Sage Cohen's Blog, page 9
September 30, 2012
Let’s bump up our productivity together at Wordstock on October 14!
Hello and happy autumn! Here in Portland, it’s a crisp, bright afternoon, and I’m feeling quite invigorated to be at my writing desk. Since starting my job as senior writer at a marketing agency six months ago, it hasn’t been easy to prioritize the writing that is closest to my heart. Which is why I’m especially excited to be spending time communing with writers facing similar dilemmas at Wordstock this year.
Want to bump up your writing productivity in 2013? Want to gain new insights about your writing process and set intentions that you feel confident you’ll fulfill? I’d love to help you get started (and keep going).
Top 10 Success Strategies for Writing More and Selling More
Join me to explore the top 10 ways to exponentially increase the results and rewards of your writing life—for any genre or level of experience. Together, we will begin to blueprint your insights and intentions for 2013. You’ll leave with a large packet of planning and dreaming tools.
Sunday, October 14, 4:30 to 5:45 p.m.
Wordstock Literary Festival
Oregon Convention Center, Portland
Fee: $35
Register at: http://wordstockfestival.eventbrite.com/
P.S. A while back, I invited you to share your intentions and celebrations. I promised feedback, which is now live in the comments section. I appreciate your patience!
August 11, 2012
Pre-Order “Turning Dead Ends into Doorways” and get 8 gifts
“It seems to me that a spirituality that doesn’t help me when my kids are fighting is a hobby, not a way of life,” says my dear friend and esteemed colleague Staci Boden, author of the new book Turning Dead Ends into Doorways: How to Grow Through Whatever Life Throws Your Way.
To Staci, I say “Amen, sister!” And to you I say: Don’t miss your chance to pre-order Staci’s new book that supports people in moving beyond control to navigate daily life unknowns in relationship with eight universal teachers: fear, awareness, choice, body, intuition, energy, intention and surrender. When you pre-order, you can receive eight downloadable gifts—one of which is from me.
What do I love and admire about Staci and her book? Here are a few words from my endorsement:
“Staci Boden is the ideal guide for navigating the unknown. She is the wise friend, the generous teacher, the compassionate soul-sister you’ve always waished for. In this book, Staci introduces a practice and a path that will help you move from control to trust, no matter what challenges you are facing. If you are seeking a practical spirituality that makes deep wisdom accessible (and applicable) in everyday life, this is the book for you. If you would like to awaken your capacity to experience grace and gratitude—in any circumstance—this is the book for you. Staci has transformed my appreciation for life as it is—while awakening the possibilities for life as it could be.”
Staci’s Practical Spirituality has helped me navigate some of the most powerful transitions of my life—from preparing to give birth to letting go of my marriage. I’m honored to welcome you into our conversation below.
Q&A with Staci Boden, author of Turning Dead Ends into Doorways: How to Grow Through Whatever Life Throws Your Way, a new book from Conari Press, September 2012
How do you define healing? How can letting go of control be a way to heal?
So often our Western culture emphasizes success as achieving a positive outcome. I’m all for positive outcomes but I’ve found that when it comes to healing, if we can’t control our reality we often feel like we’re doing something wrong. If we can let go of holding onto to a specific outcome with a death grip, we can access healing in many ways. Healing becomes a journey as well as a destination. For example, we may or may not get a certain job but by cultivating awareness as we go through the process, we can develop patience, perseverance, or even a better sense of humor. When the stakes are high around health, finances, fertility or relationships, daily life becomes a spiritual training ground to discover meaning and transform.
What does it mean to grow a conscious relationship with the unknown in daily life?
The truth is, we can never predict what’s around the next corner. We may not know small things, like what’s for dinner, or big things, like if we will meet a soul mate or remain healthy. The unknown is a tangible yet mysterious force that permeates daily life. The challenge is that relying on control to deal with the unknown doesn’t always work, and often, control ends up controlling us. If instead, we start developing a more conscious relationship within ourselves and with whatever part of everyday living is calling for our attention—health, finances, relationships, fertility—we can learn how to navigate the unknown in daily life in a more balanced and empowered way.
Who is Turning Dead Ends Into Doorways written for?
