Dear Sister

October 3, 2025 / Hermionejh

I listened to a message you had left that sunny September day in 2023, letting me know you were in the hospital – ‘doing okay,’ although you said you were feeling very weak.

It’s hard to listen to now because you’re gone. It was just three months from your diagnosis to your death. As we talked during those months, you said that it had been a couple of years that things were starting to not feel right. You said you were tired all the time, and you couldn’t get to your doctor, and when you finally did, he minimized what was happening. Unfortunately, you weren’t someone who would demand being adequately treated.

By the time they had ordered tests when you had called me from the hospital, it was already basically too late (although no one could know that in the moment).

But I think you did know. I think that’s why you had me take you home that night. I’m sure you were terrified, and you were trying to run from it. I understand it now in a way that I didn’t before.

I’m so sorry that we never got back to the kind of friendship we had in our twenties. I don’t really know what happened, but maybe it was just time moving on and life shaping us.

I hope you know that I always loved you, and always wished that we could be friends again. I know that you loved me, but I didn’t feel like you liked me very much, and I felt hurt and defensive.

If there’s another place where I’ll see you again, I hope that we’re in our best selves with each other. But I’ll be glad to see you no matter what.

I’m also glad I saved your message – I’ll take the bitter to have the sweet.

We Rise

July 31, 2025 / Hermionejh

We say: We do not condone this. We will not cooperate. We will not willingly give our rights – rights fought, bled, and died for by several generations before us who faced a monstrous moment or moments.

The work was not just about them. It was for the future. It was for their communities, their children, and your children, and all of our children’s children – those who will also be asked to meet whatever moment will be presented to them. Their choice is theirs, but our choice is to resist, to rise.

Those descendants need to know that facing cruelty was, and still is, possible. We all give up our lives in the end, and while we hope it will not come to that, we have to be prepared for that outcome. Physical death only comes once, but oppression is a daily death to our hope and to our spirit – and leaves no road map for those who will come after.

Store, sell, or give away belongings. Write a will, instructions to deal with your belongings, and notes to those you love, and to those not yet born who you would want to know and would love.

Courage is willingness to step into the unknown, even when we’re full of fear. Death comes to us all. Maybe we will survive facing the oppressors, and best them, but we defy their demands for us to capitulate – knowing it might be our last act.

This is our moment and our test as a nation, as a people. Our values are being revealed, and so many beautiful souls are standing up in whatever ways they can.

Be brave, be kind, be persistent, and be loud! Huzzah!

An Arch

June 10, 2025June 10, 2025 / Hermionejh / 1 Comment

Life gets more cherished, not because I’m going to lose it, but because I have become aware of how precious the everyday was with others that I cared about.

Last year the daughter of a friend died and the funeral reception was held at a restaurant in Bernardston, Mass, that had a large separate building for such occasions. A woman I have known most of my life was there – indeed, most of the people there I have known as long – but she has always been special to me, even though most of it was periphery when I was young, and she was a decade older. It’s funny how that gulf seems so long when you’re young and you know it’s barely anything once you’re beyond that.

She was, and is, beautiful – inside and out, and she was not just kind, but present, whenever she was around- and I regret that I didn’t spend the time with her that day that one of my contemporaries got to, but I was overwhelmed by the multitude and had to leave. I did, however, sit next to her, and got to rest my head on her shoulder for a few minutes. Time fell away and I was 12 again.

She means so much to me, and I can see the arch of our lives. She was a contemporary of the majority of the people we were involved with, and I was a child, but soon going into my teen years. She seemed so cosmopolitan to me. She had a daughter several years younger than me and I enjoyed every moment she shared time and attention toward me.

She didn’t know my inner world. For all I know she thought I was fine and getting what I needed because I had learned early on that something is better than nothing, in several aspects of my life. I wasn’t consciously aware of that back then, but I am now.

She read a story with me and her daughter, but I knew that I got more of the ironic and funny bits than her daughter did, and we got to share that. That moment is emblazoned on my heart and in my mind forever.

It’s painful that I feel the ghost of that girl wandering through my psyche, still holding onto those precious bits like those desperate people who panned for gold in California must have done so long ago. I want her to get what she needs, and I don’t know why the well is so deep.

There are other forces at work, of course, but she deserves a full well. She deserves to breathe quiet and unburdened. I just have to figure out how to give it to her.

But I honor, and am grateful for, those who stepped in fully present – whether on purpose, or by happy accident. I’m sure it is in no small part of why I am still here.

Visible Hope

August 6, 2024August 6, 2024 / Hermionejh / 2 Comments

Belonging matters.

When I was a child, I once felt a part of something bigger than all of us within the group – but I really felt it. I really believed it. It mattered to me in a deep way.

