200 Posts in Memory of Max: Kate's letter

Dear Janelley,

You are the best friend I have ever had. We have each spent a lifetime chasing imaginary or sometimes just impossible goals that we've set for ourselves. It comes as a shock when you realise you might just want a baby; something people have been doing for millions of years and something you can do in your teens without a degree or HECS debt or a house or a car or a partner or a trip to Europe or a career. Something other people want and seem to receive easily. Having a baby? Illiterate crack addicts do it every day. It can't be so hard. But what happens if the worst thing that can happen is something beyond your experience, beyond even your imagination. What happens if your baby dies? What does it mean? Who is to blame? What do you do?

Well if you're you (and luckily you absolutely are) you follow the truth of what you feel when you feel it. If you feel sad, you cry, if you feel happy (even for a split second) you laugh. If you feel upset, you say so, if you feel angry you take up yoga (OK I made that one up). Because you feel so strongly and so sincerely, you feel compelled to write, to challenge, to speak the truth. It hasn't been an easy path, there are not many people who are like you (I know this or we would hang out with them too!) and it can be confronting for people when much of our lives can very easily be lived without any authenticity. It's easy and I have done it, to drift along in life, to live pay cheque to pay cheque, to go out drinking, to think about new shoes for long periods of time, to focus on the trivial because the truth is too much. You don't have this choice; it's missing from your DNA, and probably for a very good reason - because the world needs it. I need it. Leslie needs it and Max needs it.

It's not like 200,000 words magically appeared on your blog, you put them there. Each and every one. Your truth as it was at that exact moment in time. And that's probably only a fraction of the words that were swimming around in your brain. There are no words that will ever make it OK that Max died. There are however words inside you that will help, words that will heal, that will inspire, that will mean something to you and to other people who find themselves wanting or having to read them. No one would have wished this in you or on anyone else; I'm not saying that Max's death has made you more of a writer, because you were already a writer. What this tragedy has done is make you fierce. It has made you, like all mothers fiercely protective of your children, and I know that you will remain that way forever. While there is nothing you can do to bring Max back, I think what you are doing and should continue to do is be truthful with yourself and the world about Max. If it's too confronting for people or they think they can have an opinion about how you feel or should behave then they can just fuck off.

Every good piece of writing should end with profanity, don't you think?

All my love and continued admiration.

Kate xx