Diving In

Halo and I walked down to a turn in the river yesterday where there is a bank full of colorful rocks. With her love of smells, it was like taking a kid to Disneyland. She darted every which way in sheer excitement, making sure to cover as much of the area as her leash and my less certain feet would let her. It truly is a beautiful river with the crystal-clear blue-green waters, the white frothy waterfall on the opposite bank, and the amazing array of colors in the rocks and stones deposited there. The scene is completed to perfection by a family of eagles flying along the river’s current, watching for fish, their white heads standing out starkly against the green trees.

Sharing what is real

I originally created this retreat to re-center myself in my own energy among this beauty of nature and to remember who I am as a writer. The truth is, though, I have also become hesitant to pick up my pen or a keyboard and share what is actually on my mind. While admiring such powerful honesty in books like Randy Rainbow’s Playing with Myself or Sarah Polley’s Run Towards the Danger, I haven’t been willing to open up that deeply and welcome in your critique and dislike or, even worse, never having anyone read what I write in the first place. But that doesn’t really help, does it, when I am not writing at all? I tell authors I work with, especially those writing personal memoir, that however hesitant they are to share, their stories are powerful and will speak to other people needing to hear them. It is high time I take my own advice.

Picking up my blog again

I have considered picking up my blog again for years. I even started writing a post about the pandemic in 2020 but never finished it. Now, though, it is a good way to wade back into the water of writing publicly, to dive in and pull up those colorful rocks I see on the bottom of the riverbed for closer viewing. During this retreat, I could have written more poetry about being hesitant to share what I write or wrote in my journal all the reasons why but my soul said to dive right in instead and post to my blog. To be very honest, when I went into my website yesterday and saw three genuine comments on the first post this week, not just the usual spam, tears sprung to my eyes. I was so moved people responded and I wasn’t talking to an empty room.

During a poetry retreat I went to this last summer of 2022, I was challenged by the theme of writing vulnerably, of being raw and real with an audience. Some exercises went well for me and some not so much. I think most of us have a fear of being truly open with other people. We like to hide behind what we believe to be acceptable or we don’t share at all. At that point, people stop knowing who we truly are and the genuine freedom we can feel from expressing ourselves truthfully is gone. Not sharing with each other also leaves us each feeling more alone, the lack of connection isolating us one from another (a truth I think we all realize after quarantine). It is a paradox, I know. You open yourself up quite vulnerably and you may get hurt, it is true, but you can also touch someone else and encourage them to be more genuinely themselves, like Randy Rainbow and Sarah Polley recently did for me.

Taking steps forward

So I am taking steps forward by gifting myself permission to be myself on the page. Whether you like it or not, is secondary (though I hope you do). My soul has been suffocating being hidden away for so long and maybe someone out there will echo with what I have to say. I don’t fully know where this will take me, but I can give you a preview of some of the posts I want to write (in no particular order):

• The story of Berry the bear and what he taught me
• What I learned during the pandemic (I’ll finish that earlier post)
• My spiritual journey and all the questions I have (I have a lot of material on this)
• Stories and thoughts about the poetry I write (time to give you a look behind the scenes)
• The work I’ve done on my finances over the last couple of years (I weirdly love this topic)
• How I am challenging myself after watching the show Queer Eye
• Books I’m reading and my thoughts on them
• Anything else that strikes my fancy

I imagine it will look like Halo running around the river’s shore delighting in what she finds.