My psyche had been fractured when I got there. I didn’t know this then. It wasn’t something I would come to realize until much later. Then I had to delve into my emotional and mental world to survive – and it was, and sometimes still is – brutal, raw, and exhausting.

I spent nine years growing up in a commune/cult. That’s not how it started out. It was a hippy commune in the wilds of Western Massachusetts. A commune that began out of the tumult of Vietnam – out of resistance to the powerful planet brokers who saw young people as fodder for their wars. It was also a natural defiance against societal norms – it’s what every generation discovers as those young people come into their adolescence and early adulthood. They strive to find their way in this world and not be confined by what was before – especially when they’ve been abused or otherwise oppressed by those raising them as children.

I was a sponge taking in the message that I heard in the Beatles records my older brother played. All you need is love. It was hope.

It primed me to believe and want to live what the adults in the commune were saying. Their tactics didn’t loosen the shackles of what went before, and love became coercion to get in line, follow the leader, and practice the edicts sent down from the charismatic one who believed he was ordained by spirit. He followed the heroes journey by rejecting the message to lead a flock – only he was listening to another flawed messenger who allegedly channeled spirit, and our leader chose to increase his power rather than humble himself within the group.

But I adored so many of these people who really did want to live in harmony and peace, and learn to honor the Earth and its peoples. I belonged.

If that were the end of the story, we could walk away feeling content and keep our hope, but it got dark. And then it got darker.

I became cynical, and the anger of all my life came out of my pores and my mouth and my psyche was filled with hate and contempt.

Good therapists helped me deprogram from the twisted spiritualism, neglect, and other abuse at the commune/cult, and my early childhood trauma.

We’re back to another point in history where a cult leader emerged for those whom hate, fear and resentment give purpose to. Non-inducted people are puzzled in that leader’s hold over those people. How can they elevate such a twisted person?

It’s easy. He made them feel like they mattered, like they belong. Only it’s more insidious. He is no troubled hero who wanted to create something good and miserably failed; he spoke directly to their worst selves knowing that their allegiance would give him the power he sought.

Hope, though, doesn’t belong to any one or any thing. Hope is the spiritual world made visible. Hope doesn’t promise anything. It remains whether we give it up or hang onto it. No one can claim it as their own, and everyone can claim it as their own.

It was the last thing in Pandora’s Box, and it is love’s best offering in this world.

Couldn’t We

May 11, 2024May 11, 2024 / Hermionejh / 2 Comments

Couldn’t we just go back for a visit so I can ask you questions that now hang in the air unanswered?

Like, did you used to thin out the hasta plants that grew along the walkway?

We were gifted several hasta plants last year and now they seem poised to take over the whole garden.

I don’t remember you gardening when I was little. Maybe I was in first grade?

I was wondering if you had wanted me to help you clear out and organize your accumulated stuff, but I never asked you. I don’t know why. I guess I thought it was enough to visit or bring you swimming at Laurel Lake, and going out for ice cream after.

Maybe we were just different, but you never failed to help when I asked. I was your ‘needy’ daughter I read in a letter you sent my now deceased sister.

Couldn’t we just meet on a sweet summer day and walk together and talk?

You could tell me more stories about your life, about my relatives.

I know it was a hard life, Mom. I know. It was hard all over, and it is again. You loved going to your French Catholic boarding school. I’m sure it took you away from whatever else was happening.

You had friends that made your world – and Harvey who was your first boyfriend and I never knew why you broke up, but he remained in your life through letters and occasional visits your whole life. I think he really loved you.

Couldn’t we have time to be together more than snippets in a dream that were strange and unsatisfying? I suppose something is better than nothing, and I’m glad I saw you as a young, radiant woman.

You offered me food, or were carrying food. Was that a message to myself from my subconscious? Maybe I need spiritual food now?

Change is tough, but so much changes all the time you’d think I’d be used to it. But I’ve also lived in the same place for ten years, but I don’t expect that will always be so. I’ve had the same routines, hung out with many of the same people – so there’s a sense of stability even though we’re all changing all the time. We’re growing older, and friends and relatives are leaving or have left us.

I heard your voice say “what a rainy day,” as I looked out the porch window onto the steady rain dampening the days plans.

I thought you were really there for a moment because I hadn’t been thinking of you, but it was your voice I heard. It was both comforting and filled me with longing to see you again.

Thank you for what you did for me, and for loving me.

No Time

April 11, 2024April 12, 2024 / Hermionejh / 2 Comments

My oldest sister and I went to Rhode Island today to meet with my deceased sister’s tax prep guy who seemed like a lovely, caring person.

Our sister had been using his service for 29 years. 29 years! I don’t think I’ve used any kind of service for that long.

He told us that they used to chat while he did her taxes, and she would talk to him about her nursing schooling, and he would tell her about his love of all things Germany – especially Munich and Oktoberfest.

We all got teary-eyed over our departed sister.