My book meets people where they are to help them navigate change and transform their lives. You may be feeling stuck or overwhelmed. Perhaps you realize it’s time to change but don’t know how. Or perhaps you’re hungry to develop awareness and purely positive thinking doesn’t ring true. You may also be in the middle of a severe life crisis, feeling raw and vulnerable inside some unimaginable unknown where the only way out is through. Turning Dead Ends into Doorways is a guide for learning how to feel your way through the dark from wherever you are. In the process, you develop your own inroads and pathways of healing so you can carry yourself through anything.
Your book introduces eight teachers for navigating the unknown in daily life–fear, awareness, choice, body, intuition, energy, intention and surrender. Why eight and why call them “teachers”?
The eight teachers emerged through fifteen years of being a healing practitioner. Learning how to navigate the unknown can seem rather amorphous and I began to notice individuals and groups grappling with core issues around fear, awareness, body etc. As I sat with how a reader might learn to navigate the unknown in a book, core issues coalesced into universal teachers. Anything can be a teacher in our lives, and certainly, these eight aren’t meant to be definitive. They are relationships that I felt called to write about first.
What inspired you to write Turning Dead End Into Doorways?
Growing up with a legally blind mother, chronically ill family members and friends who experienced sexual abuse made me aware of healing, and how sometimes we unconsciously convey blaming messages. As I developed my healing practice, it became important to create a safe place where everyone could access healing, whether they achieved a specific outcome or not. The intention of Turning Dead Ends into Doorways is to be a resource for people to develop their own unique healing ways, so they can grow self-reliance through any circumstance. It’s also an opportunity to shine a light on inspiring people and mentors who embody a different relationship with life.
What sets Turning Dead Ends Into Doorways apart from other self-help books?
Rather than issuing false promises for happy outcomes, Turning Dead Ends into Doorways invites readers to activate another kind of self-help. Not the kind of self-help that offers 35 days to discover a perfect you who will attract the best lover who already owns your dream house (outright). Instead, after choosing an intention to study throughout the book, you connect with each chapter teacher to engage the unknown of who you are. As you interact with client stories, exercises and personal reflection, most likely life will begin to surprise you with lessons strangely designed to facilitate just what you need to learn. Change can start to happen. Healing expands to include accepting loss alongside a positive outcome sprinkled with a soul restoring aha moment of meaning. These experiences then unite to create a new foundation of capacity for wholeness that can emanate from you out into the world.
If you had to choose one thing for people to learn from your book, what would that be?
My vote would be for people to learn how to get behind, hold, follow and navigate energy through developing conscious relationship in their life (okay four things, but one process). This is easier said than done because being in control by getting ahead is our cultural ideal. Learning to pull your attention back in order to follow something–a relationship, a project or even a wish–cannot be done through the mind alone. Navigating energy is an experiential practice. That’s why I encourage readers to focus on an intention throughout the book, so they can practice learning how to navigate energy. Regardless of what I hope people learn, my commitment is to get behind each readers’ intention so they facilitate their own healing, whatever that looks like for them.
You refer to your healing work as Practical Spirituality, what does Practical Spirituality mean to you?
My training arises from earth-based and women’s spirituality traditions but as I sat across from clients unfamiliar with that world, we needed to find another way to communicate. Practical Spirituality is an approach to life that bridges earth-based, women’s spiritual and Western ways to help people navigate daily unknowns and discover meaning. Practical Spirituality embraces the mystical with pragmatic arms. If we can’t embody peace while negotiating traffic, then we’re truly stuck. Beyond a specific form, Practical Spirituality helps people develop their own healing ways that they can access through daily living.
You wrote Turning Dead Ends Into Doorways in real time asking the eight teachers to inform the book through daily life happenings. Why? How was that?
For me, conscious living means inviting a conversation with the unknown in the context of daily life. Because I pay close attention to synchronicity–meaningful events–to help me navigate everyday living, I would naturally notice synchronicity while writing a book as well. Also, since I ask readers to let go of control and engage the unknown, it seemed only fair to join them through writing the book. Within that, I was unprepared for what arrived with each chapter teacher in beautiful and shattering ways. An earthquake punctuated a point, birth made a surprise re-entrance into my life and in the last month of writing, my teenage daughter was diagnosed with a rare form of adolescent cancer. I don’t know if noticing synchronicity while writing the book helped my daughter’s cancer come to light, but if so, I’m very grateful. Thankfully, my daughter has been in remission for over a year now.
