Editor's Note

Paul Walker

Murray State University

The thread of loss is never absent from life's tapestry. Even in times of delight, joy, or contentment, loss is always nearby, timid or brazen in its constancy. 

In July  2021, Sally Miller Gearhart passed away  at the age of 90. I did not know Sally, but I had the honor of creating a special issue for this journal in 2019 that was a retrospective of her work and spirit that she spread throughout the fields of Rhetoric and Communication. Reading the work of the issue's authors (including Lisa Ede, who also passed away in 2021) and communicating with them through the process of publishing the issue was a true pleasure, and I'm proud of the insight and stories that the special issue contributed to our readers. Even before that issue, however, Sally's admonition for scholars was a major inspiration for this journal, as expressed in my initial description of its aim and scope:

"Intraspection seeks and selects contributions by authors who, in the words of Sally Miller Gearhart, “amply demonstrate the separate virtues of worthy scholarship and open-hearted outrageousness.”

Numerous tributes to her life and legacy are available online or forthcoming, including one or two documentary films that are potentially being developed. I'm grateful to have been a part in sharing her wisdom and outrageousness with the world because she was revelatory for me -- not only in my scholarship, but also in my classrooms and other personal interactions. That "the intent to persuade [or change] another is an act of violence" is a daily reminder of the paradoxical responsibilities and struggles to be human and a teacher. 

The essays in this issue in their own ways illustrate how loss occurs or how it is accepted or questioned. To lose the image we have of ourselves, to accept in its place a new image; to lose the certainty that guided so many of our actions, to replace it with an uncertainty that proves more worthy; to lose a part of one's self, a being, without any possible recompense in its stead -- these are a few among the broad range of possible loss that are featured in this issue. I am honored to share these authors' work with readers, and appreciate the authors' honest, rich, and powerful contributions to better understanding ourselves and others.