Her house sold two days ago, and while her partner bought the house, it’s not the same. She’s gone. It was her house. Many of her things are still in it, but she’s gone.

I can’t conjure her except in memories, and maybe someday they won’t be as sad and depressing.

I can’t sing music we both enjoyed without sadness and sometimes weeping. I can’t talk about things that remind me of her, and there will never be another family beach day that she attends, or time to just spend with her – because no matter how awful she could be to me sometimes – she also just let me be wherever I was most of the time.

I don’t know what happened the last several years, but she became less happy, and less happy meant me not being treated well.

I think part of me understood that she was damaged. She didn’t want to be a jerk, but trying to make me feel bad made her feel slightly better. I understood it as our shared trauma. She learned differently. She would fight and I would flight/freeze. I was the youngest sister and learned to never mistake who was in the one-up position. Having an oldest sister who liked me helped moderate our other sister’s behavior toward me. She wasn’t top dog, but she was more top dog than me.

She told me she wanted to be a better sister. I saw her struggle with her inner world. I watched her change in ways she didn’t like, but the work to be different was a foreign language she couldn’t invest in.

We had a mutual friend from our early teens and they grew closer while they seemed to shut me out.

It was one of the most painful things I’ve ever dealt with. I honestly didn’t understand what happened, but I had to learn to accept it. Another mutual friend told me it was because they lived mostly on the surface and I had the unfortunate bent of wanting more dimension in my friendships. I also remembered the past more vividly than they did, so even if it wasn’t shutting me out, exactly, it was still a shock. I’m still shook thinking about it, but I’m adjusting and adapting, and doing my best to move on.

I guess that’s growing up. Those who I thought were my tribe are not. Maybe they once were, but that was then, this is now – and she’s gone. There’s no more chance at being accepted into the tribe – and why would I want to belong to a tribe that doesn’t want me to belong?

Still, my oldest sister and I, and my deceased sister’s partner, were with her the last days of her life. We did the best we could. She knew we loved her, and she told us she loved us.

It’s not easy to die. It’s not easy to leave a life in the middle of it. I think it’s easier to go quickly with no time to reflect on the fact of life’s end.

But we’re all dying. We’re also living. Living is what this place is for, and one day, sooner than I know, my turn to go will come.

Mapped Out

February 18, 2024 / Hermionejh

I don’t know if it’s accurate to say that my body – especially my face – is more and more a map of my life, but it feels that way.

The permanent crease above my left eyebrow lets me know that my quizzical expression is lopsided – it seems my right eyebrow doesn’t care to express itself much. The same goes for my ever-deepening smile creases that have a deeper groove on my left side than my right, and how apt it is for an inner life and outward life often at odds that has left visible reminders.

I chide myself for wanting to erase those lines and creases – my vanity wanting a smooth, un-lined face forever.

I have lived. The years keep going by leaving time’s impression, not really having much to do with who we are inside. We are semi-ageless. It seems like it would be a tragedy to stay the same – never deepening our understanding, knowledge or experience.

I get it that so many would strike that bargain – and are doing their best to keep time’s imprint off their bodies. Half of me wants that too.

Wrinkles do not confer, and should not imply, wisdom, after all – just that we’ve lived long enough for our bodies to start breaking down.

The work to stay healthy and functional seems to fill up more time and can feel daunting.

It’s probably a question of available energy than motivation, but I am more alive when I’m doing things I love, and especially getting out into the woods for long hikes.

As stupid as it sounds, I’ve started understanding how we’re everything and everything is us. I have the same elements as the chair I sit on, the floor I walk on, the metal in the ladle and the clay or ceramic of the bowl that contains the soup I’m eating, that also contains the elements of my body.

I’m not even stoned! But, yes, we are made from those elements too.

This isn’t new information to any of us, but the perception or feeling is different. It feels more visceral now. Is that wisdom? I think my brain just loves rabbit holes.

The minutiae of the outer world has become more fascinating.

I never had time nor inclination much for that when I was younger – not that I didn’t appreciate the beauty and intricacy of the world and the phenomenal unlikelihood and mystery of life itself.

Maybe it’s because I’m no longer preoccupied with raising my child or finding someone to share my time or my life with. I suppose it’s different for everyone.

Maybe it’s also because I feel my mortality more strongly than ever and I want to be here as fully as possible for the time left to me.

As for any of us, my last day here could be today.

It’s like a deadline is fast approaching and the urgency to get get my shit together to have my portfolio or the highlight reel of my time here ready for who or whatever might review it on the other side from here feels more imperative.

That might not at all be a thing, but my anxiety about the possibility is clearly nerve-wracking.

Will they like me? Did I do alright? Will they forgive me if I fucked up the one job I was supposed to do here (the instructions of which somehow got lost) – or was I just supposed to wing it all along – and we’ll all laugh about the big tangled mess I made?

