Shellen Lubin

“Sixth grade, I remembermy best friend Wendy
whose parents were fighting, harshly, loudly,
and we sat on the curb outside so she wouldn't have to hear it,
and she cried, believing her world was falling apart.
I made up a kind-of game:
to everything she would say, I would respond
"Is that a fact or an opinion?"
and she had to figure it out and say it outloud--
we played it for hours,
ending up laughing
but she also began to separate
what was actually happening inside the house
from her feelings about it
and her fears.

I feel like I'm still playing "Fact or Opinion"
in my writing,
in the world--
with family, friends,
and, of course, myself.

Wish I could play it with our governmental representatives,
our institutions,
our courts.”
― Shellen Lubin

“It is important to dream,
but then, but then,
it is also important to do, to make,
to attempt, to fail, to learn, to grow,
to create, to devise, to fail again, to learn more,
to persist, go on, hold on, keep holding on,
against all odds, defying logic,
and then, and only then
you may just work a vision into being.”
― Shellen Lubin

“So I say to you as I say to myself--
as true of short-term adventures and
last stages of long-term experiences
as it is of singing:

'Don't deny yourself the experience of going deeply
just because you're not going to be there for very long.”
― Shellen Lubin

“Sixth grade, I remembermy best friend Wendy
whose parents were fighting, harshly, loudly,
and we sat on the curb outside so she wouldn't have to hear it,
and she cried, believing her world was falling apart.
I made up a kind-of game:
to everything she would say, I would respond
'Is that a fact or an opinion?'
and she had to figure it out and say it outloud--
we played it for hours,
ending up laughing
but she also began to separate
what was actually happening inside the house
from her feelings about it
and her fears.

I feel like I'm still playing 'Fact or Opinion'
in my writing,
in the world--
with family, friends,
and, of course, myself.

Wish I could play it with our governmental representatives,
our institutions,
our courts.”
― Shellen Lubin