A Hard Silence with Melanie Brooks
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Author Melanie Brooks is back with the release of her memoir A Hard Silence: One daughter remaps family, grief, and faith when HIV/AIDS changes it all.
More about her first book, Writing Hard Stories: Celebrated Memoirists Who Shaped Art from Trauma.
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when people see me authentically speaking out of the silence of my experience, maybe it gives them a little boost of courage to do the same. (upbeat music) - This is Daring to Tell, the podcast where writers read their true stories of personal daring. Then we talk about writing and life. I'm your host, Michelle Radow. ♪ Nothing's gonna make me brave ♪ ♪ And nothing's gonna make me brave ♪ ♪ Nothing's gonna make me brave ♪ ♪ Except doing what makes me scared ♪ (upbeat music) - For those of you who follow along with some of my recurring themes, you know that both walking and bugs occupy a significant part of my brain and sometimes my day, the first one for positive reasons, the second as an irrational fear I am trying to shake. Well, this past summer, I was on my morning walk. It was probably late July, early August, the time of summer when those nasty deer flies have mostly died off and grasshoppers are springing up through every sun-filled stretch of road. I had rounded the corner of my morning walk and was on the home stretch, talking on the phone when all of a sudden I heard a mini buzz saw noise and like a drone about 10 feet in front of me, something levitated straight up into the air. Vertical as a ruler about five or six feet off the ground. It was squarely in my path. I screeched to a halt. What is that? I exclaimed to my mom who I was on the phone with and I told her what had happened. It was a grasshopper. The grasshopper kept hovering like a helicopter, absolutely static. I was careful to look behind me as I made a big loop around this hovering creature, walked around it out into the road, adrenaline pumping a little bit inside of me. It seemed other worldly. What the heck was that? Later on, I was at home,
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