by Laura Munson | Mar 15, 2024 | Uncategorized
As seen in Pangyrus
I have always been more than one person. When I was married with young children, I was at least four people. A woman. A wife. A mother. A writer. When I had a party, and that was often, I upped the ante and became many more people: a musician/singer/entertainer/chef/hostess. In other words, I threw parties in overwhelm mode. You just wouldn’t know it. I certainly didn’t.
I didn’t know that I was reverting to my early childhood in which I was asked to perform for the guests. I hated performing for the guests back then, but as an adult, I learned to entertain on my own terms and frankly, I learned that I truly loved pulling out my guitar, getting everyone singing, passing around good cheese, whipping out the good china, serving an impressive spread of lovingly prepared food. It all brought me joy. Or so I thought.
I was locally famous for my parties. I went all out. Full on Martha. I had the house and the stuff and the energy and the friends, and I loved being a hostess to all of it. One time I actually rode my horse five miles down a busy road full of logging trucks to give pony rides at my daughter’s horse-themed seventh birthday party because the horse trailer bottomed out. I wasn’t about to let that get in the way of my promise to a gaggle of little girls, and mostly to my daughter. Our Christmas party had a half mile of candle-lit luminaria (real candles) all the way up our country road in the snow. There were various cooked beasts, stacks of homemade Christmas cookies, garlands everywhere. People said it was like something out of Dickens.
I was proud of what we created in our home and as a family. Parties were a way to not just share it all, but perhaps to prove it all. That’s where the lesson lived. I just wasn’t ready yet to receive it.
It helped that I had a partner in those days. My husband. He liked to throw parties too and he was good at taking direction and he was good at innovation when I didn’t know what directions to give. We were good together in this way. But eventually we were not good together. And then I was no longer married.
Then I was fighting to keep my house and my children and my stuff intact. And the horses had to go. And the china became something perhaps ebay-able. And the parties stopped. I didn’t have the money, but moreover, I didn’t have the energy. And there was this new piece of it: shame. That chapter of our bounteous, glorious creation had come to an end. The only thing that mattered to me was to tend to my children, and fortify our little pack of three. There were ten years of that.
“Mom, you should throw a party,” my young adult children recently implored. “You used to be so much fun! This house used to be so alive!” And I realized that in my years of triage, I’d let go of the fun part of me. That’s the part I’d been longing to recover, and I didn’t realize it until yesterday.
Because yesterday… I had my first dinner party in years. I invited people who I really wanted to pamper for being so kind to me over the years, and a few out-of-towners from my childhood who I, admittedly, wanted to impress. I concocted a menu that would satisfy and maybe even impress Martha, esq. That was the problem: I was trying to impress “Martha,” who quite likely was behind the same voices that asked me to perform at my parents’ parties. And the part of me that had to prove herself in my early years as a hostess. The problem was, nowhere in this equation did I factor in happiness. Hosting that party did not make me happy.
Today, I ask myself: What would it take to make party-giver Laura happy, as the woman you are today? Isn’t that what a party should evoke in a person? Happiness? Joy?
I mean, was I happy going to five different stores to get the ingredients? For four days? Was I happy doing a garden overhaul and pulling all the grass that’s taken over in the years of letting go of the pretty things and holding the essentials together? Was I happy ignoring my back, which was screaming at me to STOP, and instead saying aloud to no one, “I can go for another fifteen minutes without it going out on me.” All day long?
Was I happy baking an apricot torte and two loaves of homemade sourdough bread, which takes three days if I do it correctly? And I did it correctly. Was I happy running to Costco for throw pillows three hours before my guests came, because I chose to make things that I’ve never made before and didn’t account for the extra chopping time (Gazpacho salad. And yes, Martha’s recipe). Was I happy in the eleventh hour chucking new throw pillows that I only sort of liked on my patio furniture to distract from the mildew? Apparently, I was going for some sort of used-to-be-me award that I thought I’d given up on a long time ago.
So I was behind. Waaaay behind. And I started to miss having a partner. Someone who could cover for me. Usher them outside and show them the garden while I composed myself. I mean… for the first time in years, I’d made my home, inside and outside, so fabulous. The silver was polished. The piano was tuned. There were cherry tomatoes and lavender and sunflowers blooming in planters on my deck. I’d made my bed and everything! It’s me that I’d neglected in all of it.
I cut it so close that when my guests arrived, I was still in the clothes I’d gardened in, sweat dripping down my face, my back teetering on giving out. I received their lovely gifts and bottles of wine from their coiffed and fully primped selves, with my mangled, muddy fingers, and limping, said, “Come on in!”
I really wanted to be primped and coiffed and sitting there like my mother when her guests arrived: casually doing needlepoint like, “Oh yeah! I forgot that I was throwing a dinner party for thirteen people! Welcome. I just so happen to have a full bar and a four-course homemade dinner awaiting you. Gimlet?”
Maybe I could get them a quick glass of wine and send them out to the garden while I cleaned up and changed clothes. They all followed me into the kitchen.
