I was interviewed today by my friend, Elizabeth Lesser for Oprah’s radio show about Soul. Oprah has asked Elizabeth to host the show when she, Oprah, is not available. Elizabeth is co-founder of The Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY and is a deeply spiritual/soulful person. We spent a wonderful hour talking together during which I realized that I want to send Elizabeth’s book, “Broken Open,” to Vanessa Redgrave. It is a book about how life’s tragedies and crisis can also be the way in which we are broken open–to deeper, richer parts of ourselves, to the broader community, to the universe. I also remembered with shock that only last year Vanessa played Joan Didion in the one-woman play based on Didion’s book, “The Year of Magical Thinking,” which told of her loss of her husband, John Dunne and her daughter. I feel certain that Didion will be able to help Vanessa now through her own loss.

Perhaps the acuteness of the tragedy of Natasha’s death is magnified for me because of I feel very ‘broken open’ by the nature of this play that I am doing 8 times a week–a play that speaks of life and death, of mothers and daughters.

(These last days it has been hard for me to write my usual ‘sign off’–see you next time. It all seems so arbitrary.)

I first met her on the set of “Julia.” She was a little girl but already
beautiful and graceful. It didn’t surprise me that she became such a
talented actor. I wanted to go to the Lennox Hill Hospital where I was
told she had been taken to see if there was anything I could do for
Vanessa, any comfort I could bring but today was a two-show day and as
the curtain went up tonight I heard the tragic news. It is hard to even
imagine what it must be like for her family. My heart is heavy.