Sage Cohen's Blog, page 10
March 12, 2012
What's hope got to do with it?
What if you could be sure a whole self and a whole life awaited you on the other side of divorce? What if divorce was actually an opportunity to discover and claim the truest parts of you?
A year and a half ago when my husband moved out, these are the questions I started asking. I was incredibly fortunate to connect with three other divorced moms online who were in a similar inquiry process. We listened to each others' stories, shared our deepest griefs and greatest desires–and came to a shared conclusion: divorce can be a hopeful transition to a more authentic and fulfilling future.
Holding this possibility through two of my most difficult years was lifesaving. My friends felt the same. Which is why we are sharing this hopeful message with other divorcing moms through an online guided journey, hopeful divorce: field notes from a friend.
Hopeful Divorce offers a year of daily, practical and soul-fortifying support for the most pressing concerns and challenges divorcing mothers face, such as:
What happens now? Everything is changing so fast, I'm not sure where I'll land.
Hopeful Divorce proposes that what is broken by divorce has an opportunity to become even more authentically whole. Participants are invited into a practice of contemplating new possibilities, mourning and releasing what they are leaving behind, finding strength and inspiration in who they are becoming, and moving toward their emerging vision of love and self care.
My married friends can't relate to what I'm going through. Who can I talk to who understands?
You are not alone! Hopeful Divorce offers an opportunity to connect with others who relate to your deepest fears, who share similar day-to-day challenges and who can share the resources that have carried them through. Our online forum, hosted by moms just like you who have weathered the storms of divorce, provides just the support you need.
Will my kids be okay? How can I help them through this process?
Hopeful Divorce calls moms back to their authority and center. By equipping them with the insights they need to cultivate power, access inner wisdom, tap emotional truths and navigate grace, this journey reminds each mother that the courage she is living right now is one of the most profound anchors she can offer her child(ren) — and that the hope she is cultivating is their birthright.
What if mothers could be guided safely to a hopeful life on the other side of divorce?
Hopeful Divorce offers mothers exactly what its founders found so valuable in supporting each other: a daily check-in from a fierce, wise and loving friend who knows just what you're facing. Seasoned guides, authors and divorced mothers Sage Cohen (yours truly!) and Jennifer New share their hearts and their insights by email every weekday for an entire year. Participants receive stories, prompts, quotes and poems designed to evoke hope, healing and wholeness. Everyone is invited to join the private forum after the first month.
What if single mothers could afford self-care when they need it most?
Hopeful Divorce costs just $55 for a full year of daily emails (less than $5/month). For the first 100 registrants, the cost is reduced to $40. You can even send gift certificates for friends going through divorce whom you'd like to support! Registration is open at www.hopefuldivorce.com.
What if a hopeful world were more possible with every hopeful divorce?
Ten percent of revenue generated from hopeful divorce goes into a scholarship fund for single mothers in Rwanda in need of vocational training to support themselves and their children. Inspired by Hopeful World partner and single mother Odette Umurerwa, the Hopeful Divorce Turikumwe Scholarship Fund provides the chance young women need to learn a trade and economically gain independence – especially in situations where staying in a difficult marriage would compromise basic safety and sustenance.
Hopeful Divorce is a product of Hopeful World, a global classroom where wisdom, knowledge and stories seed the ground of personal transformation and social change.
* * * * *
If you are a mother going through divorce, or if you know a mother who could use support, we would be so honored to accompany you (or your friend) across this powerful threshold. You can learn more at www.hopefuldivorce.com. Here's to a hopeful future for all of us.
What’s hope got to do with it?
What if you could be sure a whole self and a whole life awaited you on the other side of divorce? What if divorce was actually an opportunity to discover and claim the truest parts of you?
A year and a half ago when my husband moved out, these are the questions I started asking. I was incredibly fortunate to connect with three other divorced moms online who were in a similar inquiry process. We listened to each others’ stories, shared our deepest griefs and greatest desires–and came to a shared conclusion: divorce can be a hopeful transition to a more authentic and fulfilling future.
Holding this possibility through two of my most difficult years was lifesaving. My friends felt the same. Which is why we are sharing this hopeful message with other divorcing moms through an online guided journey, hopeful divorce: field notes from a friend.
Hopeful Divorce offers a year of daily, practical and soul-fortifying support for the most pressing concerns and challenges divorcing mothers face, such as:
What happens now? Everything is changing so fast, I’m not sure where I’ll land.
