Meet the author of . . . P.S. I Love You More Than Tuna

    —
November 17, 2020

The Author

Sarah Chauncey is the coauthor of P.S. I Love You More Than Tuna along with illustrator, Francis Tremblay, coming October, 2020. She has written and edited for nearly every medium over the past three decades, from print to television to digital. Her writing has been featured on EckhartTolle.com and Modern Loss, as well as in Lion’s Roar and Canadian Living. She lives on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, where she divides her time between writing, editing nonfiction, and walking in nature. Learn more at sarahchauncey.com.

The Book

Book cover

Our cats occupy a unique space in our hearts. When they’re gone, the loss can be devastating, the grief profound.

 

P.S. I Love You More Than Tuna gives us an opportunity to give friends, loved ones, or ourselves tangible comfort during the grieving period, when so many of us feel isolated and misunderstood after a beloved pet dies.

 

 

Send us a photo of your sacred space.

sacred space

First Nation, Saysutshun Newcastle Island is an ancient forest and marine provincial park. Saysutshun, I’m told, means “training or preparation ground,” and indeed, for millennia before colonization, the Snuneymuxw brought healers to this small island to train “mentally, physically, and spiritually.” I knew none of this history when I first began walking long stretches of the uninhabited island’s 13.6 miles of trails. I only knew that the island seemed to lift away anything that wasn’t essential, easing my mind and making way for creative ideas to flow. I’d walk a bit, then sit and meditate, write for a while, then walk some more. This bench, under a circle of seven trees, became my favorite writing and meditation spot. The moss-covered trees became my friends, teaching me to stay rooted when things around me change. As I wrote in a 2016 essay about the island, “I have become a literal tree-hugger, and even—when nobody is looking—a tree-kisser.”

What was your favorite book as a child?

harold purple crayon

I was a total bookworm as a child. Instead of playing games at recess, I preferred to curl up under my desk and read. Of all the books I read—from every Encyclopedia Brown to Freaky Friday to The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway (I was a precocious kid), the book with the most enduring impact was also the simplest: Harold and the Purple Crayon. I was enchanted by Harold’s adventures, amazed by his ability to draw his way out of every obstacle and ultimately find his way home. Long before I began seeing this as a metaphor for creativity (and life!), this story appealed to me. Fifty years later, I continue to find new layers of meaning in this little book. It’s a simple yet profound testament to the power of imagination and creativity.

What is one unexpected thing or habit that inspires your writing practice?

sarah chauncey forest new castle

Walking in nature is my creative “secret sauce” and the central practice to my writing. Several years ago, I realized that although my role in this world is as a writer, my job is to bring myself back into presence, over and over, to get into a place where words can flow through me. I walk to get out of my mind and into my body. I come into fierce presence by noticing the rain on my face, salal berries ripening into deep blue, or the texture of earth beneath my feet. When my body is occupied by walking, ideas bubble up from my subconscious. Whether I’m looking for ways to trim an over-long essay or searching for words to evoke a hard-to-articulate experience, as soon as my legs find their rhythm, ideas begin to flow.

Learn More

Book cover

Sounds True | Amazon | Barnes&Noble | Bookshop | Indiebound

Sarah Chauncey

Also By Author

However you need to grieve, that’s the right way for...

Grieving a cat—or any kind of grief—is not a one-size-fits-all experience (as though any experience or emotion were?). Some people can’t stop sobbing, while others reflect quietly. Some are comforted by hugs and rituals; others need solitude to process their loss.

There’s no “right” way to grieve, and there’s no “right” length of time. In fact, I don’t see a loss as something we “get over,” but rather something that becomes a part of our life experience. When our skin is gravely injured, it doesn’t go back to looking the way it did before; it heals, and we have a scar. 

Loss changes the fabric of our lives; it changes the way we perceive and interact with the world. And like a scar, walking through grief (not trying to circumvent it) makes something in us stronger, more resilient. Grief is something to be healed, not to transcend.

Grief is nonlinear, too. Our human minds would love to make grief into a process that has a distinct beginning, middle and end…but in my experience, that’s just not true. Grief, like life, is messy and unpredictable. As Jon Kabat-Zinn writes, “You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.”

