The point is to change one's life. The point is not to give some vent to the emotions that have been destroying one; the point is so to act that one can master them now.

She attended a Friends (Quaker) school up through her high school years. Verlaine painted did figure drawings and illustrated several books written by Deming. During the time that they were together Meigs and Deming moved to Wellfleet Massachusetts where Barbara Deming befriended the writer and critic Edmund Wilson and his circle of friends.