How has writing the book helped you grow in daily life?
I had no idea that in writing the book partially as a love letter to those surrounded by challenging unknowns, I would end up there myself. I also didn’t realize that the level of relationship I grew with fear, awareness, choice, body, intuition, energy, intention and surrender while writing would become a lifeline of support to navigate my daughter’s healing, but I am eternally grateful. While it’s always been my intention to be of service, the converging points of the book and my daughter’s health has lit a fire in my belly about supporting people in crisis. While I understand from experience that self-care is difficult during trying times, if one paragraph, one page, one teacher from the book can help someone in dire need feel less alone, I will be content.
How can people connect with you directly?
I’m available for individual sessions, groups and book-related classes in person and via phone/Skype/online. For more information visit me at Dancing-Tree Consulting. Healing is my passion and purpose, so please feel free to email me at staci at dancing-tree dot com with any questions or comments. Thank you for your time!
About Staci Boden
Staci Boden is a San Francisco-based writer, healing practitioner, and energy worker. As a feisty teenager, Staci didn’t buy the you-can-create-your-own reality interpretation of how her legally blind mother should heal her eyes. Instead, she has developed a Practical Spirituality® approach to cultivating balance within the unpredictability of life. Her book, Turning Dead Ends into Doorways: How to Grow Through Whatever Life Throws Your Way (Conari Press, 2012), introduces eight teachers for moving beyond control to navigate daily life unknowns: fear, awareness, choice, body, intuition, energy, intention and surrender. Through her company, Dancing-Tree Consulting, Staci sees private clients as well as leads personal and spiritual development workshops in energy work, sacred dance, breathwork, and guided visualization. To learn more, visit www.dancing-tree.com.
DON’T FORGET TO PRE-ORDER Turning Dead Ends into Doorways: How to Grow Through Whatever Life Throws Your Way and receive eight downloadable gifts—one of which is from me.
June 24, 2012
An invitation to share your questions and celebrations
Greetings! It’s a gray and wet Sunday morning here in Portland—the kind of day that invites melancholy to rise to the surface of every puddle—and I’m thinking about you writers all over the globe. What are you struggling with and celebrating at this very moment?
I get a lot of email (and lately tweets) from writers with questions about writing craft and career. I thought it might be helpful to start addressing these in a more public forum—so everyone benefits from the community’s inquiries about the universal issues we all face as we wonder and write.
If you have a question for me about the writing life, I’d be honored to attempt to answer it here. Just write your question in the comments section for this post, and then look for a blog post dedicated to responding to questions in the coming weeks.
I’d also love to hear any and all writing life celebrations, and I invite you to share those in the comments section as well. Did you meet a writing goal you set? Were you finally courageous enough to submit that batch of poems or read in front of an audience? Were you published or recognized for your work? Did you finally organize your filing system? Did you let go of that punishing perfectionism that was keeping you stuck?
There is nothing that invigorates me more than hearing good news—and contemplating possibilities—about the writing life! I look forward to hearing from you.
June 15, 2012
The Stage
20 years.
Time distilling destination
to destiny, his face
a mirror. You sit in the dark
room pocked with strangers
as the songs travel your blood
and breath. The flame blows out
when the man walks by and you
are laughing too loud, writing
too small on cards that can not contain
what is moving through. Something old
something new. Something broken
something true. Filling pages the way
you fill your days waiting
for the music to begin.
He stands on stage, the god
they made, and you are drunk
on history. The words arrive in answer
to the ache and sink like stones
as the stem of your glass glitters
with piano and guitar. Every song
he’s ever written was for you
and every song you ever sang
was in answer. The cards stick
to the table. You hold his hair
in your fist in your mind, to keep
the idea of him fixed, the way you look
for him in the backs of the heads of men
turning away. Strange as this including room,
the high note of you tangles in his thrum of chord.
This skeleton of metaphor on which you string
your dim lanterns of contradiction.
Harmony the arc of light too beautiful to bridge.
