“Practice comes from our body - we receive it.”
And...it's snowing in Minnesota! The Buddha is holding it down in our backyard (captured by Zach) and I'm happily inside as much as possible, basking in cozy mornings with Circe, good books, and hot beverages. #queenofthenorth
Receiving Rest
This month's guiding word for me and my community of writers is RECEIVE. I have been working on receiving this season, finding beauty in the icicles outside my window, the flurries that whip around the yard, the luscious quiet of nighttime snowfall. In short: receiving rest. Receiving what is being offered - ease - instead of demanding a book to show for all my time inside.
I want to talk about what it means to receive rest, and to receive a place, a moment, a season of your life. As Natalie Goldberg says above, "Practice comes from our body - we receive it."
What does it mean to receive our writing practice in our bodies?
Sometimes it takes a long time for the seeds of a story to bloom. Sometimes, it just needs good ground to burrow in, and trust from the earth of your body that, when the time is right, the words will flower onto the page.
Trusting that the words will come is hard. Preparing the way is even harder. What does it look like to be actively fallow? To celebrate seasons of rest, periods of preparation?
For this month, I've created an audio gift for you that is a combo meditation / writing exercise on resting places so that you can explore these questions on your own, and find rest wherever you are.
*** There's also a yummy writing / meditation practice in this month's Well lecture notes. Click below to access all of this on the Perks Portal. ***
What are your resting places?
This work with resting places was something we did during the mindfulness for writers retreat that I led earlier this month and I really loved it.
Here are just a few of my resting places over the years:
the moon
windchimes on my back and front porches
lighthouses
my husband's eyes
my morning cup of coffee
the Sahara desert
my grandmother's lap
Minnesota
Bowie’s Starman
my childhood bunk bed
The Boston Public Library
the lake by my old place in North Carolina
Little Women
Anne of Green Gables
my best friend's smile
my sister's laugh
my kitty's soft body
a dark theater just before the curtain rises
a blank piece of paper
Mary Oliver
Sunsets
Sunrises
My breath
I've been thinking a lot these days about how my writing can become more of a resting place for me. It's so often fraught - for all of us - with the weight of expectation, the inner critic, always feeling like we've fallen short, or behind.
We crave and grasp and want, so very badly, to flow, to write the book, to finish the book, to get the deal. But after that mountain? More mountains. How do we rest during the climb, on the summit, on the way down, and in the valleys between?
Next month, I'll be sharing some of the haiku we dove into in this month's ALCHEMY mindfulness retreat - it was such a joy to spend all day sitting and breathing and writing with our wonderful group of sisters and to share our pieces of writing that sprung from paying attention in the present moment.
Haiku has given me a gateway into my writing being totally fused with my meditation practice. It doesn't ask more of me than my presence. I get to write with true curiosity and a deep satisfaction I haven't found in a long time in such a short amount of words. I can't wait to share more with you next month.
Women Writers & The Challenges of Rest
In last week's Well Gathering, we talked about what would it look like to receive rest, to give ourselves permission to reject the pressures of the attention economy: to set the phone down, to not do it all, to take good care of our bones.
Here we have this season whose potential for wonder is stripped away by packed to-do lists and family pain and financial worries and illness - all in the name of "the holidays."
And who in our society carries most of that burden: the cooking and shopping and hand-wringing and organizing and kid wrangling and the no-time-for-writing? By and large: women. You. Me.
So how do we, as people with wonderfully gifted imaginations, imagine our way into some rest this holiday season? Some delight? Some time to jot down a few words?
One way is to see your words in the context of a gift economy, as a gift that is being offered you, and an opportunity for you to pay that gift forward. To see yourself and your words as an essential part of a larger ecological system that needs you to keep telling stories and writing poems and journal entries - not just to-do lists. A gift that you don't have to stand in line for, wrap, mail, or cross off a list.
This gift is already inside you, waiting patiently under the tree of your heart, wrapped and ready to be opened.
A piece of Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass sums up the questions we were asking in the Well surrounding giving and receiving rest to ourselves, including the gift of our words and our words as resting places:
“A gift comes to you through no action of your own, free, having moved toward you without your beckoning. It is not a reward, you cannot earn it, or call it to you, or even deserve it. And yet it appears.
Your only role is to be open-eyed and present.”
A small writing exercise:
I suggested we all write three ways that we can start, right now, being open-eyed and present. Go ahead, take a pause and do that too.
You Don’t Have To Be A Lone Wolf
In 2022 I'm going to be resting more, and writing more, and giving more time to study. I will still be working one-on-one with writers, but space will be limited, so if you think you'd like to work together, click above and have a look at what I'm available to give in the coming months. Please don't hesitate to email me with any questions.
If you feel a tug, a whispered inner yes, then sit with that. Listen to it. See if it means we need to work together or if it means something else.
What would it look like to build the writing life you long for in the coming year? (Hint, hint: a good journal prompt, methinks).
If one-on-one work is not available to you right now, don't forget all my free resources. There's much to support you, and I'll be here in your inbox too.
I know the holiday season is painful for many of us: loss, estrangement, distance, SAD, and any number of things. I hope that wherever this holiday season find you, you'll discover a few resting places along the way.
With American Thanksgiving coming up next week, I'll take this opportunity to let you all know how thankful I am to be able to share my words with you.
Knowing you are on the other end of my newsletters and blogs and books has gotten me through a lot and I am more thankful than I can say to have you be a part of my life in this special way. I don't take being the recipient of your attention lightly. That you for the gift of your presence, and the opportunity to share. I hope what I give to you is a little bit of wind in your sails, or some light along the way from the North as you keep heading toward your own North Star.
