Prompt 167. Transcending Darkness

Katie Calautti on the paradox of an illuminating dark

Hi friend,

Every week or so, I drive into town and check my post office box, where there’s usually a handwritten letter or two. For the same reason I love writing in a journal by hand, I love the ancient art of letter writing—seeing what paper people choose, which pen, their penmanship, whether it’s looping and elegant, squat and cheerful, or somewhere in between. 

Earlier this week, I got a letter from a woman starting her own 100-day project, writing letters to 100 people, sharing a memory with each of them. “Today is my birth daughter’s birthday,” she wrote. “I was 16 when I placed her for adoption.” She also lost her husband to cancer in the fall of 2005, and so it’s a difficult time of year. Thinking of this beautiful human gathering her yellow paper and her ballpoint pen and committing her stories to the page moves me deeply. In the months to come, these letters will reverberate—forging connections, alchemizing what’s heavy into something meaningful, even beautiful.

It reminds me of others, like my friend Katherine, whose son Brooke wrote letters to people he admired from afar, a practice she and her family have kept up even after his death. (You might remember Katherine shared it with our community as a prompt: they call it “doing a Brooke.”) Sharing our stories helps us heal, Katherine says; it reminds us: We’re not alone. It allows us to confront our ghosts, to live with them, to shift from gloom and doom, to focus on what we love. And as Katherine says, “I can’t think of a more powerful response to life’s sorrows than loving.”

That thought leads me to today’s Studio Visit guest Kate Bowler, who in her hardest time, staring down a terrible diagnosis, felt not fear—but love. Who wrote, “Even when I was dying, I never felt more alive.” I think of the above poem from Mary Oliver. I think, “How true.” It’s not some Pollyanna-ish, overly sunny take, but a dizzying and beautiful paradox of human experience.

And as so often happens, this all perfectly coalesces with today’s prompt from the writer Katie Calautti. She shares her story and her struggle and the meaning she made from it, which is one of these paradoxes of human experience: how darkness can be as illuminating as light.

Sending love,

Suleika

P.S. I’m so excited to host Kate Bowler for a Studio Visit today from 1-2 pm ET. We’ll talk about her latest book, No Cure for Being Human, and why she’s anti-bucket list and how to navigate uncertainty and find solace in surrender. Paid subscribers can join us by clicking here!

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Please note: The following passage discusses depression and suicidal ideation. If your wellness would be depleted by engaging with such a passage, please feel free to jump straight to the prompt. If the mere mention triggers feelings that threaten your current well-being and safety, please know that although we would never presume to understand exactly what you are going through, we have been there in our own way and the following crisis lines really helped. 

Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741

National Suicide Prevention Life-Line: 800-273-8255

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Your prompt for the week:

What is a darkness—either literal or figurative—that led you to a new place or realization?

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Prompt 167. Transcending Darkness by Katie Calautti

I’m scared of the dark. When I was a kid, I innately sensed there were long-gone things lurking in the shadows just beyond my bed—and as I grew up, the darkness I’d always dreaded slipped inside. In the summer of 2017, overcome with a deep depression that seemed to descend from nowhere, I only left my couch long enough to contemplate jumping from my Brooklyn brownstone’s third floor balcony. When, in a particularly numb haze, I scrolled past a stranger’s Instagram post calling for farm sitting help over the Thanksgiving holiday, I—with no familial obligations and even less to lose—rattled off a quick DM response.

One phone interview and a two-and-a-half-hour drive north was all it took. With no experience, I found myself solely responsible for the care of sheep, goats, ducks, chickens, turkeys, cats, a dog, and a massive 1830s-era farmhouse surrounded by acres of uninhabited Catskills forests and fields. My first night there, I sat on the couch—every light in the house blazing—surrounded by cylinder glass windows framing a viscous rural dark, the only sound the distant wail of coyotes. I was in over my head, terrified—but there was a kind of astonishing joy in my fear. I felt alive for the first time in months, and it made me consider that perhaps I’d want to stay that way.

Two years later, the farm sitting stints were a constant, and I was keenly aware that being in the Catskills sparked a flame that returning to Brooklyn snuffed. When I once again looked at my balcony with longing, I knew it was time to take a more figurative leap. Within two months, I drained my meager savings and moved my city life of fifteen years to a rented 1847-era cottage in the rural New Jersey countryside.

Standing in a sunnier spot, I can view my depressive episodes more clearly—as liminal spaces connecting a past and future version of myself. I realize now that the darkness has always been bone-deep, a dowsing rod bending my limbs toward the next fortifying stream. And wielding it as a force of discovery is all the illumination I need.

Your prompt for the week:

What is a darkness—either literal or figurative—that led you to a new place or realization?

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If you’d like, you can post your response in the comments below, in our Facebook group, or on Instagram by tagging @theisolationjournals.

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Today’s Contributor

Katie Calautti is a writer whose work has appeared in online and print outlets including Vanity Fair, Kinfolk Magazine, and Vulture. She lives in an 1847-era cottage on a 30-acre farm in rural New Jersey, and recently studied to be a spiritual medium. She’s currently writing her debut novel, a gothic literary fiction ghost story.

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Join us for Studio Visits

A monthly conversation series about the creative process, hosted by Suleika Jaouad. For our upcoming Studio Visit, Suleika will be hosting a virtual conversation with the New York Times bestselling author Kate Bowler on Sunday, October 31 from 1-2 pm ET.

Paid subscribers also get access to our video archive of past Studio Visits with amazing humans like Elizabeth Gilbert, Jon Batiste, & Nadia Bolz-Weber. We hope you’ll join us!