June 4, 2012
Change your context to wake up new (or old) appetites
My dog Henry whose life has been defined by his lust for food no longer has an appetite. Failing kidneys and other health complications have made food something he still comes hobbling for but then is unable to eat. This has led to a great deal of innovation on my part to make food concoctions that are irresistible, with varying degrees of success.
I noticed one day that despite the fact that Henry’s relationship with his food bowl had been severely compromised, he still sat at attention beside the table where my son and I eat, dragging himself eagerly around to gobble up any food scraps that fell. This led to an experiment.
I filled Henry’s bowl with turkey and rice. And I filled another bowl with the exact same food and sat with it at my place a the table. Henry left the turkey in his bowl untouched. Yet, when I pretended to drop spoonful after spoonful of it from my seat, he went to a great deal of effort to consume every morsel.
This has been going on for weeks now. At each meal, my son and I each sit with food alongside our own and drop it to Henry as we eat. The reversal of the rules is a source of delight for my son. And Henry thinks he’s getting away with something quite spectacular that has always been forbidden: being fed from the table.
As we were going through this ritual at breakfast a few days ago, I asked myself: How might I use this principle in my own life to wake up appetites that have long been dormant or shift patterns that seem immutable? What context would bring me running to my own table? How can I shift the context ever so slightly such that my computer is magnetic and I sit down eagerly to write, even when I am too tired, I have written for nine hours already, my son is awake until my own bedtime, I have a house to maintain, or [whatever the greatest challenge/resistance might be today]?
I experiment: On the day I intended to write the lecture and prepare the workshop I would soon be presenting, I cook all morning and garden all afternoon instead. The lecture and workshop are with me, but they are not being approached directly. An idea sprays dirt every now and then as a giant root releases from the earth. A bubble of insight rises up from its secondary simmer alongside the chicken casserole. Holding my intention and doing other work is a gentler way of engaging with my material. I ruminate instead of produce. I allow instead of force. I skip the food bowl altogether and eat with my hands from the garden, from the stove.
The flow of idea and story starts humming inside of me, until eventually I recognize the song. I scrawl down what I can, but don’t worry to much about what I capture and what I miss. I have tuned into something that I know how to return to. I have left the food bowl to enter the feast.
May 21, 2012
Own your wobble
A few weeks ago, I presented at the Field’s End Conference on Bainbridge Island, Washington. It was one of my very favorite conferences, with a level of intimacy and insight that invigorated me and seemed truly enlightening to participants.
At this stage in my writing life, I am keenly aware of how much it uplifts me to talk with writers about how very possible their writing lives can be. My desire to accompany people through their discouraged and defeated places has overtaken what was once a debilitating fear of public speaking.
And yet, those dark and dusty corners of self-doubt managed to cast their shadow through the focused light of my good intentions.
Swept up in the energy of a very full and very engaged room of people, I elaborated on my key points with more examples and more enthusiasm than usual. As a result, I didn’t make it all the way through my well-timed and well-planned presentation. The end was rushed, with at least three of 10 key points simply glossed over. Despite the fact that a throng of people communicated individually how much they got out of the presentation, I chose to torture myself with the one ambiguous comment about how much material I had attempted to cram into an hour.
I was imperfect. I had possibly disappointed someone as a result. I could not accept this.
True, it was in the spirit of connection and enthusiasm that I got long-winded. True, I had spent the entire day before driving and crying on the heels of two weeks (including the weekend) of nonstop work. True, I was as exhausted and depleted as I have ever been, having recently started a full-time job in tandem with daily content deadlines for Hopeful Divorce, the intense demands of single motherhood and the emotional bloodletting of my beloved dog slowly fading away.
Still, I could not give myself a break.
Days into my agony of non-generosity toward myself, my expectation of perfection broke me open to the truth of my vulnerability. The truth was, I was doing way too much–more than I could handle. I was not in the habit of experiencing any kind of limit to my capacity. All of my energy was going out; there was nothing coming in to replenish the well. And as a result, I had worked myself into a hole of despair that I had no idea how to get out of.
All of this from spending three days doing what I love most — but in a way that was entirely out of balance with the other variables of my life.
On the night of my return, my son got really sick, and then I did. We did nothing much for a week at least.
I came out the other side greatly humbled about how punishing some of my greatest passions have turned out to be in a context where my expectations are out of alignment with my resources. I understood that my writing life is going to happen, for now, at the office. That nine hours of writing per day is all I have room for, no matter if I’m not doing “my own” writing.