We all grieve, and for each of us, our grief is as unique as a fingerprint. If we try to avoid grief, it will redouble its strength and burst forth anyway. However you need to grieve, that’s the right way for you.

An original post by Sarah Chancey, the author of P.S. I Love You More Than Tuna, the first gift book for people grieving the loss of their feline friend. This originally appeared on morethantuna.com.

sarah chaunceySarah Chauncey has written and edited for nearly every medium over the past three decades, from print to television to digital. Her writing has been featured on EckhartTolle.com and Modern Loss, as well as in Lion’s Roar and Canadian Living. She lives on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, where she divides her time between writing, editing nonfiction, and walking in nature. Learn more at morethantuna.com and sarahchauncey.com.

 

 

 

 

 

ps i love you more than tuna

Amazon  |  Barnes & Noble  |  IndieBound  |  Bookshop

 

Meet the author of . . . P.S. I Love You More Than Tun...

The Author

Sarah Chauncey is the coauthor of P.S. I Love You More Than Tuna along with illustrator, Francis Tremblay, coming October, 2020. She has written and edited for nearly every medium over the past three decades, from print to television to digital. Her writing has been featured on EckhartTolle.com and Modern Loss, as well as in Lion’s Roar and Canadian Living. She lives on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, where she divides her time between writing, editing nonfiction, and walking in nature. Learn more at sarahchauncey.com.

The Book

Book cover

Our cats occupy a unique space in our hearts. When they’re gone, the loss can be devastating, the grief profound.

 

P.S. I Love You More Than Tuna gives us an opportunity to give friends, loved ones, or ourselves tangible comfort during the grieving period, when so many of us feel isolated and misunderstood after a beloved pet dies.

 

 

Send us a photo of your sacred space.

sacred space

First Nation, Saysutshun Newcastle Island is an ancient forest and marine provincial park. Saysutshun, I’m told, means “training or preparation ground,” and indeed, for millennia before colonization, the Snuneymuxw brought healers to this small island to train “mentally, physically, and spiritually.” I knew none of this history when I first began walking long stretches of the uninhabited island’s 13.6 miles of trails. I only knew that the island seemed to lift away anything that wasn’t essential, easing my mind and making way for creative ideas to flow. I’d walk a bit, then sit and meditate, write for a while, then walk some more. This bench, under a circle of seven trees, became my favorite writing and meditation spot. The moss-covered trees became my friends, teaching me to stay rooted when things around me change. As I wrote in a 2016 essay about the island, “I have become a literal tree-hugger, and even—when nobody is looking—a tree-kisser.”

What was your favorite book as a child?

harold purple crayon

I was a total bookworm as a child. Instead of playing games at recess, I preferred to curl up under my desk and read. Of all the books I read—from every Encyclopedia Brown to Freaky Friday to The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway (I was a precocious kid), the book with the most enduring impact was also the simplest: Harold and the Purple Crayon. I was enchanted by Harold’s adventures, amazed by his ability to draw his way out of every obstacle and ultimately find his way home. Long before I began seeing this as a metaphor for creativity (and life!), this story appealed to me. Fifty years later, I continue to find new layers of meaning in this little book. It’s a simple yet profound testament to the power of imagination and creativity.

What is one unexpected thing or habit that inspires your writing practice?

sarah chauncey forest new castle

Walking in nature is my creative “secret sauce” and the central practice to my writing. Several years ago, I realized that although my role in this world is as a writer, my job is to bring myself back into presence, over and over, to get into a place where words can flow through me. I walk to get out of my mind and into my body. I come into fierce presence by noticing the rain on my face, salal berries ripening into deep blue, or the texture of earth beneath my feet. When my body is occupied by walking, ideas bubble up from my subconscious. Whether I’m looking for ways to trim an over-long essay or searching for words to evoke a hard-to-articulate experience, as soon as my legs find their rhythm, ideas begin to flow.

Learn More

Book cover

Sounds True | Amazon | Barnes&Noble | Bookshop | Indiebound

Being Witnessed In Grief Is A Powerful Balm For Healin...

