In a reflective moment, Australian author Helen Garner, at 82, confronts feelings of loneliness while pruning a bush in her Melbourne garden. With her family away, she channels deep emotions into the act of cutting back the overgrown foliage, describing it as a cathartic experience. Garner, who has lived near her daughter and grandchildren for two decades, feels adrift as her grandchildren grow older. Through this process, she grapples with the importance of purposeful destruction, an insight that resonates with her long-standing relationship with writing and personal narrative.
Garner realized she was on the brink of a loneliness not felt since she'd moved to live alongside them 20 years ago, after the end of her third marriage.
Being willing to destroy is very important, I think, she said. To destroy something in a purposeful and orderly way, not in a hysterical way.
Garner is one of the most revered and beloved writers in Australia, famous for her autobiographical first novel, Monkey Grip, in the 1970s.
The attack on the bush wasn't senseless: Garner knew the particular catharsis it might contain, plunging into her pruning with a sharp-edged blade.
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