Christian Living
![Tallu Schuyler Quinn - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B09V214VWY.jpg)
What We Wish Were True: Reflections on Nurturing Life and Facing Death
"Facing death is the hardest thing of all, and Tallu Quinn faces hers in a way that broke and healed my heart. This book is a beautiful tribute to life, to truth, and to love."-Glennon Doyle, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Untamed
Profound essays on nurturing life while facing a terminal diagnosis, from the dedicated humanitarian and young mother creating "a vibrant legacy for us to hold on to and learn from" (Ann Patchett)
"I am holding both my hope and my grief together in the same hands. It is a loosehold, looser than I am accustomed to. My love is so much bigger than me."
Nonprofit leader and minister Tallu Schuyler Quinn spent her adult life working to alleviate hunger, systemic inequality, and food waste, first as a volunteer throughout the United States and abroad, and then as the founder of the Nashville Food Project, where she supported the vibrant community work of local food justice in Middle Tennessee. That all changed just after her fortieth birthday, when she was diagnosed with stage IV glioblastoma, an aggressive form of terminal brain cancer.
In What We Wish Were True, Quinn achingly grapples with the possibility of leaving behind the husband and children she adores, and what it means to live with a terminal diagnosis and still find meaning. "I think about how my purpose may be the same in death as it continues to be in life-surrendering to the hope that our weaknesses can be made strong, that what is broken can be made whole," she writes.
Through gorgeous prose, Quinn masterfully weaves together the themes of life and death by integrating spiritually nourishing stories about family, identity, vocational call, beloved community, God's wide welcome, and living with brain cancer. Taken together, these stunning essays are a piercing reminder to cherish each moment, whether heartbreaking or hilarious, and cast loose other concerns.
As a mother, a kindred spirit, and a dear friend, Tallu Schuyler Quinn looks into our eyes with well-earned tears in her own and tells us the bittersweet truth: We are all searching for what has already found us-present and boundless love. This love will deliver us and never let us go.
Profound essays on nurturing life while facing a terminal diagnosis, from the dedicated humanitarian and young mother creating "a vibrant legacy for us to hold on to and learn from" (Ann Patchett)
"I am holding both my hope and my grief together in the same hands. It is a loosehold, looser than I am accustomed to. My love is so much bigger than me."
Nonprofit leader and minister Tallu Schuyler Quinn spent her adult life working to alleviate hunger, systemic inequality, and food waste, first as a volunteer throughout the United States and abroad, and then as the founder of the Nashville Food Project, where she supported the vibrant community work of local food justice in Middle Tennessee. That all changed just after her fortieth birthday, when she was diagnosed with stage IV glioblastoma, an aggressive form of terminal brain cancer.
In What We Wish Were True, Quinn achingly grapples with the possibility of leaving behind the husband and children she adores, and what it means to live with a terminal diagnosis and still find meaning. "I think about how my purpose may be the same in death as it continues to be in life-surrendering to the hope that our weaknesses can be made strong, that what is broken can be made whole," she writes.
Through gorgeous prose, Quinn masterfully weaves together the themes of life and death by integrating spiritually nourishing stories about family, identity, vocational call, beloved community, God's wide welcome, and living with brain cancer. Taken together, these stunning essays are a piercing reminder to cherish each moment, whether heartbreaking or hilarious, and cast loose other concerns.
As a mother, a kindred spirit, and a dear friend, Tallu Schuyler Quinn looks into our eyes with well-earned tears in her own and tells us the bittersweet truth: We are all searching for what has already found us-present and boundless love. This love will deliver us and never let us go.
