the compassion anthology
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  • Archives
    • Spring 2019, Letter from the Editor
    • Winter 2018 Letter from the Editor
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    • Winter 2016 Letter from the Editor
    • Summer 2015 Letter from the Editor
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    • Exhibits/Fundraisers 2015
    • Poetry, 2019 >
      • Robbie Gamble
      • Robert Okaji
      • Nicholas Samaras
      • Gabriella Brand
      • Sarah Wernsing
      • Jen Karetnick
      • Cindy Veach
      • Seres Jaime Magana
    • Fiction, 2019 >
      • Ruth Mukwana
      • Andrea Gregory
      • Olivia Kate Cerrone
      • Rebecca Keller
    • Essays, 2019 >
      • Review of the movie GIFT
      • Jalina Mhyana
      • Stephen Dau
      • Alexandra Grabbe
      • Olive Paige
    • Art, 2019 >
      • Krisztina Asztalos
      • Rute Ventura
      • Laura Gurton
    • Winter 2018 Art >
      • Dawid Planeta
      • Liliana Washburn
      • Ellen Halloran
    • Winter 2018 Fiction >
      • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
      • Herman Melville
    • Winter 2018 Essays >
      • Nikki Hodgson
      • Ciara Hall
      • Sara Roizen
      • Review of Claudine Nash's The Wild Essential
    • Winter 2018 Poetry >
      • Parker Anthony
      • Crystal Condakes Karlberg
      • Julia Lisella
      • Cynthia Atkins
      • Claudine Nash
    • Essays Summer 2017 >
      • Interview with Gail Entrekin
      • Patricia Reis
      • John Nelson
      • Mary Baures
      • Monette Bebow-Reinhard
      • M.J. Iuppa
    • Fiction Summer 2017 >
      • Jean Ryan
      • Daniel Hudon
      • Ray Keifetz
      • Anne Elliott
      • C.S. Malerich
      • Sascha Morrell
    • Art Summer 2017 >
      • Sara Roizen
      • Jill Slaymaker
      • John Mark Jennings
      • Janel Houton
      • Brandon Gorski
      • Tara White
      • Nancy Dudley
      • Elisabetta Lucchi
    • Poetry Summer 2017 >
      • Megan Merchant
      • Joey Gould
      • Claudine Nash
      • M.R. Smith
      • Kim Aubrey
      • Vivian Wagner
    • Winter 2017 Poetry >
      • Dan King
      • Kathleen Byron
      • Sam Bresnahan
      • Olivia McCormack
      • Danny Romanovitz
      • Kyle Quinn
    • Winter 2017 Art >
      • Elliott Grinnell
      • Olivia McCormack
      • Brendan Brown
      • Lauren Waisnor
    • Winter 2017 Essays >
      • Kathleen Byron
      • Eddie Marshall
      • Sofia Colvin
      • Ishita Pandey
      • Mohsin Tunio
    • Summer 2016 Fiction >
      • Jyotsna Sreenivasan
    • Summer 2016 Art The Women Artists and Writers Exhibit
    • Summer 2016 Poetry >
      • Colleen Michaels
      • Jennifer Markell
      • Tara Masih
      • Holly Guran
      • Heather Nelson
      • Bahareh Amidi
      • Alison Stone
      • Julia Travers
      • Amy Jo Trier-Walker
    • Summer 2016 Essays >
      • Olivia Kate Cerrone
      • Katelyn Gilbert
      • Kim-Marie Walker
      • Bahareh Amidi
    • Winter 2016 Fiction >
      • Blue Vinyl, Green Vinyl
      • The Cresting Water
    • Winter 2016 Art >
      • San Giovanni D'Asso Landscape Paintings
      • It's All About the River
      • Jellyfish Sculptural Drawings
    • Winter 2016 Poetry >
      • Poems from Songs in the Storm
    • Winter 2016 Essays >
      • The Gleaners
      • The Aliveness Project
      • Named
    • Summer 2015 Fiction >
      • The Cloak
      • Sanctuary
    • Summer 2015 Art >
      • Environmental Art
      • Compassion in the Midst of Violence
      • Burn Myself Completely for Him and Souls
      • Eye of Oneness
      • Stepping Forward
    • Summer 2015 Poetry >
      • Poem With a Question From Neruda and INDICTMENT
      • The Humans
      • Afghan Boy and other poems
      • Reparations
      • Transference and other poems
    • Summer 2015 Essays >
      • The Ineffable Aspects of Forgiveness
      • He Was Better Than I’ll Ever Be
      • A Voice in the Desert
    • Winter 2015 Fiction >
      • White Heron
      • Freeing a Little of the Madness
    • Winter 2015 Art >
      • Cascade of Care and Life
      • Sentience
      • A Paternal Instant
      • Aurora, Paloma, and the Melangolo Tree
      • Seated Pose
      • Antigone's Map
      • Ladder
    • Winter 2015 Poetry >
      • Dissolution of the Soviet Union
      • Nicknames
      • Stopped at a Light,
      • Why mate for life? Red crown crane
      • The Prisoner
      • Stigmata
      • "Oh don't," she said. "It's cold."
      • Convene
    • Winter 2015 Essays >
      • The Forgiveness Project
      • A Stranger on a Subway
      • A Journey to Compassion
      • The Question of Compassion
      • Reflections on a Childhood Deforested
      • Click, Click, Click
​I came up with the theme “On Hope and the Human Spirit” last summer after convalescing from an operation that entailed removing a tumor, nineteen centimeters in diameter, from my abdomen. It was benign, but “bizarre,” as the medical report said. Before my diagnosis, I was confused by what my body was telling me: I had gained weight, and yet I was regularly exercising and eating healthy. I consistently had abdominal muscle strain due to playing tennis, but I had been playing tennis for years and never experienced this before. I had other difficulties as well and went to a series of doctors, until finally I was diagnosed with a cyst. At first, this tricky cyst-tumor thing was not easy to assess, and I was told there was a good chance I had stage three ovarian cancer. The memory of being on my knees after I hung up with the doctor is one that will never leave me: I yelled out to God not to take me for the sake of my kids. With the help of my family and friends, I started to accept the idea that I could have cancer. I felt something inside me come to light, some power that was dormant on a daily basis. I had felt this power before in times of great fear and anxiety: after a job loss or a bad break up. I can only describe it as a light surrounding my heart and extending outward, a beam that lit up a path.
 