Meltdowns offer valuable insight; mine yielded a good, close-up look at how my perfectionism is doing me deep harm that limits my capacity to be of service–in my personal and professional life. I saw how much I want to be liked, and what a liability this can be. I saw how deep this wobble runs in me: a parallel track to all that I hold most sacred.
The beauty of the writing life is that it’s always the context, even when it’s not the content of our work. I understand that everything life serves up (even if this prevents us from writing) seasons us as writers and as people. I thanked myself for working so hard to keep what mattered most to me alive. And then I gave myself permission to let it all go — for now.
Recognizing where we wobble and owning that wobble with as much compassion as we can muster will help us both accept and release patterns that are holding us back from the ease and grace that is our birthright.
Where are you wobbling right now? What small step can you take or commitment can you make to help steady yourself? I know you have the creativity and commitment to find new ways to love and support yourself through it.
May 16, 2012
See yourself through someone else’s eyes
Three years after becoming an author, my first official book review–of The Productive Writer, by Marj Hahne–has just been published in the Spring 2012 issue of Rain Taxi Review of Books. The review begins:
Thank the writing gods that Sage Cohen “compensated for insecurity by being overprepared.” Her second guide for writers, The Productive Writer: Tips & Tools to Help You Write More, Stress Less & Create Success, is generous, comprehensive, pragmatic, and optimistic—and departs from its kin by saying things we haven’t already read or heard a gazillion times.
The review goes on to reflect back to me the spirit and intention and love and passion that drove me to write this book in the first place. There is no gift like seeing oneself and one’s writing through the eyes of an appreciative reader.
I don’t know about you, but I tend to be so much harder on myself than anyone else seems to be. It helps me tremendously to exit the loop of my own “mean editor” and invite someone else’s feedback into the conversation I’m having with myself. Many years before I had books or poems circulating in the world, my friend Sebastian was my one and only reader. I’d write a poem, read it to her, and see on her face the mysterious alchemy of emotion and experience traveling from one heart to another, conducted by language. That simple circuit of my writing and her reading was enough to ease my loneliness and help me believe that my writing mattered. To this day, there is nothing more satisfying than knowing I’ve written something that Sebastian appreciates.
Do you have someone specific in mind as your reader when you write? Do you regularly share your work with this person and invite them to tell you what they admire and enjoy about each piece they read? There’s plenty of time for critique, and plenty of people who’d be happy to tell you what needs fixing in your writing. That’s not what I’m talking about. My hope for you is that you have (or will soon find) one person who will simply and reliably revel in your words.
Writing, reveling, writing, reveling. How sweet the writing life can be when we give ourselves what we really need.
April 26, 2012
Let’s meet in person!
I am so grateful for the connections I am able to create and sustain virtually — with writers and readers all over the world. And, it’s a very special treat to experience the alchemy that happens when we get to be together in the same place to write and plan and dream and stir the possibility pot.
I’m getting very excited about presenting at Field’s End this Saturday where I’ll be meeting some of you for the first time in person. And, I’d also like to invite you to consider joining me in my favorite place on earth — Cannon Beach, OR — June 15-17 at Summer in Words 2012: Refinement, Resonance & Renewal. Organized by Jessica Morrell and featuring keynote speaker Chelsea Cain, this event offers a powerful weekend of workshops, lectures, panels and individual consults to inspire and inform writers at all levels. I’ll be speaking about “The Productive Writer Archetype” on Friday night and offering a Saturday workshop on “Becoming Fierce in Your Writing Life.”
June 15-17, 2012
Summer in Words 2012: Refinement, Resonance & Renewal
Hallmark Inn & Resort
Cannon Beach, Oregon
Cost for all three days is $265.00; single day pricing is also available
If you’re staying at the Hallmark Inn & Resort, register by May 14th to receive the group rate at 1-888-448-4449.
Both beginning and established writers are invited to participate. SIW will also feature a raffle with proceeds going to Write Around Portland, an organization that helps people transform their lives through writing and the Hoffman Center for Arts in Manzanita.