Hopeful Divorce proposes that what is broken by divorce has an opportunity to become even more authentically whole. Participants are invited into a practice of contemplating new possibilities, mourning and releasing what they are leaving behind, finding strength and inspiration in who they are becoming, and moving toward their emerging vision of love and self care.
My married friends can’t relate to what I’m going through. Who can I talk to who understands?
You are not alone! Hopeful Divorce offers an opportunity to connect with others who relate to your deepest fears, who share similar day-to-day challenges and who can share the resources that have carried them through. Our online forum, hosted by moms just like you who have weathered the storms of divorce, provides just the support you need.
Will my kids be okay? How can I help them through this process?
Hopeful Divorce calls moms back to their authority and center. By equipping them with the insights they need to cultivate power, access inner wisdom, tap emotional truths and navigate grace, this journey reminds each mother that the courage she is living right now is one of the most profound anchors she can offer her child(ren) — and that the hope she is cultivating is their birthright.
What if mothers could be guided safely to a hopeful life on the other side of divorce?
Hopeful Divorce offers mothers exactly what its founders found so valuable in supporting each other: a daily check-in from a fierce, wise and loving friend who knows just what you’re facing. Seasoned guides, authors and divorced mothers Sage Cohen (yours truly!) and Jennifer New share their hearts and their insights by email every weekday for an entire year. Participants receive stories, prompts, quotes and poems designed to evoke hope, healing and wholeness. Everyone is invited to join the private forum after the first month.
What if single mothers could afford self-care when they need it most?
Hopeful Divorce costs just $55 for a full year of daily emails (less than $5/month). For the first 100 registrants, the cost is reduced to $40. You can even send gift certificates for friends going through divorce whom you’d like to support! Registration is open at www.hopefuldivorce.com.
What if a hopeful world were more possible with every hopeful divorce?
Ten percent of revenue generated from hopeful divorce goes into a scholarship fund for single mothers in Rwanda in need of vocational training to support themselves and their children. Inspired by Hopeful World partner and single mother Odette Umurerwa, the Hopeful Divorce Turikumwe Scholarship Fund provides the chance young women need to learn a trade and economically gain independence – especially in situations where staying in a difficult marriage would compromise basic safety and sustenance.
Hopeful Divorce is a product of Hopeful World, a global classroom where wisdom, knowledge and stories seed the ground of personal transformation and social change.
* * * * *
If you are a mother going through divorce, or if you know a mother who could use support, we would be so honored to accompany you (or your friend) across this powerful threshold. You can learn more at www.hopefuldivorce.com. Here’s to a hopeful future for all of us.
March 9, 2012
The beauty of being a beginner (or at least acting like one)
As my son climbed out of his bed in the morning, I noticed a strange, misshapen lump where his diaper would normally be.
Theo, let's take a look at what's going on in those pajamas, I proposed dreamily (it was 5:30 a.m). I stretched the elastic of his bottoms and sort of leapt back.
Duct tape! I shouted.
On my son's left hip, connecting the front and back of the diaper, was a fat piece of black tape.
[Name of Friend] didn't know how to do my diaper, explained Theo as I peeled his lumpen, yet in tact, diaper from his hip.
My extremely-responsible-but-inexperienced-with-young-children friend had babysat the night before. She'd helped my son with pull-ups previously and I had forgotten to give her a lesson in application of the overnight diaper. So, as was reported to me later, first she panicked (as did my extremely by-the-book son). And then, she improvised.
As I was teasing this friend about the shock of discovering her duct tape, she pointed out that her lack of skills or knowledge with such things as diapering allowed her to come up with a solution that no mother would have thought of. Because, of course, mothers make a point of knowing how a diaper works. But more to the point that my friend was getting at, we have our preconceived notions about how certain things should go with our children–and in any realm where were are deeply entrenched and quite familiar with the terrain. So, we are less likely to think beyond the solutions we know. Then she suggested that I could probably tie this somehow into the writing life on my blog, since I seem to like to write about everything under the sun and then insist that it has something to do with writing. And she was right.
While I do not happen to be in the market for diaper adhesive alternatives, my friend's improvisation reminded me that things can get pretty interesting when you have more imagination than experience. There is a kind of purity of revelation to the person who is new to a practice. I remember the thrill of handwriting poems and weeping into my notebook on the bus in transit to my administrative job at age 22. I had yet to even admit to another person that I wrote poems. I had no idea what I was doing. And it was the best thing in my life, this strange and unnamed journey into the center of something reached only by words, yet still incomprehensible.
