Recovering: A Journal

by May Sarton

May Sarton's sixty-sixth year, 1978-79, was a difficult time: a cherished relationship came to an end, she had a mastectomy, she fought against depression. But, she writes, "When there is personal darkness, when there is a pain to be overcome, when we are forced to renew ourselves against all the odds, the psychic energy required simply to survive has tremendous force." This journal tells how she drew on that force, and how her friendships, her love of the natural world, and her growing audience of devoted readers brought light to the shadows."

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Journal, Biography Memoir, Diary, Womens, Biography

248 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

May Sarton was born on May 3, 1912, in Wondelgem, Belgium, and grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her first volume of poetry, Encounters in April, was published in 1937 and her first novel, The Single Hound, in 1938. An accomplished memoirist, Sarton boldly came out as a lesbian in her 1965 book Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing. Her later memoir, Journal of a Solitude, was an account of her experiences as a female artist. Sarton died in York, Maine, on July 16, 1995.

Reviews

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

i love all of her journals & cannot assign a star rating to the solace they give me as a human and writer, so five five five five five. start w Journal of a Solitude.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

(3.5) This journal covers January to November 1979. Sarton was recovering physically from surgery for breast cancer and emotionally from the end of a 30-year relationship with Judy Matlack, a former lover who was in a nursing home, declining gradually from Alzheimer’s.

I’ve been reading Sarton’s journals at random, rather than in chronological order. Journal of a Solitude is still my favorite, and I slightly prefer At Eighty-Two to this one. As always, though, there are wise words about the sanctity of everyday life (“the immense joys of having time to think, to be quiet, to live along in a sedate routine, that routine that for me releases the imagination”) and the absolute importance of time alone for a creator.

“Every artist lives in a constant state of self-criticism, self-doubt, and in near despair a good deal of the time,” Sarton writes. She was her own worst critic. Poetry was always foremost for her, followed by fiction, followed at some distance by memoir. Indeed, she questions the autobiographical pursuit, even as she engages with it: “I find the journal suspect because it is almost too easy. It is a low form of creation.” Yet I think the journals are fantastic. They are such cozy reading for me; I’ll have to ration myself so I don’t run out of them too soon.

(With thanks once again to Open Road Media for making e-books of many of Sarton’s works available through NetGalley.)

[Paula Cappa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read nearly all of May Sarton’s journals. House by the Sea and Journal of a Solitude are my favorites, but Recovering is an extraordinary gem, filled with a depth of thought that exceeds her other journals. May spent ten months writing this journal with the intention of discovering more “inner space” and recovering from depression. There is much about pain in these pages, sources of pain, and the understanding and grace that come from pain. “Pain is the great teacher” and “always a means toward growth.” Aging and living alone are steadfast themes in all of May’s writings, which I find to go quite deep. Lots of references to Virginia Woolf, Florida Scott Maxwell—another astonishing writer. Self-healing is woven into these ten months of entries. I read this book in small bites as my morning readings with a pot of tea. She begins by expressing her goal in the journal to “restore a sense of meaning and continuity” to her life. By the end, there is truly a fusion of mind, will, and spirituality. She makes an art of her life and her woes. If you’d like a book to give you pause, to think, and think again, this is an illuminating text. Highly recommended. Paula Cappa is an avid book reviewer and an award-winning supernatural mystery author of novels and short stories.

[Scartowner · Rating 4 out of 5]

A journal (diary) writer cannot help but compare one's own to the superior eloquence of May Sarton's. Although she planned to publish her journal, her entries are brutally honest. Whatever she might have censored for the public, so much more is revealed. The year (December '78 through November 1979) progressed from utter despair and rages to a much more accepting understanding of her life and its painful changes. (It came to me near the end that she must have been bipolar.) Dated December 29, 1978 she writes: "The light these December mornings has a rather special quality; austere, cold as it is, it has amplitude, a spacious austerity. I live with a wide semi-circle of horizon over and beyond the bare field. Snow would make it richer, but in my mood at present, I rest on the cold gray sea. And wait for the sun's rays to catch a tiny prism Karen Saum hung in my bedroom window, wait for that sudden flame, first crimson then sometimes a flash of blue, startlingly alive."

Despite poetic phrases and deep probing of thoughts and feelings, Sarton's story is raw and rough, hard to bear at times. But of course I highly recommend it.

(NB: Title's years should be 78-79, not 1979 - 1980.)

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is something so necessary to Sarton's work for me, especially when it comes to her journals. They are never perfect - they are not meant to be. They simply are. I love them and will forever annotate them to pieces. Sarton always reminds me to reflect and, of course, to write.

