Issue #10: "I Will Call Us a Blessing" by Eileen Vorbach Collins

November 2025, COMMUNITY

Introduction by Kate Lewis

In thinking of community and its impact on my life, my thoughts are often drawn to joy. The close friends whose counsel I seek before major life decisions, often over salt-tinged margaritas. The weekend potlucks with neighbors, our entire asphalt street a gleeful party filled with the thrum of music and the shouts of racing children and adults who chase after them. The people with whom I share the daily work of building a meaningful life.

Yet the true power of community is often the ways it shows up for us during our hardest times. When we’ve bent or broken. When we’re sure we can’t go on. This beautiful piece, “I Will Call Us a Blessing” by Eileen Vorbach Collins, is stunning in its devotion to these communities of care — those that lift us, those that nourish us, those that sometimes bear the impossible weight of life alongside us when we can no longer carry it alone.

And now, our chosen piece for “COMMUNITY.”

“I Will Call Us a Blessing” by Eileen Vorbach Collins

Penguins travel and rest on rafts made of their collective bodies. On land they huddle, constantly shifting, small steps, each taking its turn rotating into the warm middle. Sheltered. Protected. Held.

When my daughter died, my heart hurt. Takotsubo cardiomyopathy, my left ventricle ballooning into the shape of a Japanese octopus trap. Broken heart syndrome. Though most octopuses are solitary, some form communities. A tangle.

I longed to float away. With others but separate. A raft of mourners was what I needed. To be part of a collective grief, but still able to hear my own distinct voice howling her name in the universe. Lydia.

A murmuration of ten thousand starlings, each wingbeat individual but spreading waves of connection. Undulating, never-ending supplication. Communication. Validation.

Profound grief rewires the brain. Makes you forgetful. It could turn you into a fish. Jittery, jumping, a flash of silver. A neon green electric eel, sleeping with eyes wide open. Or not sleeping at all. Fish in a shoal are less stressed, healthier, than if isolated. A shoal might contain fish of different species while a school is less diverse. Fish in a school, like starlings in a murmuration, move together. One turns, the school turns.

My son’s goldfish, Ed, lived a long life, alone in his bowl. He recognized my son and would swim to the surface and put his whole face out of the water when Daniel entered the room. When Daniel went to sleepaway camp, Ed ate the food I gave him every day but never greeted me with that enthusiasm. One morning I found Ed floating belly up. Alone.

Elephants have been known to return to their dead. Rock gently in unison. Stroke the bones of the deceased. A collective noun for elephants is a memory.

Tahlequah, an orca, carried her calf’s corpse for 17 days, over 1,000 miles. Other orcas—primarily females— supported her, sometimes carrying the calf so she could rest. A collective noun for orcas is a pod.

I found my raft, and we drifted to shore. I was held and huddled till my heart rate dropped to normal. Till my left ventricle resumed its pre-shock state. Till my brain fog began to lift. Till my neurons settled down and the neon electric eel of me faded to a soft green glow. There is no word for this group of grieving mothers, this community of mourners.

I will give us a name. I shall call us a raft. A huddle. A pod. A takotsubo. I shall call us an understanding. Or, like a group of unicorns, I will call us a blessing.

Photo Credit: Hal Cooks for Unsplash

Author Spotlight

Kate: I loved the sense of scope here, which weaves through the natural world from penguins to orcas to starlings to us, and draws the reader into the many ways we exist in community. What sparked this piece for you?

Eileen: I was at a week-long retreat at Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities. My stay coincided with the last of an eight-session virtual support group I co-facilitated for bereaved mothers through The Alliance of Hope. Concerned about the weak wi-fi signal in my room, I found a strong signal in the library on the first floor and set up there for the Zoom meeting. The participants were an awesome group, so caring and supportive of one another.

Afterward, back in my room, I wrote this piece as I thought about the people who’d supported me after Lydia died. That was 25 years ago and many of us have stayed in touch.

And to add a bit of serendipity, I discovered another author, Iris Angle, holds a monthly suicide loss support group in that same library at Weymouth. A blessing, I’m sure.

Kate: We spoke about the importance of naming in this piece: naming grief, naming loss, names to groups of animals and to our specific, beloved children. What power does naming hold for you?

Eileen: Great question. You pointed out in my first draft that despite all the collective nouns, I hadn’t named Lydia in this piece. I’ve written so much about Lydia, but this piece felt different. More an ode to other women who’ve supported one another through this unfathomable loss. Still, adding Lydia’s name brought it back to her and made it more personal. More visceral. Thank you for that suggestion.

Kate: The final line, “I will call us a blessing,” is also the piece’s title, and refers to the community of grieving mothers who became your raft, as you say. As we think about COMMUNITY this month, what other communities have helped sustain you?

