We’re All As Holy as the Holiest Folks Who Ever Lived
The Body, Brain, and Books: Eleven Questions with mother and writer Isabel Cowles Murphy
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What are you reading now?
I read spiritual stuff in the morning and fiction at night.
I’m nearing the end of Eric Butterworth’s Discover the Power Within You: A Guide to the Unexplored Depths Within—which is more theological than self-help-y. Oprah recommends it often, and I can see how it sparked her life-force. Butterworth’s thesis is that we each have infinite, divine potential, which was Jesus’ message before it got twisted by folks in power. “God is in you as the ocean is in the wave” is a line I love. Plus, reflecting on our shared, limitless divinity really sets me up to manage missing homework, dog barf, spilled milk, etc.
I’m also nearly through Florence Knapp’s The Names, a novel about a family in three different iterations, depending on what a mother names her son. The story’s filled with love, awkwardness, pain, and absorbing details of daily life. The plot is complex, but the through-line is so clear, I’m pulled along without a hitch. Knapp is teaching me a lot as a writer.
What are your most beloved books from your youth? Did you ever hide any from your parents?
My parents were quite bohemian—my father, Pappy, found God on mushrooms and he had a habit of saying: “there’s no federal law says you have to!” about stuff like finishing homework or dinner. (I had to go to law school to get things straight.) My mother was a theater actress when I was young, and she loves edgy intellectuals. This is a long way of saying: no restrictions.
We didn’t have a T.V. until 9/11 when I was a senior in high school, so we read a lot. Pappy turned me onto all the good stuff: Breakfast of Champions (“To give an idea of the maturity of my illustrations for this book, here is a picture of an asshole” was the first time I gasped while reading.) Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl was my father’s all-time favorite. Mom gave me West with the Night by Beryl Markham, a horse trainer and bush pilot in 1920s Kenya. I read that book until the bindings cracked.
What’s your favorite book to reread? Any that helped you through a dark time?
I revisit Man’s Search for Meaning every few years. I love Frankl’s message that our dignity is ours to define. It connects me with Pappy, who died in 2014.
I’m also glad I get to read children’s books every night at bedtime. William Steig is our family favorite and I especially love Wizzil: the story of a witch who turns herself into a gardening glove and falls in love with the man she intended to torment by giving him rashes. Every Steig tale comes with a message of love, but they’re all delivered with so much weirdness and wit you don’t see the transcendence coming.
What’s an article of clothing that makes you feel most like you?
I turned forty last September and I hoped my husband would do something special, so I bought myself a white dress as a goading mechanism. “I got myself a dress, Christopher, just in case!” I found it about a week before my birthday—the skirt practically curtseyed at me on the mannequin. I thought: “That dress is me.” I don’t usually feel drawn to clothes and when I do buy something nice, I tend to hoard it, waiting for some ‘special’ occasion that never comes.
The night before my birthday was the Harvest Moon and two close friends came over and took me out to look at the sky. I thought, “Oh screw it, I’ll put on the dress.” We carried candles and set all sorts of intentions for the decade ahead, and it felt like a wedding, except I was marrying myself. Four nights later, Christopher and I went to our friends’ birthday party. I wore the dress in the continued spirit of why not. Turns out, the party was a surprise… for me. I cried and tried to hide behind a bush. I felt so blown open and happy. I keep wearing the dress whenever I can.
What’s the best piece of wisdom you've encountered recently?
“Life is like licking honey from a thorn.”
Tell me about any special relationship you’ve had with an animal, domestic or wild?
When I was six, Pappy drove by a barn across town, came home and asked, “How’d you like to be a cowboy?” Bonnie’s was a wholesome, backyard operation: nothing fancy. The fences were just electric wires and a goat wandered around with the mutts. Nobody worked there except Bonnie and a bunch of local kids, so we did everything ourselves: hay hauling, grooming, breaking ice off the troughs.
Growing up, the feelings were sometimes complicated in our house—my mom moved from theater into T.V., but my parents didn’t want to raise us in L.A, so she traveled solo for weeks at a time. Pappy had trouble managing his diabetes, and my sister and I took his despair personally because that’s what kids do.
With the horses, though, we were grounded and free. In the summers, we’d ride through the woods and gallop along the edges of the cornfields. I pretended I was Indiana Jones and had no idea how much maternal wisdom I was collecting. The horses taught me how to listen and speak without words and how to be firm but also gentle. Anybody who loves an animal knows that while you think you’re caring for them, they’re caring for you. When our four kids are big and gone, I’ll find another backyard barn and spend my days sniffing the salt-smelling ridge of some horse’s nostril.
What's one thing you are happy worked out differently than you expected?
Every day I wake up in awe of the beauty of my life even though it’s not the version of ‘making it’ I imagined. I thought I was going to be an itinerant archeologist, a famous actress, or a suited-exec, driven around in a black car. Sometimes my ego erupts a little and I wonder “is this it?” But I gravitate towards calm, sensuous tasks like sweeping leaves off our brick porch, walking in the woods and cooking. I love reading and writing books. I have a lot of ambition for my work, but no matter where my writing ends up, I’ll want to spend my days exactly the way I do now.
Singing in the shower or dancing in the kitchen? Or another favorite way your body expresses itself?
Moaning on the floor, circling my legs in the air with tennis balls under my butt. Anytime I do unchoreographed, spontaneous stretching I feel like all my vessels have opened and every kind of energy’s pumping through me at double-speed: the blood, the oxygen, the feelings & ideas. I get all lit up.
What are your hopes for yourself?
I want to see the best in everyone and hold that vision for them even when they fall short.
What’s a kindness that changed your life?
College was awful. I was pathologically hungry and always trying to hide it. Being gaunt made me exotic in a praying-mantis kind of way, and I got a lot of weird, scary attention. I felt extremely fragile, which I covered with coolness and bluster.
I would, occasionally, allow myself to dance in the apartment I shared with two friends. One of my roommates—Kelly, who was younger and so looked up to me—once met my eyes as I flung my bones around and said: “Belle, I love it when you’re goofy.” She saw the tender self I was hiding, and she called it out in the most loving, generous way. Her eyes sparkled like she knew who I used to be—silly, open, undefended. It took me ten years to recover that version of myself, but I reached for Kelly’s comment, always. She’s holding me up in the party picture.
What’s a guiding force in your life?
My father used to say that Jesus could be anywhere or anyone. I pictured a man in robes popping out from the bathroom stall at school. But now I realize Pappy was telling me that the deepest dignity and divinity are in everyone, all the time: we’re all as holy as the holiest folks who ever lived. And I agree. I really love people. I try to keep the armor off so I can feel it.
If you enjoyed Isabel’s questionnaire, you may also enjoy this one with
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This was lovely; so happy to come to know Isabel. Love the story of the dress—and the gorgeous dress—and this: “it felt like a wedding, except I was marrying myself.” A thousand times yes. And I also moan on the floor with tennis balls under my butt. Myofascial release has been my gateway out of intense low back pain that erupted earlier this year just shy of my 65th birthday. Glad to know another butt ball lover. My practitioner says lovingly I have a tight ass; most of us do. It’s where we hold control.
Once again, thank you. You're interviews are always so enlightening, Jane.