on Orkney, standing unstable at the cliff edge, trying to come to terms with what happened to her in London.

Spending early mornings swimming in the bracingly cold sea, the days tracking Orkney’s wildlife—puffins nesting on sea stacks, arctic terns swooping close enough to feel their wings—and nights searching the sky for the Merry Dancers, Amy slowly makes the journey toward recovery from addiction.

The Outrun is a beautiful, inspiring book about living on the edge, about the pull between island and city, and about the ability of the sea, the land, the wind, and the moon to restore life and renew hope.


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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Writers and Lovers

Read: October 2021

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Writers and Lovers

by Lily King

Writers and Lovers by Lily King is a page-turner of a book. From page one, I was engaged with Casey and wanted to continue reading to find out how she resolved the crises of her life.

The loss of her mother was a constant reminder of my loss. Although she mourned in a different way than I am, there was much we had in common. The big difference was she was writing a novel about her mother, and I am only doing journal entries and occasional posts.

Blindsided by her mother’s sudden death and wrecked by a recent love affair, Casey Peabody has arrived in Massachusetts in the summer of 1997 without a plan. Her mail consists of wedding invitations and final notices from debt collectors. A former child golf prodigy, she now waits tables in Harvard Square and rents a tiny, moldy room at the side of a garage where she works on the novel she’s been writing for six years. At thirty-one, Casey is still clutching onto something nearly all her old friends have let go of: the determination to live a creative life. When she falls for two very different men at the same time, her world fractures even more. Casey’s fight to fulfil her creative ambitions and balance the conflicting demands of art and life is challenged in ways that push her to the brink.

Writers & Lovers follows Casey–a smart and achingly vulnerable protagonist–in the last days of a long youth, a time when every element of her life comes to a crisis. Written with King’s trademark humor, heart, and intelligence, Writers & Lovers is a transfixing novel that explores the terrifying and exhilarating leap between the end of one phase of life and the beginning of another.

I very much recommend this book and this writer.

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Lila: A Novel

Read: April 2022

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Lila: A Novel

by Marilynne Robinson

Lila: A Novel by Marilynne Robinson is an unusual but believable love story. Although different than how I met Jan, this novel is about love and romance that, on the surface, should never have happened. Lila, homeless and alone after years of roaming the countryside, steps inside a small-town Iowa church – the only available shelter from the rain- ignites a romance and a debate that will reshape her life. She becomes the wife of a minister, John Ames, and begins a new existence while trying to make sense of the life that preceded her newfound security.

Lila is the third novel in the Gilead series. Previously I read Home, the second in the series, and Jack, the fourth. I highly recommend all three books.

Hopefully, one day I will read the Gilead and complete the series.

The Goodreads summary of the book provides an excellent overview.

Neglected as a toddler, Lila was rescued by Doll, a canny young drifter, and brought up by her in a hardscrabble childhood. Together they crafted a life on the run, living hand to mouth with nothing but their sisterly bond and a ragged blade to protect them. Despite bouts of petty violence and moments of desperation, their shared life was laced with moments of joy and love. When Lila arrives in Gilead, she struggles to reconcile the life of her makeshift family and their days of hardship with the gentle Christian worldview of her husband which paradoxically judges those she loves.

Revisiting the beloved characters and setting of Robinson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Gilead and Home, a National Book Award finalist, Lila is a moving expression of the mysteries of existence that is destined to become an American classic.

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Stony The Road

Read: October 2019

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Stony the Road

by Henry Louis Gates Jr

Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow by Henry Louis Gates Jr. is a must-read book, especially with white nationalism on the rise.

I read this book when Jan began her chemotherapy. Although the book’s subject – the retreat from reconstruction – was one I studied in college, at times, I found it hard to focus on the material and my wife’s health at the same time. I stayed on the stony road as it is a subject we need to understand if we are going to correct the past failures.

As The New York Times wrote,

Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s “Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow,” an indispensable guide to the making of our times, addresses 2017’s mystifications. The book sets the Obama era beside Reconstruction and the Trump era beside the white supremacist terrorism of Redemption, the period beginning in 1877 during which Reconstruction’s nascent, biracial democracy was largely dismantled. Gates juxtaposes the optimism of Reconstruction, the despair of Redemption, and the promise of the New Negro movement — the effort by black Americans, starting around the turn of the 20th century, to craft a counternarrative to white supremacy. In doing so, “Stony the Road” presents a bracing alternative to Trump-era white nationalism.

Growing up in the Jim Crow south, I was well aware of white nationalism. This book is an essential read if we are going to make America a multi-racial democracy.

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A Sovereign People: The Crises of the 1790s and the Birth of American Nationalism

Read: February 2019

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A Sovereign People: The Crises of the 1790s and the Birth of American Nationalism

by Carol Berkin

A Sovereign People: The Crises of the 1790s and the Birth of American Nationalism by Carol Berkin, Presidential Professor American Colonial and Revolutionary History; Women’s History Professor at Baruch College, focuses on four crises in the first decade. Most historians view these are part of the early partisan debates in America.

Professor Berkin takes a different perspective. She focuses on how the Whiskey Rebellion, the Genet Affair, the XYZ Affair, and the Alien and Sedition Acts helped build nationalism. Despite the partisan divisions, both sides could find solutions that helped America survive its first decade. The failure to resolve anyone of these could have doomed America to failure.

The Federalists – Washington, Hamilton, and Adams – were the leaders of that first decade and managed the successive crisis of sovereignty.

A Sovereign People is one of four books from my first One Day University class.

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