A year later and what’s left of the tumor is a nine-inch-long scar down the middle of me. I am in another state of mind now, one of ennui and numbness. I am stunned by the numbers I see on the news—the number of people who have died, the number of people living with COVID-19. I feel helpless. I myself am not experiencing the power, the heart as radiant, but I see it in others. I see it, and I am hopeful, because of the expertise, compassion, and courage of the people fighting firsthand to help heal others. I witnessed this particular power of compassion when I had complications from the surgery. If it weren’t for the expertise and bright faces of the staff at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, I would have suffered so much more.
 
COVID-19 deaths are still on the rise. People are dying alone, without their loved ones; people are grieving; people are anxious; people are living altered, insulated lives. It is time to check in with ourselves: what do we believe about compassion and making sacrifices? What gives us hope? What is the human spirit, anyway? Is it the power to heal and persevere, as in Chad W. Lutz’s poem “Not the Arms,” and Cathy Warner’s essay “May All Those Who Enter Here Be Comforted”? Is it courage and compassion during the direst of circumstances as in Leslie Contreras Schwartz’s flash story “Passengers” and K. Alan Leitch’s “In Deep”? Is it an embraced joy despite the world's vitriol, depicted in the wide strokes of Amantha Tsaros's paintings? Does it involve divine attributes, like those in Tolstoy’s “Three Hermits”? Or is it the playfulness of being alive, of knowing how to dance, as in Rachelle Parker’s “Dancing on Beat”?
 
If you ask me, it is all of these things.

This edition is dedicated to those with human spirit fully engaged, to those struggling to stay hopeful while fighting serious illnesses like COVID-19  and cancer--and I want to send a shout out to Christy Doxsee, a friend of mine with lung cancer, and Bobby Jean Russo, a cousin fighting ovarian cancer--as well as those lending their expertise and sometimes putting their own lives on the line. I also want to send a personal thank you to Dr. Whitfield Growdon and his team at Mass General Hospital. You are all wonderful, thank you.

Thank you to my Poetry Editor Jennifer Martelli for helping me shape this edition; thank you to all of our talented contributors who inspire us with their creativity and insight. Thank you to our readers who are curious about what we have to say. May you all be safe, healthy, and despite the news, hopeful.
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Laurette Folk, Senior Editor of The Compassion Anthology
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Tree of Hope, Keep Firm, 1946, by Frida Kahlo
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