Editorial Reviews
"Facing death is the hardest thing of all, and Tallu Quinn faces hers in a way that broke and healed my heart. This book is a beautiful tribute to life, to truth, and to love."-Glennon Doyle, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Untamed
"Tallu's essays of living a spiritually and emotionally rich life in a failing body are nothing less than a master class in how to be fully human. They are deeply felt and beautifully rendered meditations on the gifts-yes, the gifts-of struggle. Of suffering. Of temporality itself. A spirit of generosity and flashes of wit shine through even her saddest words."-Margaret Renkl, author of Late Migrations and Graceland, At Last
"When reading What We Wish Were True, I kept thinking of the famous Mary Oliver line, ‘Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?' Clearly, Tallu Schuyler Quinn's answer is everything. Her life, her mission, her decency, and her love create a vibrant legacy for us to hold on to and learn from. This book, like its author, is incandescent."-Ann Patchett, New York Times bestselling author
"With death approaching in the rearview mirror, Tallu Quinn takes us on her final drive, fully present to the gritty, beautiful, excruciating, awe, fullness of family, love and life. I am forever changed by the journey. Thank you, Tallu."-Amy Grant, Grammy Award–winning singer-songwriter
"What We Wish Were True is an unforgettable memoir of the most profound and private experience. At the threshold between this world and the next, Tallu Quinn asks the unanswerable questions out loud, so that we may all consider them and become wiser and more openhearted ourselves."-Mary Laura Philpott, author of I Miss You When I Blink and Bomb Shelter
"Grief inevitably shatters us. But Tallu Quinn has done what is quite unimaginable-holds the pieces up to the light and finds glory in a mosaic of endings."-Nadia Bolz-Weber, three-time New York T...
"Tallu's essays of living a spiritually and emotionally rich life in a failing body are nothing less than a master class in how to be fully human. They are deeply felt and beautifully rendered meditations on the gifts-yes, the gifts-of struggle. Of suffering. Of temporality itself. A spirit of generosity and flashes of wit shine through even her saddest words."-Margaret Renkl, author of Late Migrations and Graceland, At Last
"When reading What We Wish Were True, I kept thinking of the famous Mary Oliver line, ‘Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?' Clearly, Tallu Schuyler Quinn's answer is everything. Her life, her mission, her decency, and her love create a vibrant legacy for us to hold on to and learn from. This book, like its author, is incandescent."-Ann Patchett, New York Times bestselling author
"With death approaching in the rearview mirror, Tallu Quinn takes us on her final drive, fully present to the gritty, beautiful, excruciating, awe, fullness of family, love and life. I am forever changed by the journey. Thank you, Tallu."-Amy Grant, Grammy Award–winning singer-songwriter
"What We Wish Were True is an unforgettable memoir of the most profound and private experience. At the threshold between this world and the next, Tallu Quinn asks the unanswerable questions out loud, so that we may all consider them and become wiser and more openhearted ourselves."-Mary Laura Philpott, author of I Miss You When I Blink and Bomb Shelter
"Grief inevitably shatters us. But Tallu Quinn has done what is quite unimaginable-holds the pieces up to the light and finds glory in a mosaic of endings."-Nadia Bolz-Weber, three-time New York T...
Readers Top Reviews
Georgia Munson
I don't understand quite how she does it, but this beloved author has the ability to speak about things with such transcendent language - turning even a devastating terminal illness into something we can all somehow relate to and learn from. Highly recommend!!!
Brant Wong
This is a breathtaking, essential book and a generous gift: Tallu Schuyler Quinn wrote this memoir during the 18 months after she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. I am so grateful that she left this record of her remarkable life and of her vulnerability and strength in facing death.
Maurice Martin, Prof
Having had the privilege of knowing Tallu and following her caring bridge posts through her illness, I now can keep her words close in this excellent book. What a gift. Today I am pondering the essay entitled "the forest and the clearing." Tomorrow I'll find another to linger (and possibly laugh out loud) over. These gems can be read and reread as they carry one along on a profoundly complex and yet simple journey filled with hope and love despite a devastating diagnosis.
Leita
These words send a shockwave of gratitude through my skin every time I pick them up. I have reread some of these chapters already three times each. Especially the chapters "In You and Among You" and "A Deep Yes", they have branded me with a holy reverence for time, beauty, and the urgent cherishing of what is most important in life: loving those in front of us. Reading Tallu Quinn reminded me those times we are with our family or chosen family, and collectively go silent--finding ourselves in the middle of a simple, yet miraculous life. I wish I could have sat across a table from Tallu, shared a meal with her, or known her personally...but it's still a gift to simply bear witness in these pages to a life well-lived.
bobby cudd
Highly recommend to anyone who has lost someone they love -- which is to say, all of us.
