Got to wake up with the birds today — up and out walking through the just-breaking dawn, and quiet neighborhoods suddenly clipped alive here, then there, then there, with bird calls. Coming home, a goldfinch couple landed on the fence just as I approached. Good morning!
Walked through some quiet downtown neighborhoods I hadn’t yet visited in our year here — where will we be at the end of this month? Where is the next home? Said hello to pups out for walks, to people visiting their cars and cats and kids. (What does that mean?) Said hello to the morning flowers and the thin, pale rose coloring the edge of the sky as the sun arose.
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A beautiful workshop on Saturday in Sacramento — a day of claiming and reclaiming our erotic story! It was such a gift to be with 13 incredible writers, to get to play around in the language of desire for a day, to step into that bawdy embodiment in community — thanks to all who were there! Lots of laughter, some ragged edgings of tears, and plenty of flushed cheeks: we were grateful for the cool tule fog outside once it was time to break for lunch!
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Coming up next:
- Writing Transitions this Saturday, Feb 5! Are you or your characters preparing to move through some transitions? Join us Saturday for Writing Transitions, and give yourself the opportunity to write into your own, possibly surprising, possibilities while supporting Writing Ourselves Whole!
- Writing the Flood on Saturday, Feb 12! (this month, Writing the Flood meets on the second instead of the third Saturday, so we can have one more meeting in the Flood building before the big move!)
I love these writing Saturdays — we take the day or an afternoon and devote that time to living into our creative discovery and play. What a powerful group of folks to get to be a part of!
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Plenty of transitions going on around these parts, and lots of old fears and worries and sorrows are emerging in the space created by slowing down and moving my body more. This is what I wanted and what I was afraid of: if I stop all the racing around, then everything I’ve been running from will catch up with me.
Right. Hello again.
How to move through all of this that I spent years avoiding? How to avoid feeling like I will never be free of this sorrow, that loss?
Keep walking, and let the tears come. Read, watch movies, let friends in, keep stretching. This is not supposed to be comfortable (remember?) — comfortable is what got you here. This is new growth, and growing pains hurt.
Reading through Pinkola Estés again, this time, La Selva Subterranea (p. 404-405): “There are times in a woman’s life when she cries and cries and cries, and even though she has the succor and support of her loves ones, still and yet she cries. Something in this crying keeps the predator away, keeps away unhealthy desire or gain that will run her. Tears are a part of the mending of rips in the psyche where energy as leaked and leaked away. The matter is serious, but the worst does not occur–our light is not stolen–for tears make us conscious. There is no chance to go back to sleep when one is weeping.”
This is not just true for women, I think.
It feels, so often, like the tears will never end — but they do, when it’s time for them to. Are there unexplainable tears coming right now, or tears that feel continuous or constant? Can you let them come with out shame or self-blame? Is one of your characters in a place of many many tears? Is there wisdom in these tears, in this place of release and cleansing? What are the tears bringing up?
Thank you for all of your wise healing ways, every urge and strategy and mechanism that your brave and resilient self has crafted to bring you through to this right now. Thank you for your creativity, your words.