What if we were to approach every piece of writing like we were discovering what it means to write a poem, an essay, a story for the first time? What if we could exit the loop of expectation that a piece of writing is going to be created in a particular kind of process or have a certain shape, tone, impact? How could we approach something as familiar as pajamas and make ourselves (and our readers) leap back in surprise with the actual revelation that awaits us?
And what unexpected concoctions might we come up with from the tool box, the kitchen cabinet, or the back yard hold it all together?
March 5, 2012
Writing in the margins, yearning for the whole page
Love Dogs
–– Rumi
One night a man was crying
Allah! Allah!
His lips grew sweet with praising,
until a cynic said, "So!
I've heard you calling out, but have you ever
gotten any response?"
The man had no answer to that.
He quit praying and fell into a confused sleep.
He dreamed he saw Khidr, the guide of souls,
in a thick, green foliage.
"Why did you stop praising?" "Because
I've never heard anything back."
"This longing you express
is the return message."
The grief you cry out from
draws you toward union.
Your pure sadness
that wants help
is the secret cup.
Listen to the moan of a dog for its master.
That whining is the connection.
There are love dogs
no one knows the names of.
Give your life
to be one of them.
*********************
This is one of my very favorite poems of all time. I love its reminder that our longing may actually be the point–the end state–our place of completion.
As I was driving home from my evening presenting at the Mid-Valley Willamette Writers, contemplating the rich discussion about how we craft our writing lives, these lines bubbled up in particular:
"This longing you express
is the return message."
Very few of us feel we have time to write. Or the systems and attitudes in place to easily enter the writing flow when we'd like. Despite the fact that I always tell people, "It's all your writing life," meaning that everything you "have to do" that does not involve actually writing is integral to what and how you write, I find myself wandering sometimes into longing for more than the scraps of time than I get for my own writing. I ache for the whole, blank page of my writing life, not just the slender margin.
And yet, I know equally well that there have been times in my life where I had, arguably, more than enough space for writing and writing did not happen. There were clearly other limitations (in me) beyond the logistics of time. Sometimes, no matter how much we want something, it is not our time for manifesting. In the course of nearly 30 years of writing practice, I have lived intimately with the ache of desire for writing and the endless destinations (and dead ends) this ache and I have traveled together. For many of us, this secret cup of pure sadness is what the writing life is rising up in attempt to answer–or reveal.
I live with a love dog. My truest companion on earth, Henry, has been traveling with me for more than 12 years, and he is in transition out of this world. There is only my ache filling my cup. It is the completion of my love for him. My tears the only non-answer of an answer there seems to be to this most inevitable of outcomes. I want what I want, but he is on a path that I may influence but do not control.
So it is with the writing life. Our ache to be with ourselves on the page — to travel that deeply into the fundamental truth of our hearts — is for many of us at the very core of who we are. It is the impulse from which we have no choice but to live. Maybe that ache is simply enough. We may or may not hear anything back. Still, we write. When we can. In the best ways that we know how.
There are writers no one knows the name of.
Give your life to be one of them.
March 2, 2012
Bluebird of happiness, pigeon of discontent, cat of comfort
"We search for happiness everywhere, but we are like Tolstoy's fabled beggar who spent his life sitting on a pot of gold, under him the whole time. Your treasure–your perfection–is within you already. But to claim it, you must leave the commotion of the mind and abandon the desires of the ego and enter into the silence of the heart." ― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
Some people search obsessively for happiness. I search obsessively for the cat. Specifically, (since I live with three) the one who was once named Diablo but has more recently and aptly been renamed Bloblio by my son.
Bloblio sleeps not just with me but on me. During The Year of Divorce, his weight was a kind of anchor that kept me in my body, in my bed, tethered somehow to the molting version of me who would become, eventually, exhaustingly, some far more seasoned and streamlined version of me. Bloblio the lifeline.
Bloblio generally is tucked invisibly under some piece of furniture in my bedroom until, the moment I get under the covers, he spontaneously appears on my right side to knead his delight into the comforter between us and then line up spine-to-spine with me. Bloblio smells impossibly fresh. As if he'd just rolled in a bed of new pine leaves. Always.
