I’ve been thinking to myself, thinking that I’m not ready for real life to start up again. Apparently my lizard brain thinks that the last two weeks of December are not real life. Dunno what’s up with that. It’s not like I have this starry-eyed notion of Christmas; most times I don’t even like it.… Read More Even silence resonates.
The last few weeks have been exceptionally difficult. Does it have to do with the holidays? I can’t tell. If I could just ferret out why I keep finding myself on the edge, I think I could control it better. You know, not tip into the abyss. I hate having this continual ache because now… Read More 200 days
The last week has been particularly difficult. I’m thrilled and relieved to be back in school. But…I have to drive past Denny’s every day that I teach. That Denny’s where I last saw my son months ago. I had a delayed reaction to that on Monday. I got past the Denny’s without going into the… Read More Blog of Missing: Day 126
Someone asked me where Day 1 was of the Blog of Missing. I started with Day 20, which is kind of a let-down, right? Where’s the beginning? There should be a Day 1. A way to find the genesis of the heartache. And there should be words for every day of the missingness. We’ve got… Read More The Blog of Missing Day 118: An update
101 days. No word. I still don’t know where my son is or if he is okay. I am thankful for people who ask about Jake. Please don’t stop. I’ve been dragging my feet about posting because it means I have to unbolt the hatch to the compartment where overwhelm lives. Overwhelm is a troll… Read More Missing: 101
Sometimes I only have a scent. Ivory Soap. Pine sap. Old Spice. It’s faint, like an afterimage, as Atwood writes in The Handmaid’s Tale. Other times, I catch a memory when I noodle about something peripheral, like the weather of my childhood. And other times, I am knocked into a pit by something that happens,… Read More A Day in the Life of a Writer: Excavation via fresh hurts
“According to Jungian Jolande Jacobi, in psychic inner reality the archetypal Shadow is a symbol for an aspect of the self (1959). When we cannot find a way to work with our shadow through our dreams or in other ways, it becomes a symptom in our outer world. ” From http://www.eupsychia.com/perspectives/defs/shadow.html In the compilation of shadow… Read More Shadow work
I wrote a little about Shenpa in 2012, but I didn’t have a lot to say because, while I recognized it, I didn’t really understand it. I’m not sure I do now, but I’m going to write about it anyway. I’ll share the same quotes: Shenpa is what Pema Chodron calls the hook. We each… Read More Shenpa revisited
When I was little, my mother read fairy tales to me. She never read stories about fainting princesses who languished until a handsome prince rescued them. She read Little Red Riding Hood to me, and Hansel and Gretel, and Babes in the Wood. When I learned to read, I read them every night before bed. … Read More Out of the Woods intro
Telling a story from one’s childhood is not the same as excavating it. One may think that simply writing out a vignette from one’s childhood addresses issues plainly, but it ain’t so. Here’s the thing: First you have to write out the memory exactly as it has been playing in your head for the… Read More How to excavate a story from your past: Memoir ideas