Category Archives: Writing

Three Truths and One Wish

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1. Truth: I find it really, really difficult to go on with my life as usual when someone I love is dying. Today is Eric and I’s 19th wedding anniversary, and even though we have tickets for an Aimee Mann concert tomorrow night, tickets I bought specifically as an anniversary present for us, we both forgot that today was the day to celebrate because we’ve been too distracted by the hard stuff in our lives. And it’s not just the big stuff I’m having trouble engaging, it’s all the small stuff. I had a moment last night when I noticed the thick layer of dust in the living room, on the books, the TV, the end tables, and my first thought after noticing was “I’ll dust when Dexter is gone, because I can’t face it right now, can’t waste time on that. It’s just not important.”

2. Truth: I don’t always know what to do. For a retired perfectionist, a master puzzle solver and super stubborn human, this is incredibly frustrating. I try to stay openhearted and present, quiet and still enough that my innate wisdom can arise, but quite often, the panicked chatter of my monkey mind and the howling of intense emotions get in the way and I am confused.

3. Truth: Practice helps me clear my mind and stay in the present moment. When I write, I can dump all the nonsense and the noise and work my way towards understanding. Yoga and walking help me to move, to feel my body in the world, just as it is, to engage with it fully, to release the tension of resisting the way things are and the wishing for things to be different. When I meditate, my mind softens and settles and I can practice being gentle, allowing my deeper wisdom and compassion to manifest. And the practices of love and dog constantly remind me of impermanence, of the reality that change is real and I have no control, that all I can do is surrender, to open my heart and love knowing full well that my heart will be broken as a result.

One wish: For relief, for our collective suffering, shared and private, to ease. For us to find the strength to stand right where we are, just as we are, keeping our hearts open to the way things really are, knowing that we are a part of something beautiful.

Book Writing Saturday: Retreat

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Instead of my regular Book Writing Saturday this week, I am on retreat. I am practicing with my fellow Open Heart Practitioners, and we are being led by our shared meditation instructor and friend, the brilliant Susan Piver. This is a virtual retreat, in part because we are scattered all across the globe, even as we are connected and practicing together.

So instead of literal book writing today, limited to four hours focused on the book, I’m doing a retreat. And yet, it has everything to do with writing this book, is structured similarly to the in person writing and meditation retreat I did with Susan in April, (and the one I’ll most likely be missing in October). There will be multiple sessions of meditation, dharma talks, and time alone to read, write, contemplate, and rest.

My word for this year was retreat. And as a practice, it’s become one of my favorite things, powerful and restorative. There’s a plan for a full week retreat at the end of Susan’s book, How Not to Be Afraid of Your Own Life: Opening Your Heart to Confidence, Intimacy, and Joy. It begins with a weekend intensive spent alone and away, along with a focused plan for the remaining five days back in your normal weekly routine. I’ve been wanting to do that one, but need to wait for a time when I feel like I can be away from my little family for an entire weekend. With the huge question mark about Dexter’s health and future, I don’t way to be away from him for that long, don’t want to leave Eric alone with that possibility.

Susan has asked those of us participating this weekend to have a book to read,  “one that supports you on your inner journey. Use your judgment and select something that will challenge you to delve within.” I am reading Brene’ Brown’s Daring Greatly. Last night, we answered a writing prompt Susan provided, and as I said earlier, there will be other blocks of time for reflecting, contemplating, and writing–becoming still and quiet, sinking down, delving deep. I suspect there will be some tears, as well as epiphanies. There usually are, when you make space for them, when you show up with an open heart.

One thing I found interesting as I prepared for retreat is that suddenly all the things I thought were so important, that had to be done before this could begin, seemed to dissolve, to no longer matter so much, even though Susan had warned us about the opposite happening, about obstacles arising the closer the retreat got. I felt like I was moving differently, slowed down, stripped down to what was important and essential, relaxing. The only “obstacle” ended up being my struggle with any type of math: I got the time zone conversion wrong, added two hours to my time instead of subtracting, so showed up late, didn’t start the retreat in “real time” with every one else. D’oh!

In my post a few days ago, I shared lyrics from an Alexi Murdoch song:

May the grace of god be with you always in your heart
May you know the truth inside you from the start
May you find the strength to know that you are a part of something beautiful.

Besides writing, contemplating, opening my heart, and meditating, opening up to this awareness is my intention for this retreat–for the grace of god to be with me always in my heart, to know the truth inside me, and to find the strength to know that I am a part of something beautiful.