Every now and then, I get into bed and there is no Bloblio. Within 10 minutes of being asleep, my body registers its lack of tether / anchor and wakes. Sometimes, I spend quite a while awake and willing him to appear on the bed while worrying about all the things the mother of an indoor-outdoor cat worries about. The world and his will: two big variables in this cat's life that are not up to me. Which leaves me with the crumbs — worry — that influence nothing but my insomnia.
I get out of bed to go looking for Bloblio and discover him six feet away from me — on the other side of a piece of furniture blocking my view. The distance between me and my desired outcome: the ability to recognize that what I am seeking is already found.
Without quite realizing it, we are creating moment by moment the symbols that we live by, whether it be the bluebird of happiness, pigeon of discontent, chicken of depression, or the cat of comfort. The more we reference them, the more they stick around.
I am hoping that you have your very own cat of comfort (literal or figurative) to glom onto your sleeping shoulder when that's the thing that will get you through the night. Feed it, pet it, let it know that it is welcome. And when it doesn't come around, you can toss and turn all night, or you can get out of bed and go find it.
February 28, 2012
Poetic license granted
Years ago, I took a workshop with Susan Wooldridge where she handed out small, driver's license-sized cards that said "Poetic License." I thought this was brilliant. Because we all want permission — poetic license — to be ourselves, in our writing and in our lives. And this was a fun way to invite others to claim it.
I thought of this today when I received a note from a writer I've never met who is taking a class on the business of writing. Instead of helping her clarify her path, the class has confused and shut her down. This brought to mind the endless confessions I hear from writers when I teach, speak and blog about how they've tried to create support for themselves in ways that backfired. Writers everywhere are feeling misunderstood and alienated in their writing groups, completely unable to write the novel they believe they should be writing (and therefore writing nothing), or taking in feedback from teachers or other "experts" that doesn't resonate and gets them tangled up in a bad feeling with no resolution. I'll bet you could find something off the top of your head to add to this list.
The irony is that often it can be the very pursuit of support that, in the end, interferes with our writing.
Occasionally, I swoop in to extricate one of my cats from what started as a wonderful stretch and ended in a panicked hanging-from-the-couch-by-a-claw. As I see it, poetic license is the superhero ability to do this for ourselves: see where we are stuck and take swift action to release.
What would this look like? A few possibilities: if you're taking a class that's shutting you down, try another class. If your writing group is not providing a context of information and inspiration, it might not be the one for you. If you're making yourself get up at 5 a.m. to write for two hours because that's what you've read that disciplined writers do, and as a result, you're a miserable wreck for the rest of the day, consider starting at 9 p.m. instead. And, it's fine to expect to write a novel someday, as long as this expectation does not interfere with a more immediate writing practice.
A dear friend writes beautiful stories and poems. She works hard at her writing, and at finding the right context in which to keep herself moving forward. Recently, she started a blog as a space to celebrate two areas of expertise that also happen to be two services she offers. (She did this after studying herself over a period of time to ensure that she was overflowing with ideas and a passion to bring them forth in this way. She didn't want to set herself up for an expectation she wasn't likely to fulfill.) Practically overnight, she is thrilled with her writing process–and the spirit and quality of her writing reflects this. This writer has found a point of entry — in both form and content — that make her feel not just invested but exhilarated to show up at the page.
If you are finding your writing path littered in roadblocks, I invite you to grant yourself poetic license to simply try something else. Chances are good that you've made a well-meaning commitment that may have outlived its usefulness–or maybe was never useful in the first place.
Poetic license: the freedom to continue seeking our writing sweet spot, and the trust that we'll know when we've arrived.
P.S. Do you live in or near Eugene, OR? I'd love to see you this Thursday!
February 24, 2012
The traffic cone and the under-construction writing life
A few weeks ago, my son and I were headed out for preschool and encountered on our front stoop a beat up orange traffic cone. It was a strange thing to find. Even stranger to imagine that someone had walked all the way up to my front door to place it there — for reasons I would never know.
I moved the cone to the grass strip between the sidewalk and street, hoping beyond reason that it would be collected by whoever left it there. No such luck. After a few days of the cone's resolute presence in front of our house, I moved it to the driveway where it still stands today.
Every time I see the cone, the metaphor I have made of it plunks inside my ribs. That cone I don't quite feel responsible for and can't seem to properly dispose of brings to mind all of the gray area in my life: the self-care I intend to do but don't do, the limiting stories I tell myself, the administrative tasks such as returning the too-small boots and too-small curtains that feel just too hard to deal with. In the few, short weeks of our strange acquaintance, that cone has come to stand in brightly for all of my immobilized places.