Dear friends,

Two days after my cat, Hedda, died in 2016, my friend Francis sent me a sketch with a note “from” Hedda that read, in part, “P.S. I love you more than tuna.” Through my tears, I thought that would be a great book title. I had a clear vision: an illustrated gift book that people would give to friends, family, colleagues, or clients after the loss of their cat. A step beyond a sympathy card, this would be the first “empathy book” for adults grieving the loss of a cat.

Thinking About You - Being Witnessed In Grief Is A Powerful Balm For Healing Blog

 

Inspired in part by Eckhart Tolle and Patrick McDonnell’s Guardians of Being and Charles M. Schultz’s Happiness is a Warm Puppy, P.S. I Love You More Than Tuna offers comfort and inspiration through New Yorker-style drawings and simple, evocative language. My goal was to make it heartfelt without being cloying.

Every year, six million Americans and Canadians must say a final goodbye to their cats—buddies who leapt into their hearts as kittens, purred away heartbreak through multiple breakups, snuggled by their side in homes large and small, and occasionally deleted folders of work by stretching out on a warm keyboard.

“Pet loss” is considered a disenfranchised form of grief; it’s not culturally sanctioned. We don’t have any universal rituals for this grief, like sitting shiva or holding a wake. This often leaves the bereaved feeling isolated and misunderstood, which compounds the grief and makes healing more difficult.

People grieving companion animals have a need to be seen, their grief validated. Being witnessed in grief is a powerful balm for healing.

Friends of those grieving companion animals are often at a loss for ways to show their support. P.S. I Love You More Than Tuna gives all of us the opportunity to make a profound impact with a simple gesture.

When Francis sent me the sketch and note, I felt seen. Francis’s gift acknowledged the bond I’d had with Hedda and my grief at her death. The present tense of the note also reminded me that Hedda was still with me, even if I couldn’t see her. That was significant in terms of helping me heal, and that’s the comfort I hope P.S. I Love You More Than Tuna will provide to other cat lovers.

Sounds True has created a lovely video preview for P.S. I Love You More Than Tuna. I hope you’ll check it out below.

Best Friends Animal - Thinking About You - Being Witnessed In Grief Is A Powerful Balm For Healing Blog

Ultimately, I hope this book will benefit the world in multiple ways: for the recipient, witnessing and healing; for the giver, a tangible action they can take to help another; for Best Friends Animal Society, to which I’m donating 10 percent of my proceeds, contributing to their work of keeping pets in the home. This includes helping low-income people connect with resources they need to feed, train, and care for their companion animals. And of course, I hope this will benefit Sounds True and their work in the world, which is quickly becoming more needed than ever.

Take care,

Sarah Chauncey

Book Cover

Amazon  |  Barnes & Noble  |  IndieBound  |  Bookshop

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Growing through the Peak of Your Pain

A doctor of Chinese medicine who was a famous bonesetter in China once said to me with a heavy accent, “Here, you [meaning Americans] don’t like to feel pain. You don’t like to suffer.” He said this as he wrung my neck as one would a chicken’s, snapping it back and forth in a way I had never experienced. I screamed as if he were breaking my bones.

For a month prior, I hadn’t been able to move my head to the left or right. My left arm was nearly immobile. I had just started a new job that probably should have ended the moment my body locked up. I went for acupuncture, then pain pills; used ice and hot water bottles. I went to medical doctors, and they X-rayed the area and gave me more pills and a brace to keep my head still—the kind used for whiplash. I later tried one of the best chiropractors in the city, and she gave me the number of a neurosurgeon, thinking I had a herniated disk and would need surgery. I did not seek out the surgeon and stayed in pain for weeks. Finally, a friend from my job gave me the number of her doctor, the famous bonesetter mentioned above. I called him at 10:00 pm that night. That’s how much pain I was in. To my surprise, he answered the phone. He said, “Come in. I wait for you.”

I said, “Now?”

“Yes!” he said. “You have pain, come now.”

Wow, I thought. Now that’s a healer. It didn’t matter that it was the middle of the night.

