Gifts from the Broken Jar
P. J. Long
(Reviewer - Dr. Alma H. Bond)
2005 EquiLibrium Press
ISBN: 0966739396

Rediscovering Hope, Beauty & Joy through writing.

Everyone, at some time, learns how life can change in a moment: with the crossing of the center line on a highway or the reading of a blood test; a telephone's knell in the still of the night or a spouse's hesitation before the unspeakable is spoken.

Occasionally, out of the turmoil emerges a work of exceptional wisdom & beauty. Gifts from the Broken Jar is such a work. Psychotherapist P. J. Long's life-altering moment came when the bolt of a terrified horse tossed her to the ground & left her brain damaged.

Sr. Associate Reviewer Dr. Alma H. Bond writes:

On September 16, 1999, the day Hurricane Floyd carved its destructive path up the eastern coast of the United States, PJ Long & her daughter Ekta headed to the stable where they were taking riding lessons. Vermont was deluged with rain & violent windstorms that day, & the sky was ominously dark. PJ decided she would not allow Ekta to ride, but feeling that it wasn't right to cancel both of their lessons, lessons without notice, she decided to proceed with her own.

Although the mare she was riding tossed her head & jerked wildly, the instructor told PJ to keep control, as riders should learn to manage a horse in all kinds of weather, & the horses had been ridden earlier that day with no difficulties. Despite her intuitive feeling that she should dismount, PJ continued to canter at a fast pace. All of a sudden, the horse bolted & slipped in the mud. PJ flew into the air with her legs lifting up, & landed on her head. “That's how it happened,” PJ writes, “the brain damage that left me a stranger to myself.;” (p.3)

Shortly after her fall, PJ discovered she could not remember from one moment to the next, & was unable to express her thoughts in words, or read or write. Words for her were like disappearing ink, first clear, & then slowly fading away.

A few months later, she was able to write to her dear friend Christin, “Sometimes I feel like a robot... as I go though my day. This brain injury has led to my sort of disappearing from my life - like I've gone away. I reenter slowly as my mind accommodates to new strategies and devices that help me function. I struggle to find myself, feel like myself, a new and different self.” (p. xiv). Later, she wrote, “My body was a shell with no ‘me’ inside.” (p. 4).

Formerly a fine cook, she now could barely find her way around the kitchen, & needed complete silence in order to accomplish a simple task like unloading the dishwasher. She was terrified to use the garbage disposal, lest she catch her fingers in it & lose them down the drain. Explicit written directions were necessary for her to perform the simplest tasks, i. e. in order to remind her to peel an onion before chopping it. Her physician told her she would have to find strategies & make changes in daily living that would help her overcome her limitations.

To help her re-find herself, PJ asked Christin if they could correspond by email, conversations that could go slowly that she would find easier to process than spoken language. She could take each sentence her friend wrote & ponder it, think it through, & form a response. Since PJ could keep nothing in mind for more than a moment, in her e-mails Christin could separate each of PJ's remarks & answer directly beneath it.

Christin was ecstatic at the thought of helping her friend to retrieve her memory & her voice through writing, & answered immediately that it would be her deep pleasure & joy to help however she could. She waited impatiently for a reply to her letter, but unfortunately, it never came. It seemed PJ had forgotten she wrote the letter! A week later, Christin wrote again & this time PJ responded enthusiastically. “I needed her,” PJ wrote, “and happily she was there.” (p. 13)

It worked! PJ's computer delivered pages & pages of conversation between the friends. She was able to process the letters bit by bit, & feel nourished by the words. She wrote: “The words are opening up doors in my mind and bringing back parts of me to myself. What a miracle... I am able to follow, taking in only what I can handle and relaxing because it's all right here in my fingers and won't disappear... vanish somewhere in the ether of my head before I can grasp it. ”(p.xvi)

& so they wrote to each other, sometimes several times a day. As the months progressed, Christin noticed that PJ's thoughts were gradually becoming clearer, less repetitive, & written more in the flowing style she remembered from PJ's past. Christin writes, “Who would have thought that what began so falteringly through a few e-mails, could have developed into such an accomplishment as PJ has achieved?” (p.xvii) It was indeed a miracle, which taught PJ much about life, love, & what is important. One of the great gifts PJ learned from her accident is that she is loved for who she is, not what she does.

Unfortunately, PJ has not yet recovered enough to return to her practice of psychotherapy. But she lives very happily with her husband & two children in Vermont, & continues to write, garden, & be grateful for every moment of pleasure she finds in her life.

Gifts from the Broken Jar is a beautifully written memoir which describes in detail how one woman put together the broken shards of her life. It is recommended for all who need help in navigating their own darkness. Isn't that true for everyone of us, at some time or other?

About the author:
Prior to her accident, P. J. Long was a psychotherapist in private practice, an adjunct college professor, & a consultant. She holds dual masters degrees, one in interpersonal communication & a second in psychology & spirituality.
(02/12/06)

Dr. Alma H. Bond
2006©Alma H. Bond
A RebeccasReads.Com Sr. Associate Reviewer

A RebeccasReads author featured in Authors & Books

Reviewer's Bio:
Dr. Alma Halbert Bond is the author of 11 published books. Her latest, Camille Claudel: A Novel, hot off the presses!
The Deadly Jigsaw Puzzle;
The Tree That Could Fly;
Tales Of Psychology (2005);
I Married Dr. Jekyll And Woke Up Mrs. Hyde (2000);
The Autobiography Of Maria Callas, A Novel (1998);
On Becoming A Grandparent: A Diary of Family Discovery (1994);
Who Killed Virginia Woolf? A Psychobiography (1998);
Profiles of Key West (1996).

She recently recorded her new manuscript, Old Age Is A Terminal Illness, as an audio book.

She is also the author of a just published children's picture book called The Tree That Could Fly.

Dr. Bond teaches Psychology & Writing online at WriterSchool.