The traffic cone is an interesting symbol, because it is used to call attention to a problem while also offering some encouragement that the problem will be addressed if you just stay out of the way long enough to let it. I find myself experiencing this solemn and mute visitation with a feeling that my under-construction life has been duly noted. And through that imagined witnessing, somehow, a sense of repair has come over me.
Something as unremarkable and unexpected as a traffic cone has awakened me to new opportunities to peel back a heavy layer whose weight has only now become evident. I call the handyman and together we carry the treadmill back into the house from the garage. I buy my first new pair of running shoes in at least six years — three years after my foot increased a half-size from pregnancy. I discover that my son's 5:30 a.m. waking time allows me to cook a wonderful meal in the morning that we can sit down to enjoy immediately when we get home at dinner time. I use my middle-of-the night waking times to do the writing I wish I had all day to do. I buy the new computer whose necessity parallels the running shoes. I get the blood test that was recommended in July and then the iron supplements that are clearly needed as a result.
Spontaneously, my under-construction writing life is getting simpler, clearer, more streamlined. The activities that need to be in place for me to feel rested, friendly, inspired, invigorated, are finding their fit in my dense days that seemed impenetrable until now.
The only thing I haven't done that needs doing is get rid of the traffic cone. The public proclamation of a writing life under construction feels apt to me — even if no one gets the reference but me. I am grateful for the reminder that a single, well-chosen symbol can bless us, galvanize us to release our burdens, invite us into the ease that is always there waiting for us, if we learn to allow it.
February 20, 2012
What preschoolers and poets know–and the rest of us often forget
My son, on the cusp of age three and a half, is going through a growth spurt. What this means for us is two-hour long breakfasts (made possible by his 5 a.m. waking time) where I parade out every variety of food imaginable and he eats every last drop. This morning, as he was making his way through a mosaic of plates holding eggs, nuts, fruit, cheese, yogurt and cereal, we stumbled upon a new ritual: catalogue surfing. And not the type you'd expect.
I had a bed and bath catalogue on the counter that was intended for the recycling and, without thinking, opened it. My son was captivated. In all of his years, he'd never seen such a thing.
Read it to me? he suggests.
It's mostly a list of colors, I explain.
I want to hear the colors! is his emphatic response.
My son is articulate. The spirit driving his articulation seems to be the pleasure of naming his physical and emotional experiences. He observes, for example, how his lozenge resembles a sea anemone, and then describes what happens when the lozenge "dissipates." His most vivid language surfaces when he is describing scents, flavors, moods, and visuals. Of course he would want to experience the sensory promises of a catalogue–suddenly it seems silly that this has never occurred to me before.
We begin: amethyst, ivory, lemon chiffon, linen, mint, sky, taupe, toast, pool, eggshell, fennel, marzipan, rose water, sandalwood, sea glass. The list goes on and on and on. I have never spoken a catologue's worth of color. My son and I are swimming in a sea of sensory suggestion.
As I'm moving towards the back half of the catalogue and can't take in the meaning of the words I am speaking any longer, a single piece of advice surfaces in my consciousness. When I was in graduate school, I attended a poetry reading featuring my professor, the poet Galway Kinnell. His voice is like manna to me. I experience it as the exact vibration at which poetry is meant to enter the body. But I digress.
At the end of his reading, Galway took questions. A young man asked him, "If you could give one piece of advice to poets, what would it be?"
Galway's response: "Learn the names of things."
Yes! Yes! This is the impulse behind all writing, I think: the desire to know–to discover, to FEEL–through the application of language. When we learn the vocabulary of any topic: insects, dinosaurs, solar systems, bath towels, for example, we transcend time, space, form, and get to experience through the specificity of language that particular realm. The names of things are the keys that unlock such raptures. Language the secret knock standing between us and limitless, virtual (and actual) experience.
It's such a small but potent act to hold the name of a thing inside you–then share it. My son reminded me of the simplicity of the equation. When there is a speaker (or writer) and listener (or reader), the circuit is complete, and the possibilities of how words can alchemize us are endless.
February 17, 2012
What if marketing were just love made contagious?
Today I found myself folding my son's monthly preschool payment into a poem I wrote recently–about my son and stars and divorce and grace–before placing both in the envelope for the preschool director. In this simple and impulsive act, Sage the poet and Sage the mother and Sage the professional marketer all experienced a kind of harmonic convergence. There was a wholeness to sharing the right offering–from my deepest well of soul–with a person likely to receive it with welcome.