Short Excerpt Teaser
The Meadow
I am standing in tall grass. It is not soft. The day is overcast, but there is light, and it is slanted and bright in an almost sinister way, like rainbow weather. This meadow is where I have stood many days of my waking life. I know its soil, its roots, its curves, its weeds, its humus, its smell. And since my cancer diagnosis, I have spent nearly every day imagining myself standing here.
So many early mornings, I circled the lower acres, forging a worn path with my worries, my questions, and my footsteps. Slipping out of bed quietly so my children didn't wake, dressing in the dark and getting the buttons wrong, desperate for as many minutes to myself as I could steal. I want them back. This meadow is the place of many of my fondest memories, and now it's a place that is helping me surrender to the great beyond-that boundless dark.
One winter here my family tapped eleven sugar maples, yielding fourteen gallons of sweet sap that boiled down to only a single quart of syrup and tasted like the smoky fire upon which we cooked it. I remember our children, Lulah and Thomas, diving into the leaf piles while wearing wire butterfly wings. Lulah's wonky, early cartwheels, and Thomas's watercolor picnics. My husband, Robbie, with Lulah on his lap, waiting at the end of the driveway for me to return home from work, their faces bearing the widest smiles. The soccer ball lodged high up in the tree and how hard we laughed when our enthusiastic friends Heather and Kelsey finally kicked it out. The black walnuts we collected for dye. The hundreds of eggs the chickens gifted us in those years, and the hot breakfasts that followed. Sharing countless meals on the front porch overlooking the meadow.
And there has also been suffering here. The sixty pullets who died tragically in a coop fire while we were in Maine-the young birds charred and their wooden coop too. Our farmer friend Cari's three baby pigs she was raising attacked by coyotes in the open daylight, and countless hens picked off by predators over the years. The deep rivers of rainwater that cleaved our rocky driveway after every storm, and the literal tons of river rock we'd have hauled in to repair it. The massive pile of cleared brush and stumps, and the burns up and down our friend Sally's legs and arms when she lit it.
What is time in this meadow? Will it be my final resting place? My forever?
I keep visiting this scene in my mind-this humble place so alive with the memories of my full and happy life. Reflecting on it is helping me learn how to die. My children are there-young, bright, chubby-cheeked and glossy-chinned, smiling, taking in each other and this world we love. Does it love us back?
The grass is long. Robbie is making us laugh. No thought of my own death in the background, just the pulsing slow time of family life. With the chickens and their muck and their spilled-out food. With the tall weeds overgrown and the cardinals preening and showing themselves.
I meditate on my own death in these visits to the meadow. What will it feel like to die? Grounding myself in the memories of this place connects me to all the physical love I have encountered in this embodied life. With my eyes closed, I visualize strong tendrils shooting downward from my feet, penetrating the soil, pushing through layers of rock, and becoming roots. The roots stretch themselves through the earth's crust and arrive at the deep and strong core of all I am and have ever been and ever will be.
I come back to my breath, looping through my body as a beautiful figure eight. My mind carries me through this journey, and the present moment is full of curiosity about the unknowable past-a lineage of ancestors I never met and yet whose presence I deeply feel as I face my own death. I am carried by them, they in me, their love in me, their love is me.
Over and over again I go back to the smiling faces of my children-their grunts as they nursed at my chest, their first steps, their delight in the world around them. Our joy so big that nothing-not even death-could rob us of what we'd found and somehow formed together. I go back and I go back, and meanwhile my illness marches on, moving me forward, closer to my final days. I tell myself over and over what I have been telling my children-
Love never ends.
