Shadows of leaves shifted on the window. I sat in the worn office chair I’d inherited with the office, talking with a bright, talented student who wrote astonishing poems and had implied, in those poems, some fairly traumatic events from her childhood. She was poised on an emotional precipice—tears, despair, anxiety—and looked up at me from under dark lashes. “Will I ever be fixed?”

“No,” I said immediately. I was thinking of how trauma affects us our whole lives, that “healing” is a continual process. I was thinking of how much I dislike the term “fix” when people use it to talk about writing, a term that implies there’s just one way a piece of writing will work at its top form, as if a poem is a machine. I didn’t know what I was going to say next, but then this came out: “Because you’re not broken.”

We both knew it was the right thing to say. The dust from all the poetry books in that small office hovered, golden, in the air-conditioned room. We breathed. We smiled. And then we continued to talk about poetry.

Our lives rarely have easily recognizable vital moments, like we see all the time in fiction. Often we don’t know what experiences are important until someone else asks about them, or we lose a person we love, or years slip by like the water in a river and we are surprised by what we remember and what we don’t.

I remember this, which happened, oh, maybe 12 years ago, not just because I felt for once I got it right, but because the moment only happened in the context of writing. It happened because we cared about metaphors and pacing, titles and endings. It happened because, underlying those elements of craft, we cared about trying to make sense of our human experiences, this world we can only perceive from our own vantage points, our ever-changing selves.

In this time of justified fear and anxiety heightened by media headlines and YouTube videos and shouted opinions—each one taking a bite out of us like schooling piranhas—I am more and more convinced that we must prioritize the activities that remind us why our lives are important. Why living is worthwhile. What being human is for.

Meaning. Connection. Support. Joy. Not every moment is going to include these things, of course. But shouldn’t we seek them out, more urgently now than ever?

p.s. By the way, if your way of seeking meaning is through writing poetry or creative nonfiction (life writing), consider joining me for a writing workshop—the next class begins September 11. If your hesitation is due to the cost, I completely get it. Please email me and we’ll work something out. I’m serious about that; I know budgets can be tight, and if you ask, I will gladly accept what you can pay.