The Beauty That Sustains Us
“It is helpful to remember that beauty exists and beauty persists; And, that we can choose to side with it, champion it, and protect it.”
Growing up, Kathryn Schulz and her sister’s favorite nights were the ones their dad narrated his own stories about the adventures of Yana and Egbert from Rotterdam; A town he chose because he knew it’d make them laugh. The intentionality behind Isaac’s stories are representative of the abundance of love he aspired to share with his daughters — The love Kathryn now shares with her own.
This is where Kathryn’s memoir, Lost & Found, begins and ends. In chronicling her experience losing her father and simultaneously falling in love with her wife, she illustrates our capacity to find beauty in life’s duality. She explores this in Part III, “And”...
“Life, too, goes by contraries: it is by turns crushing and restorative, busy and boring, awful and absurd and comic and uplifting. We can’t get away from this constant amalgamation of feeling, can’t strain out the ostensible impurities in pursuit of some imaginary essence, and we shouldn’t want to if we could. The world in all its complexity calls on us to respond in kind, so that to be conflicted is not to be adulterated; it is to be complete.”
I was eager to hear how Kathryn’s learned to find rhythm in the ‘And.’ Her answer about her daughter, who was born during the pandemic, stayed with me…
“I have never encountered a more pure means to re-anchor myself in the joyful side of the equation.
Every time I pick her up from a nap, every time she laughs, every time I look at her, I am restored to joy.
It is helpful to remember that beauty exists and beauty persists; And, that we can choose to side with it, champion it, and protect it.”
Honoring the beauty in our lives feels like a pathway to fulfill Lost & Found’s invitations of healing and hope. Perhaps most important is Kathryn’s recognition that while love and loss are often marked by beginnings and endings, it’s savoring the middle that truly counts.
Who restores your joy? How might you thank them this week?
With gratitude,
Jenna