Category: Mission Log

  • Paul’s Penance: A First Look

    Paul’s Penance: A First Look

    For a long time, I’ve kept this one close.

    Now it’s time to introduce it.

    He stole flowers. The court gave him a choice: go to jail or write a book.

    That’s where Paul’s story begins.

    Thirty days to find his story. A lifetime to find himself.

    Paul’s Penance is a novel about what happens when life refuses to follow the plan, and a man is forced to sit down and look at the story he’s been living.

    Somewhere in those thirty days is a question about his father that he has never been able to answer.

    I’m in the final stretch of revisions now, with the goal of submitting it to Hay House this December.

    I won’t be sharing pages from the manuscript here. But I will share the journey: what I’m learning, what’s working, and what it takes to finish a book.

    If you’d like to follow along, pull up a chair. I send one letter a month with honest updates on Paul’s Penance and new writing.

    Sign up at danhansen.com.

  • What Care Can Hold

    What Care Can Hold

    Before the first appointment of the day, I had a conversation with Jeff about Bear.

    I already knew the truth.

    I couldn’t care for Bear physically or financially. Wanting him wasn’t enough. Taking him in when I couldn’t give him what he needed wouldn’t have been fair to either of us.

    Knowing that didn’t make saying it easier.

    I felt myself getting choked up. My hormones were still unsettled from treatment, and it didn’t take much to bring tears close to the surface. I fought them because there were appointments ahead and things that still needed to be done.

    First came the echocardiogram.

    I got through it, although it left me tired. Then I caught a Lyft to Stroger for the full-body scan following my radioactive iodine treatment.

    The afternoon scan went better than the first one. It took less time, and I didn’t need another radiation pill because enough remained in my body from the treatment.

    By the time I got home around 4:30, I was exhausted.

    Jeff and Bear were outside when the car dropped me off.

    A little later, Jeff and I went out for split pea soup. I paid. Then I bought the last of the soup to bring home for him.

    It wasn’t a grand gesture. It was soup.

    But it was something I could give.

    That was the quiet truth running beneath the entire day.

    There was care I couldn’t provide, no matter how much I wanted to. There was care I had to receive because my body couldn’t carry the day alone. And there was care I could still offer in return, even if it came in a takeout container filled with split pea soup.

    I used to think love meant doing everything.

    Maybe love is more honest than that.

    Sometimes love means admitting what I cannot carry. Sometimes it means allowing someone else to help me. Sometimes it means noticing one small thing I can do and doing it without treating its size as a measure of its worth.

    I couldn’t solve everything that day.

    I could tell the truth about Bear.

    I could get through the appointments.

    I could buy the soup.

    That was what care could hold.

    Alignment Before Outcome

    Accepting my limits did not mean I cared less.

    It meant I stopped asking love to make promises my body and circumstances could not keep.

    Alignment did not remove the sadness. It helped me respond honestly to it.

    I could not give everything.

    I could give what was mine to give.

    “Love is not doing everything. Sometimes it is telling the truth about what I can carry.”

    If this resonated, pull up a chair. I send one letter a month with new writing and honest updates on my novel, Paul’s Penance. Sign up at danhansen.com.