"Pain is the great teacher. I woke before dawn with this thought. Joy, happiness, are what we take and do not question. They are beyond question, maybe. A matter of being. But pain forces us to think, and to make connections, to sort out what is what, to discover what has been happening to cause it. And, curiously enough, pain draws us to other human beings in a significant way, whereas joy or happiness to some extent, isolates."

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I am starved for tenderness and that is what is the matter with me and has been the matter with me for months.”

This journal was written in 1979 when May was 66 years old. She was living in her home in York, Maine and recovering from the end of a long-term relationship and a diagnosis of breast cancer that required a mastectomy. And as always – depression lurks just in the background.

This one was interesting to read after Journal of a Solitude and Plant Dreaming Deep – she’s younger in those and relishes in a life of solitude. But here she shares some of the letters she’s written to readers in which she encouraged them to marry, have children, and live a life amongst others — saying this is how we learn the truths of life. It was an interesting shift.

I enjoyed that it was set in York – a town I love and typically visit at least once a year. She also spent time in Sandwich, New Hampshire several times in this journal – another town I love visiting. It’s strange that we sort of share a stomping ground!

I’d love to read more of her journals and think I will move backwards and pick up The House by the Sea, which is the journal she wrote when she left Nelson, NH and moved to York. I’m excited!

[Judy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was impressed by parts of this book, in particular when Sarton writes about her mastectomy and her lover's suffering from Alzheimer's - but long chunks of the journal seem to have a sort of relentlessly upbeat tone, as she's writing about named friends who will be reading every word and so can't say anything remotely critical. I'll be interested to read one of her novels and see if she has more freedom to express herself in fiction.

[Syd · Rating 4 out of 5]

So everyone knows that I love May Sarton, and this journal was no exception. This was written in her sixties, as she was recovering from breast cancer. She writes about her struggles with love in a way I can relate to, as well as the pain of losing her long-time partner to alzheimers.

[Jay Cardam · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm currently rereading Sarton after many years( like 30) and enjoying the journals even more this go around. What my gut reacted to when I was 30 now becomes so much clearer in my 60's.

[Abby Gleason · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the fourth journal of May Sarton’s I’ve read now, and I’ve come to think of her as my friend from another lifetime. She beautifully puts to words thoughts I’ve wondered if only I was strange enough to have. Her works are open and brave, stemming from a belief that sharing intimate details from one’s life and mind is the foundation of friendship and community: “When we admit our vulnerability, we include others; if we deny it, we shut them out.”

I turn to May’s journals when I feel instability or chaos in my own life, whether that be internal or external. I’ve recently gotten a new job, embarked on a cross country journey and seen one of my closest friends welcome her long awaited baby into the world. These are all good changes, and they make me feel big emotions, like a form of heartache. May talks about her great capacity for feeling and how it’s normal to feel overwhelmed. Her depictions of simple, solitary life on the ocean as a writer and gardener bring me a sense of calmness, order and peace whenever I pick up the journals.

“The constant remaking of order out of chaos is what life is all about, even in the simplest domestic chores such as clearing the table and washing the dishes after a meal.” Life without a bit of chaos is no life at all.

Every journal of hers has a different focus. This one takes the reader through her recovery from a mastectomy, and journey through a deep depression back into herself. From the start of the journal to the end feels like almost a different person. It’s very subtle but relatable to the times I’ve gone through a period of intense mental struggle—you’re still you, but muted, and coming out of the fog to the other side, whole and somehow happy, it feels like a genuine miracle.

These journals are a vacation for the mind, and I highly recommend them for anyone who needs a little extra peace and a good think, with someone who feels like an old friend.

[Nicola Pierce · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this just as much as I enjoyed the other Sarton journals that I've recently read. Can't get enough of her journals. Typically, I'm not interested in seeking out her novels. Once I read a writer's nonfiction - be it a diary, letters or autobiography - I find it impossible to work up a desire to read their fiction. I'm so grateful to Sarton for keeping so many journals! I also googled and found the film that was made about her, 'World of Light'. So wonderful to see bits of the house and her animals and hear her distinctive voice. Here's the link to it: https://archive.org/details/worldofli...

[Mandy · Rating 3 out of 5]

1978-79 wasn’t a good year for May Sarton, including as it did a mastectomy and the increasing dementia of her friend Judy Matlack. This volume of her diaries is as honest and intimate as her readers would expect, and chronicles the ups and downs of those months. Essential reading for her fans but the book could also be an introduction to her writing and thinking and I found it an interesting and compelling read.

[Rose Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A journal that Ms. Sarton wrote to help her through her depression from losing someone dear. Heartfelt; very evocative descriptions.