And it struck me: marketing is as simple as this.
We all get the delighted impulse to share. And when we offer something that has meaning or value to us with someone whose interests are concentric to ours in some way, this invites them in to what we love. Announcing a reading or teaching gig, sharing publication news, offering links to or copies of our poems and prose can all be communicated in this spirit–from that powerful, tender and wide-open place in us that called forth the work.
So many of us feel awkward, ashamed, false, inept when it comes time to bring the privacy of our work into a brighter public light. We imagine that others who do this are more accomplished, more confident, more [your projection here] than we believe ourselves to be.
What if we were to let go completely of the idea that we need a certain amount of bluster or bravado to "promote ourselves" and instead consider how we might let what we love most about our intimate writing lives overflow a bit onto the people around us?
I enjoyed enclosing a check in poetry so much that I am now considering sending my utility bill payments in this way, as well. Not because I want Portland General Electric to buy my book or to read my blog. But because it feels good to give thanks with what I have to give: poems. Thank you, PGE, for making it possible for me to use this computer. In exchange, here is a poem that makes it possible for me to inhabit my humanity more completely.
Chances are good that you don't feel apprehensive about sharing a spoonful of a delicious dessert with a friend. What if marketing were the exact same impulse, expressed in your writing life? What do you have to give today just because it feels good to do so? I propose that your passion, unburdened by judgement and fear, will be contagious.
February 6, 2012
The art of repair through language
You know that old saying, If it ain't broke, don't fix it? 2011 was a year for me where pretty much everything broke. And it's yielded some incredible opportunities for fixing in 2012! Sometimes, as the adage advises, things just need to completely fall apart before they get our attention. And when they're completely, utterly broken, the fixing process can become pretty interesting–liberating, even. Because there's not just one part to fit back into place. There's a whole, new composition to make of the pieces.
My dear friend and brilliant thinker Ed Batista just tweeted an excerpt from a post I wrote on September 11, 2006–that he re-blogged a few days later. I was fascinated with the synchronicity–to see how this snippet from my past proposes the kind of opportunity I was just about to suggest to you now:
At the rehab vet's office tonight, I met a Corgie on wheels. His hind feet were wrapped in bandages and covered with neon socks; they dragged behind him as the little metal cart supported his rear end. By compensating for his back legs with wheels, the cart allowed him to leverage his front legs for complete mobility. His "wheelchair" had a little American flag poking out of it. This crippled, happy, well-loved dog was the metaphor I needed today to reconcile my 9/11 unease. There is cruelty in this world, and there is joy; we can feel unlucky that our legs don't work or lucky that we are fortunate enough to have wheels.
This dog's parents were there in the waiting room together (you almost never see both parents at the vet's office) and they were in such a darn jolly mood about everything – including the hour + backlog of waiting, that I was shaken out of my own small thinking about what had seemed earlier today like insurmountable struggle. I was reminded that people can simply be happy together; that this is the brick and mortar upon which our world is built and built again. Kindness is our most precious natural resource. It can never be taken from us, no matter what falls from the sky.
Isn't it remarkable that simply encountering a dog on wheels can change a person's entire outlook in a moment? And that we can invite others to shift their consciousness even briefly, simply by sharing an image through the weightless word and story?
I have long considered writing to be the art of repair through language. In my own literary cosmology, it seems to me that we are restoring ourselves and our world by arranging the fragments of experience, memory, and emotion into a collage of meaning through which we transcend the parts and move into unexpected wholeness. I want you to have access to this possibility–and to cultivate it in whatever directions you most want it to grow. I want you to remember that an image, and how you hold it, can change everything.
That's why I've been working hard behind the scenes for many months to now to introduce a new, high-performance online platform whose beauty and intimacy will allow me to offer you some really interesting experiences, classes and tools. My goal is to bring writers all over the world together to make new discoveries and define new futures in writing–together. My first offering is getting close to fully baked. Stay tuned for news about how we might learn together online. And, if you'd like to connect in person, I'd love to see you at one of my upcoming teaching and presenting events this spring!
In the meanwhile, if you find yourself holding something broken–a story, a heart, a history, a trust–see if there might be even a wisp of gratitude you might write yourself toward–if it's your time for that. Or maybe words might smash some possibility wide open. The choice is always yours.