My partner at the time drove me across the Bay Bridge to San Francisco, and I met my friend from work at the healer’s office. She had come to translate from Mandarin to English. The place was tiny, with photos on the wall of city dignitaries and other famous people who were his clients.

“Hi.” The bonesetter smiled like a boy. “I’m Dr. Fu.”

I sat down in his small room and showed him my X-ray. He threw it on the floor without looking at it. He took the brace off my neck and threw that on the floor, too, right next to the X-ray. Then he twisted me into a pretzel. I howled, yelped, screamed, and hollered.

All of it. No wonder he had me come when no other patients were there. He told me to breathe, and I did my best. Suddenly, at the peak of the pain, I felt my muscles release in my neck, shoulders, and back. It was in fact a miracle to me. I had suffered so long.

I carried my brace and X-ray out in my hands. It was as if I had never been in pain or unable to move. The night sky filled with stars made me feel like I was on another planet. I was in bliss. When I returned to work, everyone was shocked. Was it a miracle, or was it the ability to withstand a greater amount pain to be free of the pain? I would have never imagined that I needed to go deeper into the pain, deeper into the darkness of it. All I had wanted was out.

We are averse to pain and suffering and understandably so, given our American sensibility. We have access to a large market of remedies, products, spiritual paths, and, yes, gateways to the freedom from suffering. I wonder how many times we have diverted our own freedom when we have discovered there is more pain, more trouble, more darkness ahead and we keep adding on remedies. What is the mindset, along with fear and terror, that causes us to avoid our suffering rather than go deeper into seeing what is there? Yes, I should have quit that job on the spot when the pain started, even though I had been there for only a few weeks. I didn’t know at the time, but the pain that was deep inside was because I wanted something different for my life than the job I had accepted. The pain was my impatience, and it was at the same time physical pain in real time. I didn’t wait to allow that“something different” to be revealed in the darkness.

Since all paths—religious, spiritual, or without name—intersect in the place of darkness, darkness is the place where the mind is forced to detach itself from whatever it has grabbed onto in life. And in that nothingness, in that dark place, we awaken.

What of darkness terrorizes us so that we run from it, rather than go deeper into it? How can we bear dark times, or, more explicitly, horrifying times, with the skill of an awakened one? Misery, struggle, and sorrow are not the sole intentions of this life. Yet we can respect our interrelationship with everything in the world, including the suffering in, around, and between us. Is there a way to live in unsettling times that we have forgotten?

Excerpted from Opening to Darkness: Eight Gateways for Being with the Absence of Light in Unsettling Times by Zenju Earthlyn Manuel.

Osho Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, PhD, is an author, poet, ordained Zen Buddhist priest, teacher, and artist, whose diverse background, education, and experience all provide a unique integral and cultural perspective within the space of religion and spirituality. She is the author of The Shamanic Bones of Zen, The Way of Tenderness, The Deepest Peace, and more. Manuel is a native of California and now resides in New Mexico. Learn more at zenju.org.

Sará King: Liberatory Technology from the Future

We live in an age of astounding technological wonders. Yet there is great fear and uncertainty around where it’s taking us all. The multitalented Dr. Sará King is a neuroscientist, education philosopher, public speaker, and codirector of Mobius, a nonprofit committed to the creation of “liberatory technology” as a countercurrent to the harm perpetuated by much of our modern technology. 

In this thought-provoking podcast, Tami Simon speaks with Dr. King about her life and work, covering a variety of intriguing topics including the critical skill of self-compassion; intergenerational trauma and the relationship between the personal and the collective; how to shift to a freeing perspective on our suffering; the pain inflicted through the practice of othering; empowerment, awe, and curiosity; gratitude for our ancestors whose dreams become our reality; the metaphoric medicine bowl visualization; metta (or lovingkindness) practice; weaving together the multiplicity of selves within us; technology that contributes to our sense of interdependence and well-being; and more.

Note: This episode originally aired on Sounds True One, where these special episodes of Insights at the Edge are available to watch live on video and with exclusive access to Q&As with our guests. Learn more at join.soundstrue.com.

