I can no longer remember the exact circumstances that encouraged me to read Operating Instructions, but I know it was around 1995 and I was still quite new at being an adult, my grown-up paint not yet totally dry. My mind was blown by how brutally honest she was--and she remains to this day one of the most honest authors I have encountered. In a world that celebrates easy answers and bumper sticker band-aids to cover life's trials, I consider her willingness to tell the messy truth about the complicated realities of life nothing short of heroic. Here is the way she puts it in one passage of her book, Stitches:
Our lives and humanity are untidy: disorganized and careworn. Life on earth is often a raunchy and violent experience. It can be agony just to get through the day.
And yet, I do believe there is ultimately meaning in the chaos, and also in the doldrums. What I resist is not the truth but when people put a pretty bow on scary things instead of saying, "This is a nightmare. I hate everything. I'm going to go hide in the garage."
I am so grateful to have the encouragement and laughter her books provide in those moments when I want to hide in the garage (and/or companionship when I am hiding there.)
In spite of being a bestselling author (which role, I presume, brings with it a great deal of pressure to maintain one's status as such), she recently announced on her Facebook page that she would not be writing any more books for the foreseeable future. Her commitment to telling the truth, to being her most authentic self, to not letting others define her (as, for example, a "bestselling author") is astonishing. Twenty years after "meeting" her, she continues to inspire me to endeavor to be brave and true to myself.
Anne Lamott on Wikipedia
Anne Lamott on Facebook
(Have a real-life hero or she-ro to nominate for this blog? Let me know at misslynn [at] misslynn [dot] com!)
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