[Lexie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quotes from the book:

"I believe that there are more urgent and honourable occupations than that incomparable waste of time we call suffering." ~ Collette

For me the moral dilemma ... has been how to make peace with the unacceptable ...

.. a spacious austerity.

Tenderness is the grace of the heart, as style is the grace of the mind ...

Sometimes the unmeasured, the unlimited natural powers are what I need, what everyone needs. I am tired of measure, control, doing the right thing.

The worst thing right now is that I no longer have any distant hopes, anything ahead that I look forward to with a leap of the heart. What I have lost this past year is the sense of a destiny, the belief that what I have to offer as a human being in love ... In naked terms, I simply feel a failure. Too old to hope that things will ever get any better. I have been 'put down' in such brutal ways that recovery is only possible by dogged self-discipline. And it is not true recovery, it is simply ... keeping alive, using the tools I have at hand, being a writer because that skill is the only one I have at my command. I still cannot 'recover' from the things that have happened last year. / A trajectory, the sense I had of myself and my own powers, has been broken.

With nothing behind him to help, this exquisite creature fashioned himself to an ideal, became what he had chosen to be. How rare.

The art of making exquisite distinctions. Nothing is blurred or wrapped up in a cliche. It is all fresh.

... there is homage, the loving and selfless observer ...

... there is always the implicit understanding of the poignance in a caress.

Feeling is anarchic, breaks down barriers, and that can be dangerous. Weeping is for women and means weakness, lack of self-respect; for self-respect implies control, even more, self-sufficiency. Tears are almost always a cry for help.

Benjamin Blech: "It is the tragedy of our times that we consider nature's way of healing a weakness, even as we continue to confuse emotion with immaturity ... Why must the ideal response of human behaviour be 'cool' when the warmth of emotional commitment best expresses the language of love and concern?"

... people who live alone because they are ... people to whom solitude has 'happened' ...

How does one find one's identity? My answer would be through work and through love, and both imply giving rather than getting.

There has to be commitment somewhere or life has no meaning. Can one be committed simply to oneself? I think not.

[Do you have] a vocation powerful enough in its pull to justify a life of solitude ... or to fill [your] life with enough real challenge and discipline to justify it [?]

May's father: "It is clear to me that the main purpose of a man's life is to give others what is in him."

... further limitations release deeper powers.

... poems that pounce out of nowhere.

... he is an extraordinarily sensitive register of feeling ... He is a born friend ... he observes. He listens. He is what Henry James says the writer must be, "one on whom nothing is lost." And in a quiet way, without arrogance, he is tough about doing what he wants to do and not being deflected.

[He] had to accept constant humiliation in order to survive ... Wherever one human being humiliates another, both are corrupted.

... a milky gentle day [of late February]

Heaven has to be earned!

Flannery O'Connor: "We are judged by how hard we use what we have been given ... She is much to be admired for not repeating."

Henri Nouwen: "Without solitude there can be no real people.The more you discover what a person is, and experience what a human relationship requires in order to remain profound, fruitful, and a source of growth and development, the more you discover that you are not alone -- and that the measure of your solitude is themeasure of your capacity for communion."

Pirandello: "One cannot choose what he writes -- one can only choose fo face it."

... a fellow-beingness ...

I feel at present like a baby seal swimming desperately around in an enormous ocean trying to find some landing. Excruciating loneliness.

Ilse Vogel: "... the secret of much of the unrest and dissatisfaction with one's self and longing for a more vivid, expressive existence is the thing planted deep in everyone -- turning toward the sun, the love of a virtue and spendour that must be adored. One has an inward sense of harmony. I mean one recognizes, by instinct, the celestial harmony and must try to adjust one's natural discord and dis-symmetry to match it. One is always trying to tune one's self to an unheard perfection."

(start at pg. 102)

[Melanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I truly enjoyed this book. It's the nature of a journal to capture an author's voice, and I felt as if May and I became fast friends as I read about her story and struggles. I have a lot in common with her, struggling with my writing, escaping to my lovely house in New England, cherishing my feline friends and the local wildlife, reveling in the latest changes in the perennial bed. She had a lot of loss in her life and was grieving the loss of a lover when she wrote Recovery. Her ups and downs were familiar to me since I was grieving my brother during the months I read the book.

Depression, fear of aging, the push-pull of solitude and society, writer's block - it's all in here. In the end, the book is hopeful because she moves through all of this, in addition to going through breast cancer. Whew! I want to read more of her fiction now.

[cat · Rating 4 out of 5]

May Sarton's journals are such quiet and contemplative books. I am slowly working my way through all of them (in no chronological order) as my sleepy time reading. She is such a fascinating woman - full of wonderful observations, sometimes ornery, occasionally a total a**hole - but always willing to say the hard truths about her life. I so respect the commitment that she has to her own truth, to her own time, and to her writing. Her examinations of concepts have often mirrored my own -- this journal in particular has been a revelation of shared experiences around pain, recovering, and love.