Angels in the Architecture
I wanted eyeglasses so badly when I was a child. Alas, I was born with excellent eyesight. I bought a pair of fake glasses from a kiosk at the old Fountain Square mall in Nashville in the third grade. One morning before school, I put them on and attempted to slip out the front door without my parents catching a glimpse ...
I am standing in tall grass. It is not soft. The day is overcast, but there is light, and it is slanted and bright in an almost sinister way, like rainbow weather. This meadow is where I have stood many days of my waking life. I know its soil, its roots, its curves, its weeds, its humus, its smell. And since my cancer diagnosis, I have spent nearly every day imagining myself standing here.
So many early mornings, I circled the lower acres, forging a worn path with my worries, my questions, and my footsteps. Slipping out of bed quietly so my children didn't wake, dressing in the dark and getting the buttons wrong, desperate for as many minutes to myself as I could steal. I want them back. This meadow is the place of many of my fondest memories, and now it's a place that is helping me surrender to the great beyond-that boundless dark.
One winter here my family tapped eleven sugar maples, yielding fourteen gallons of sweet sap that boiled down to only a single quart of syrup and tasted like the smoky fire upon which we cooked it. I remember our children, Lulah and Thomas, diving into the leaf piles while wearing wire butterfly wings. Lulah's wonky, early cartwheels, and Thomas's watercolor picnics. My husband, Robbie, with Lulah on his lap, waiting at the end of the driveway for me to return home from work, their faces bearing the widest smiles. The soccer ball lodged high up in the tree and how hard we laughed when our enthusiastic friends Heather and Kelsey finally kicked it out. The black walnuts we collected for dye. The hundreds of eggs the chickens gifted us in those years, and the hot breakfasts that followed. Sharing countless meals on the front porch overlooking the meadow.
And there has also been suffering here. The sixty pullets who died tragically in a coop fire while we were in Maine-the young birds charred and their wooden coop too. Our farmer friend Cari's three baby pigs she was raising attacked by coyotes in the open daylight, and countless hens picked off by predators over the years. The deep rivers of rainwater that cleaved our rocky driveway after every storm, and the literal tons of river rock we'd have hauled in to repair it. The massive pile of cleared brush and stumps, and the burns up and down our friend Sally's legs and arms when she lit it.
What is time in this meadow? Will it be my final resting place? My forever?
I keep visiting this scene in my mind-this humble place so alive with the memories of my full and happy life. Reflecting on it is helping me learn how to die. My children are there-young, bright, chubby-cheeked and glossy-chinned, smiling, taking in each other and this world we love. Does it love us back?
The grass is long. Robbie is making us laugh. No thought of my own death in the background, just the pulsing slow time of family life. With the chickens and their muck and their spilled-out food. With the tall weeds overgrown and the cardinals preening and showing themselves.
I meditate on my own death in these visits to the meadow. What will it feel like to die? Grounding myself in the memories of this place connects me to all the physical love I have encountered in this embodied life. With my eyes closed, I visualize strong tendrils shooting downward from my feet, penetrating the soil, pushing through layers of rock, and becoming roots. The roots stretch themselves through the earth's crust and arrive at the deep and strong core of all I am and have ever been and ever will be.
I come back to my breath, looping through my body as a beautiful figure eight. My mind carries me through this journey, and the present moment is full of curiosity about the unknowable past-a lineage of ancestors I never met and yet whose presence I deeply feel as I face my own death. I am carried by them, they in me, their love in me, their love is me.
Over and over again I go back to the smiling faces of my children-their grunts as they nursed at my chest, their first steps, their delight in the world around them. Our joy so big that nothing-not even death-could rob us of what we'd found and somehow formed together. I go back and I go back, and meanwhile my illness marches on, moving me forward, closer to my final days. I tell myself over and over what I have been telling my children-
Love never ends.
Angels in the Architecture
I wanted eyeglasses so badly when I was a child. Alas, I was born with excellent eyesight. I bought a pair of fake glasses from a kiosk at the old Fountain Square mall in Nashville in the third grade. One morning before school, I put them on and attempted to slip out the front door without my parents catching a glimpse ...
