Alice Kalso, here. I’m the author of Elder Care SOS: Facing Hard Choices With Hope.
If you’re a writer or a reader or both, you know how words matter.
Some words can build a nest in your mind and heart. One day they might spring, unbidden, into your consciousness to work their magic.
I was eight years old when I wrote my first poem. It was entitled, “The Farm.” Writing it swept me away from my everyday life in a small town in Indiana. In my mind, I was transported to the country, to a place where cows and horses outnumbered people and where the air was fresh and clean. Even the process of writing invigorated me, seeing my fingers move across the page. That dream of writing lay dormant, though, as I grew up, graduated from college, taught school, married and had three children.
In my 30s a family crisis shook me to the core.
Worry choked my happiness and hampered my health. Have you had such a difficult experience? I began to read a book by Catherine Marshall called Beyond Ourselves. She wrote it in the aftermath of her husband Peter Marshall’s sudden death. Marshall’s premise was that God can take anything that produces sadness and hurt in our lives, and turn it into a place of resurrection, of newness of life. How does that premise sound to you? For Marshall, her writing was the tool God used to heal her and to bring joy and comfort to others. When I finished her book, I believed that God might want to take my unused gift of writing and allow it to bloom and grow.
Just weeks later, I attended a Christian Writers Conference and met people who were publishing articles and books. Soon I was, too. The funny thing was that God seemed to be directing me to people who had suffered, and yet allowed God to use their pain to bring healing to others and to themselves. I discovered I loved to tell stories of God’s work in people’s lives. Those people included Peggy King Anderson, a writer of children’s stories and winner of a Highlights Fiction contest. Peggy had lost a baby to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, and began to doubt the goodness of God. One day God met her in the quiet of a church and began to fill her with incredible joy. Mary Rose Arnold, despite the excruciating pain of rheumatoid arthritis, penned thousands of letters to persecuted Christians in Eastern Europe. I also was blessed to interview a Solidarity leader, a self-proclaimed atheist, who met God in a Polish Prison.
Henri Nouwen had a name for these people. He called them Wounded Healers.
They experienced suffering, and through their pain were able to minister to others. In my case, God seemed to be tapping me on the shoulder with each person I wrote about, telling me, “I worked in her life; I healed her. I can heal you, too.” My guess is that you may have experienced something similar.
I have been blessed to have published more than 200 newspaper and magazine articles for both secular and Christian publications. I worked for four years for a daily newspaper then owned by the Washington Post and honed my writing skills under the tutelage of wonderful teachers. My writing and editing awards include those from the National Federation of Press Women and the National Mature Media Awards. And wherever I went, I found myself looking for stories of God’s work in people’s lives.
In 1994 I began working at a Christian senior community. My main responsibility was helping families find good choices in senior care. I also got to interview and write the stories of seniors who were vibrant, doing wonderful things for others and for God.
Working with seniors and their loved ones and often writing their stories has guided my life ever since.
One blessing was writing a blog, beginning in 2010 and continuing today, with 300 posts. And now, a huge blessing was the birth in August, 2021, of my first book, Elder Care SOS: Facing Hard Choices With Hope.
There’s a reason I refer to the process of writing my book as birthing. A book takes an incredible amount of work during the gestation process. You pour your entire self into this creation, nurturing the ideas and often worrying how they will work. Finally, though, after months and sometimes years of effort, the baby arrives in the form of a published book. Thank God for his work in the process!
In the meantime, please feel free to write to me about whatever is on your mind, especially if it deals with your aging parent or loved one!
Blessings on You,
Alice Kalso