The End of All-or-Nothing, Emergency Self-Care

What message are you giving to yourself when you wait until you’re in crisis before you begin caring for yourself? I used to be deeply entrenched in this pattern. I’d care for myself just enough so that I could be productive again and then get back to work until my next care emergency. I’d crash from striving and producing without a thought to my needs and then stop just long enough to treat myself just kindly enough to nurse myself back to health so that I could resume my breakneck speed.

Those days were exhilarating because even in my burnout I felt so purposeful, high on how good I was at pushing my needs aside to tackle whatever needed tackling. Exceptionally good in a crisis, I felt born for running myself into the ground and then picking up the pieces just enough to get back to work. Even as this pattern started to break down for me, I could feel my ego attachment to it. I was good at getting things done. I was good at helping others. I was good at putting everyone else’s needs ahead of my own. I was good. I was good. I was good.

The tricky thing about this pattern is that needs will get met one way or another. They don’t just vanish or disappear when you ignore them. They become rowdier and rowdier, nipping at your heels as you try to outrun them. Your body is infinitely wise and makes more noise as your ache for care compounds itself. When you ignore your needs long enough, you will be forced to prioritize yourself by circumstance, illness, or burnout, bringing you abruptly to the crisis point of having to slow down.

But even in the face of that, attending to the need for sustenance can sometimes still feel impossible if you are exhausted from a lifetime of holding it all together. While the need for sustenance might seem to come before rest, [in my book Needy] I ordered these chapters deliberately [“Rest” coming before “Sustenance”] because having the energy to start asking big questions about what you need requires energy too. You’re crumbling beneath the weight of your conditioned expectations for yourself and others, and you judge yourself for not being about to do it all without a thought for the energetic capacity necessary to prioritize joy, pleasure, or satiety.

You might think, Well if it’s right, it should feel good or it should be easy. But tending to your needs can be almost boring, and having the capacity to investigate the larger picture of what you are hungry for requires energy. It requires stamina and self-awareness to develop a healthy relationship with yourself after being in a dysfunctional relationship—one that’s chaotic, intense, familiar, thrilling, and compelling even when you know there is no way it will all work out in the long run. After a dramatic relationship like that, a relationship in which you are respectful of each other, loyal, trustworthy, and committed to each other can feel boring—but that kind of steadfast love heals and rebuilds a steady foundation of trust. The same is true for your relationship with yourself.

Self-love so often isn’t a flash-in-the-pan,
Instagram-worthy, wait-until-the-moment
is-perfect-and-the-stars-align kind of love.

It’s about showing up for yourself each and every day and doing what needs to be done. Maybe that’s resting. Maybe that’s calling your lawyer. Maybe that’s dealing with the window that is leaking and the moldy floorboards. Taking care of yourself is showing up for your relationship with yourself each day, asking what needs to be done and doing that to the best of your abilities.

It can be mundane, but as you begin making these shifts for your own sustenance, you might find yourself softening into a rhythm and routine of caring for yourself this way. 

There is a deliciousness in knowing you will be there when you need yourself. There is a sense of safety in the self-trust you build each time you choose not to abandon yourself. This work can be messy but also joyful, silly, sexy, creative, and playful. You might find yourself enjoying the celebration of infusing pleasure and sovereignty where there was none before.

And with time, you might realize that the purpose of your life is not to be good, productive, or approved by others. The purpose of your life is for YOU to live it. For you to take up space in your own thoughts and actions. For you to tend to your needs, devoting yourself to your own wholeness each and every day. For you to contribute to the world in the way that only you can. For you to love and be loved. For you to play. For your utter enjoyment and wholehearted pleasure. The purpose of your life is not to be nice and polite. It is for living—messily, humanly, in whatever way you feel is good and right for you.

Excerpted from Needy: How to Advocate for Your Needs and Claim Your Sovereignty by Mara Glatzel.

Mara Glatzel, MSW, (she/her) is an intuitive coach, writer, and podcast host. She is a needy human who helps other needy humans stop abandoning themselves and start reclaiming their humanity through embracing their needs and honoring their natural energy cycles. Her superpower is saying what you need to hear when you need to hear it, and she is here to help you believe in yourself as much as she believes in you. Find out more at maraglatzel.com.

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