" Are we not on earth to love each other? And to grow? And how does one grow except through love, except through opening ourselves to other human beings to be fertilized and made new?"

[Rebecca Bernzweig · Rating 5 out of 5]

A clear view into the heart and mind of May Sarton during a pivotal year in her life. I felt the images and insights getting stronger and more poignant the further into the book I got. I feel enriched by reading this journal and will definitely be reading some of her other books - fiction, poetry and other journals. Well worth the time.

Also, if you're interested, throughout the book she speaks of being interviewed for a documentary about her life, her writing and her poetry which was lovingly filmed at her beloved oceanfront home in Maine and released in the late '70s. I was able to find it on archive.org and watch the entire thing, which made everything she was describing in the book come to life in a very cool way. I'm so glad to have "met" May Sarton through this book ;-)

[Taryn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this book because I am also recovering and I wanted both the comfort May Sarton gives me and insight into this process. In this journal, May is recovering from a doomed love affair, a bad review of her recent novel &, about halfway through, a cancer diagnosis & mastectomy. I find it so interesting that of these 3 things, she obscured & spends little time on the cancer diagnosis. Sarton’s ability to evoke the natural world is the true pearl in this journal. The grit is her internalized homophobia, never truly recognized. And given that this was written in the late 70’s, there is also racial language & ideas that are jarring to my ears in 2022.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Though dealing with loss (physical and emotional), this one is more upbeat than the previous journals; revolving cast of characters can be a bit overwhelming, but that's the way her life was! I'm not an animal person, but Tamas and Bramble's appearance are interesting. She seems to encounter lots of snowstorms - I went to college in Maine around that time and don't recall such harsh weather as she describes. At times her descriptions of New England sound more like the Aleutian Islands!

[Maryjoamani · Rating 5 out of 5]

See my review on A Reckoning by May Sarton. This journal, one of many May Sarton wrote over the years, is wonderful! She writes it at age 67 after two hard years of difficult events (unrequited love, mastectomy, poor review of recent novel). She struggles in the journal with depression and even that struggle causes her to question her resolve but despite the struggle, so much light shines in her daily detailing of friends' visits, gardening, long walks, her dogs. Read and enjoy!

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

My second May Sarton journal in a month. The first I read with my memoir group, which was sharply divided between Sarton-haters and Sarton-lovers. I was in the latter group - I appreciate her journals for their unique, transparent nature. If hearing about the inner life of an accomplished writer (who is in her sixties, lives in solitude and is a lesbian) sounds interesting to you, then I'd recommend this. Otherwise, skip it - she'll drive you crazy.

[Josephine Ensign · Rating 2 out of 5]

It seems so strange to me now to wrap my head around the fact that she wrote this 'personal' journal specifically with the aim of having it published. She acknowledges this tension in the book. While there are a few nuggets of interesting self-insights, much of this is her quoting long sections of other people's writing and adding a brief reaction to it. Disappointing after having read her much more engaging Journal of Solitude.

[Allie Mullin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love reading May Sarton's journals. She really probes the conflict creative minds experience towing the line between introvert and extrovert in honest journal entries and exploration of everyday life. I do find the torment she experiences by choosing to live in solitude really painful and sometimes scary, though.

[Stephy · Rating 5 out of 5]

May Sarton is a word smith beyond compare. But I already knew that.

[Clairester]

This is a book I am dipping in and out of at the moment as the need arises, I love her style of writing.

[Anita · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read a couple of Ms. Sarton's journals now and I have to say this is by far one of my favorites!

[Mary Beth]

I enjoy reading journals about women living in solitude. This one had some wonderful insights, but it wasn't the best of its nature.

[Tracy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love May Sarton's journals! I wish I would have met her or would meet someone who knew her...she sounds like an interesting woman!

[John’aLee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although I do not subscribe to her lifestyle, I do enjoy her insights on being a writer and a dedicated journaler.

[Angela Boord · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the third of May Sarton's journals that I have read now and probably my favorite. While my gut feeling in reading all of these journals is that Sarton is a bit of an unreliable narrator in her own life--there are always section which seem a little too upbeat, like she's crafting an image for consumption (and of course these journals were written for publication and not for herself alone)--when she talks about dealing with pain and old age and the struggle of being a writer, an artist, and needing to live in the world while also needing vast amounts of time away from it in order to create anything worthwhile... Those sections ring very true to me, and I have committed the crime of dog-earing basically every other page in my copy of this book because I wanted to mark a passage and I didn't have a pen.