I hope it’s the latter because the worry is being mapped out all over my ever-creasing face.

Love Is

February 15, 2024 / Hermionejh / 4 Comments

Because there is love we exist. Not because of sex, even though that’s literally how we’re here (most of us anyway), but we exist because we form bonds of family and friends. We can even bond with strangers, with characters in books or on film or other mediums.

Our capacity to love never diminishes.

We might become bitter, or angry, or vengeful, but find a way to crack that and love can enter, fully.

Removing love can make us feel broken, incapacitated, but it never ends our ability to love if we had enough love and appropriate touch in infancy and early childhood.

Love is the center of our being and emanates from our heart – which is where our goodness and spiritual connection also stem from.

Love can and has changed the world, and love can save a soul, and heal our entire planet.

We get to choose what we leave in this world. All we can do is pass on our love, and knowledge and wisdom. The rest falls away.

Love is steady and unceasing, but it must be chosen and practiced and remembered.

Choosing love isn’t always easy, but it’s an open invitation, just waiting whenever, if ever, we’re ready and willing.

Twyla Higgins, In Memoriam

January 26, 2024January 26, 2024 / Hermionejh / 6 Comments

Twyla Higgins passed away peacefully at home surrounded by loved ones in Pawtucket, Rhode Island on December 16, 2023.

Born in Passaic, New Jersey on March 6, 1958, Twyla was an adventurous firebrand of a woman with long red hair and a bright smile who rarely let an obstacle stop her from reaching her life goals.

She was fearless in her youth, from pushing through crowds to stand front and center at hundreds of concerts, to going wilderness camping and canoeing in Maine and New Hampshire by herself, as well as with friends, to taking the yearly “Polar Bear Plunge” Challenge for a New Year’s Day ocean dip, and sometimes skinny dipping at the beach on hot summer nights.

Spending summer and autumn nights around the fire-pit talking and laughing with her partner, Bill, and other company was another favorite activity. As time passed, Twyla’s interest in music and concerts remained, but she preferred reading, gardening, and tending her property.

The fourth of six siblings, Twyla lived in southeastern Massachusetts until moving to a western MA commune with her mother, her two sisters, and her younger brother when she was 13. She left the commune at 16 and moved in with family in Colorado for a year or so before heading back East. She settled in RI in the 1980’s. In 2004 she bought her home in Pawtucket, where she remained until her passing.

Twyla earned her Associate Degree in Nursing from the Community College of Rhode Island in 1991. In 2016 she received her Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Rhode Island College. Twyla’s passion was diabetes education and she loved her work.

Twyla leaves her partner Bill Blair of Pawtucket, RI, her siblings Clarke Higgins of Middleboro, MA, Jerri Higgins and partner Andy Kostecki of Montague Center, MA, Jacki Pinger and husband Andy Pinger of Brattleboro, VT, and Marc Brousseau and wife Dorothy Brousseau of Claremont, NH. She also leaves her nephew Austen Bartels (nee Higgins-Cassidy) and wife Mikaela Bartels of Malden, MA, and her niece Amealia Brousseau and wife Alexandra Elias of Orchard Park, NY. Twyla was predeceased by her mother, Doe (nee Doris) Brousseau, her father, Alan Higgins, and her brother, Scott Higgins.

Memorial contributions can be made to the National Scleroderma Foundation or to organizations preserving our oceans and wild spaces.

Love Remains

January 15, 2024 / Hermionejh / 2 Comments

Sometimes I wish I could visit my friends and family during the best times in my life.

I would ask my favorite Grandpa & Grandma what their lives were like, and if they felt content. What challenges did they face and surmount? Did they ever ponder life’s existential questions, or was it a life too busy with ordinary concerns?

Like so many stories about going back in time, I don’t know if I’d change anything that would affect my life now (unless it was for the better).

And even if I thought that changing something would obviously better my life, I’d still be taking a risk that the opposite would be true.

It’s not really situations that I want to re-live, it’s to revel in my connections with friends and relatives – especially those that have passed on.

But, if I could time-travel, would it be helpful or harmful for my mental/emotional health? Would I find what I was looking for?

Am I just imposing what I wish now on what was?

I am betting those moments I want to recapture in their fullness are only partially, or even barely, what I’m attributing to them.

It’s deep and abiding connection with those who share my values, kindness & humor I seek.

Laughter is one of my favorite lights in the dark. Gladness and companionship continue warming my heart long after parting company.

‘Cultivate what is missing here and now,’ my inner wisdom whispers. Trust that my loved ones passed on will greet me at my end – but that I still have (hopefully) many good years to carry on in this world, and to create the kind of life that matters to me.

I’m not forgetting them; I’m bringing them with me. Their laughter can still ring in my ears, and I can revisit the love & goodness we all shared any time I want or need to.

Love remains.