Cannon Beach, Oregon is vibrant community on Oregon’s coast known for its love of the arts and books. The Hallmark Inn & Resort is located in midtown and overlooks Haystack Rock. Cloud & Leaf Bookstore will be selling books at the event.
The fabulous line-up of instructors and presenters includes:
The registration fee of $265 covers tuition for the three-day conference, Friday night’s reception, Saturday lunch and keynote, and light breakfasts each morning. Friday night’s Writer’s Reception and the Saturday lunch and keynote are $25.
For information contact jessicamorrell@spiritone.com or mary.drw@gmail.com. Updates at http://summerinwords.wordpress.com
April 12, 2012
Love is where you look for it
It is time for a new way of looking, a new way of seeing. So you take a full-time job after running your own business for 15 years, purchase a used camera that curves right into the palm of your hand, and become a woman on a bus traveling the rain-streaked poetry of Belmont Street into the rumbling belly of downtown.
You are a woman layered: pink coat, criss-crossed in shoulder bags, standing at a strange angle over the perfection of your coffee until you wander out into the dim morning to become the woman squatting on the sidewalk to shoot directly up at the flat soles of shoes dangling so high above their missing feet. Searching the sky of Alder Street, you see the strange angles of context and place.
Sometimes, looking is the path to finding. Sometimes, love was there all along, in the clouds, in the cup, in the mirror. But you had forgotten how to recognize it.
Sometimes, a borrowed lens reteaches you the loveliness of your own soul, such that everything you see is a part of the song: the arched light fixtures, splashing fountains, buildings climbing ambitiously up in their stuccoed flourishes and facades.
You realize you have fallen in love with your ex-husband all over again, and his girlfriend, too, because when the old story wore out, you were left with something deeper and quieter — like the imprint a pencil makes on a pad through the layer of paper that is now gone. The press of it has simplified and expanded you.
There is nothing left but love and sky, framed in the squares of your making. And you understand that poems and stories are like this: love and sky compressed into something that can, for a moment, hold you.
(Borrowed from Hopeful Divorce.)
March 26, 2012
The most important thing you can do: Take a stand
It has taken me 20+ years of writing seriously to understand what is, for this writer, far more essential than having a platform, knowing my audience, or targeting particular publications. At the root of all this strategic stuff–which is of great importance, but a little later–is knowing where I stand as a writer and as a person.
What does this mean, and how does a writer do it? I'll explain.
Over the years, my writing was a kite on the winds of influence, opinion and inner disorientation. First, I wrote to survive. Later, I wrote to give service and make connections — made possible through blogging and publishing. Though I'd defined all of the strategic stuff mentioned above (and I love the strategic stuff), there was still a somewhat shapeless self roaming around within my many PowerPoints of carefully articulated goals. This writer self, I can see now, was still seeking the right landing pad that was not reachable through goals and platforms, and she hadn't quite found it.
It was only through my divorce journey and as I started writing content for Hopeful Divorce that I came to my latest layer of understanding about what it means to find one's authority as a person and as a writer. I made a choice about how I intended to move through my divorce. My guiding principles were: emotional honesty, self-responsibility and optimism. I made a decision that the writing I did would be processed through these filters, as well, with emotional truths winning out over optimism when the two were profoundly in conflict. In so doing, I understood for the first time that this was more than a short-term survival strategy or a writing maneuver: these were the guiding principles of my life.
Bingo. With this realization, my focus became exact as a penpoint. Now, I was writing to first define and then learn how to occupy an identity and a context that had significance for me. Almost as if I were one of those cartoon people standing in a blank space and then drawing in the house and garden around me. Through this lens, everything that I'd done and written in my life had new meaning and relevance. Whatever my platform might be or the publications that lined its imaginary shelves, I know I can count on myself to show up on the page in a way that is respectful of my own pain and others, focused on the opportunities and gifts that such agonies bring, and with love for the ever-floundering, ever-flawed, ever-extraordinary human condition.
It's almost as if I've stumbled upon the secret fountain of my soul that's been the water source of my life all this time but was, unnamed, unreachable. Today, I name this soul fountain: Grace. I take a stand for grace. I live and write to occupy the space where all that happens is welcome, all who enter are welcome, and all that is available to me is not only within reach but deeply appreciated.
What do you take a stand for in your life and in your writing, and how does it change everything to say so?