Eileen: The writing community, of course. I’m tempted to use a hashtag with that for old time’s sake. Twitter was a great community hub of writers. It was where I’d go to find lit mags open for submissions, to read what my favorite writers had published, and to share my own published essays. There was the #5amwritersclub for which I was habitually two hours late, a daily haiku challenge, and my favorite, #tinytruths —flash pieces written in the character limit for a Tweet. Creative Nonfiction Magazine would publish a page full of those in every edition. Substack seems to be the place now for forming that kind of community, although I haven’t found my way around the neighborhood yet.

Eileen Vorbach Collins

What Our Co-Editors Had To Say

Casey: This piece holds great meaning for me as a member of the club no one wants to join—mother of a child who has died. Like other bereaved mothers, I’ve often thought of how wrong it is that we have no name for this. In “I Will Call Us a Blessing,” Collins, in her unique style, leads us back and forth from the natural world to a world that for us survivors feels about as unnatural as a thing can be. Her use of language and metaphor results in a breathtaking immersion into the emotions and even physicality of a grieving mother in a way that both saddens and comforts. To co-opt a phrase I recently read, Collins “makes pain speak English.”

Nina: The gift for me in reading this stunning piece on grief is that I not only learn something new (A huddle. A pod. A takotsubo!) but feel the lungs of my experience as a human expand as Collins draws me into the animal kingdom. I observe, through Collins’ soulful and beautiful examples of penguins, elephants, orcas, the various ways animals grieve and support each other, and immediately feel the perceived and limited boundaries of our humanity melt away toward something bigger, with wonder and awe, in much the same way the late Jane Goodall did for us in her life-long study of primates: we see that all living creatures deserve “understanding” and blessings.

Leanne: In “I Will Call Us a Blessing,” Collins doesn’t just hold space for the personal vs. the universal– she spells it out for us in breathtaking detail. This is one of those rare pieces that I could read a hundred times in a hundred different ways. I learn from it, as a critical exercise; I let it soak into my bones and wash over my skin. I feel profound appreciation to Collins for writing this beautiful treatise on grief and nature, and the delicate balance of a fragile life held within community.

Cindy: Forty years ago, I lost my first child, a daughter, whose birth and death certificate were written on the same day. Unlike Collins, I never found a community, nor the words to process my pain.

When Collins writes that profound grief rewires the brain, I know what she means. It could turn you into a fish. Jittery, jumping, a flash of silver –an apt metaphor for the person I became.

The other side of tragedy is redemption. Collins finds her raft, and with it the generosity to hoist others to safety. “I Will Call Us a Blessing” is a poetic tribute to all the lost mothers who have been resurrected by communities of love.

Author Bio

Eileen Vorbach Collins is a Baltimore native. Her work has been widely published, receiving several literary awards and two nominations for a Pushcart Prize. Eileen’s essay collection, Love in the Archives, a Patchwork of True Stories About Suicide Loss, was a Foreword Indies Finalist and received the Sarton Women’s Book Award for Memoir.

Links:

Substack: https://substack.com/@eileenvorbachcollins2

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vorbachcollins

Instagram: www.instagram.com/evorbachcollins

Website: www.eileenvorbachcollins.com

Submission Calls

Enjoyed Eileen’s essay? YOU could be our next featured author!

From November 1-15, please submit pieces on the theme of ROOTS.

From December 1-15, please submit pieces on the theme of MAPS.

From January 1-15, please submit pieces on the theme of REUNIONS.

From February 1-15, please submit pieces on the theme of MEMORIES.

—No submissions in March—

Before submitting, refer to our Submission Guidelines page. As a reminder, we read all submissions blind. We can’t wait to read your work!

What’s Going On With Us

Last month, editor Kate Lewis spoke about “Writing to Build Community” for the 2025 Mental Health & Motherhood Summit. Register now to watch the replay for advice on supportive writing groups, making time, and prompts to keep you writing even during busy seasons of life!

Casey Mulligan Walsh appeared on Open to Hope TV in September, including episodes on Grief and the Role of Faith and Transforming Loss Through Purpose and Meaning, in support of her memoir The Full Catastrophe: All I Ever Wanted, Everything I Feared, as well as her other short-form writing about grief and loss.

At Nina B. Lichtenstein’s recent book launch event for Body: My Life in Parts in her native Oslo, Norway, she learned about a huge family secret from an audience member. The story was published in HuffPost Personal and you can read it here. Nina is teaching a 3-week workshop, “Your Body, Your Story” through Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance in November (in person), and a one-day hybrid workshop on “Writing Our Fathers” on December 14th. Find out more here.