Historically, I’ve loved the fact that my kitchen is in the middle of the house. It’s where everyone wants to hang out anyway. But in that moment, I was thinking, Why is the kitchen in the middle of the house? There should be doors. Locked doors. So that I can make the food in privacy, kick the fridge closed, ignite my hot pad holder in flames, swear like a sailor.
They were all so gracious. “What can I do to help?” And I really didn’t know what to do with all that love. I’ve been a solo act for a long time now.
I wanted to say, “Oh, la. Don’t you lift a finger. What can I get you to drink?” But I was visibly rattled. My back was shooting nerve pain down my legs. And I almost snapped. I all but said, “If you could just leave me alone for half an hour, I’ll have my s*** together. But right now, I’m drinking from the firehose. And it’s all my fault. Apparently, I think it’s three decades ago.” I think I said something like: “Here’s a glass of wine. Go have a seat in the garden. Eat cheese. I’ll be out soon.”
Once we were all seated at the dinner table, and the candles were lit, and everything in its right place, one of my guests said, “Oh we need a photo! This is so beautiful!” She snapped a photo of the group and sent it to me. I’m looking at it today, sitting in my pajamas, with a sink of dirty dishes, because I wouldn’t let anyone help clean up, and after they left, my back was so wrecked, I couldn’t deal. They all look so happy in the photo. I… do not.
What would it take for me to be happy as a single hostess? Does it depend on saying yes to help? To letting things be a little rough around the edges, because I am most definitely that. To give up perfection altogether? I mean, why is it so hard to admit our imperfection? Why is there shame in it? And just what was I trying to prove, anyway, by splaying myself supplicant on the altar of that party? That I’m capable of creating magic without any help from a spouse, partner, or guest? That I’ve held down the fort and am thriving solo? Probably. I should know better than to try to prove myself to anybody. So enter: shame. Shame that I’m only one person, after all, not many. Shame that I don’t know how to say yes to help. Shame that I wasn’t able to show my true self. And shame that I set myself up for all of it.
Rolling in shame never helped anyone. Instead, I finally feel ready to receive the lesson I’ve been avoiding: Proving myself as a happy, gracious hostess isn’t at all a useful undertaking. In fact, it’s a myth that needs to die. It’s time to be a proud, and healthy team of one. I learned yesterday that I need to value my energy level, my body, my time, my reality, not what once was. And that means: I need to not over-produce and not overwhelm myself. I need to have the courage to say yes to the “Can I help?” question, rather than consider it a defeat.
Especially when we are a team of one, we need to learn to truly value our happiness and well-being. And that means, we likely need to drop the quest to impress people or prove ourselves. Can’t parties just be an act of generosity, to others and to oneself? So my next dinner party? I’m thinking: potluck. Want to come? Please bring a side dish.
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by Laura Munson | Feb 1, 2024 | Musings, Writing Prompts
This is a three part, three week, series about how to become aware of the negative self-talk we all have on some level, and how to replace it with a kind, loving inner voice, all inspired by the plot twists of travel.
Part I: In which I describe this voice, and give you concrete writing exercises to finally shed its destructive nature.
Part II: In which I make a case for getting away from your normal life in order to find a new, loving voice. Rich in inspiration from Mexico City.
Part III: In which I share some places that inspired me while in CDMX (Mexico City), as well as some other local spots to check out.
To read all three parts now, please subscribe to my paid Substack.
Exiling the Voice by Exiling Yourself
There is this voice in my head. Dogging me. Driving me. Running me. And I let it. Much more than I want to admit to myself or anyone else. But if humans aren’t willing to admit their truth, then how are we going to evolve as a civilization? So I’ll admit it here: this voice feels all-powerful. All-knowing. And (big dirty secret): I speak to it. Out loud and a lot. Like it’s in the room with me. “Okay okay OKAY! I’m TRYING! Alight??? I’m going as fast as I can! I’m doing my best!” But I don’t believe that really. What I believe is this: If I ignore the voice, I will get into big big trouble.
It says things like:
Hurry up! You’re going to be late! (When I’m perfectly on time.)
You’re not doing enough! (When I know that if I did more, it would require working through the ight.)
You’re not doing it right. Look at how that other person does it so perfectly. You’ll never be that good! Which is why you should keep trying trying trying to get better! You’ll never be perfect, but you should try try try! (When I’m totally aware of the fact that said person has their own voice that tells them that someone else is better than they’ll ever be, too. And that they should keep trying trying trying, too.)
But when I look at it honestly and rationally…just how much real trouble have I gotten into in my life? Not. That. Much. So what’s the rub? Why have I courted this craziness? I am fifty-seven years old. I’ve danced to that voice all my life. It has one decibel: 10. And I’m finally doing something about it.
To analyze the genesis of this voice is less interesting than to accept its reality, be aware of its destructive role, and exile it. I mean: I could blame it on my mother. But that’s sort of a cop out. When I was a child and would ask her how her day was while I was at school, she’d say, “What do you think I do? Sit around and eat bon bons all day?” Message: being a bon bon eater was bad. Whatever bon bons were. You were supposed to move. Produce. Prove. Leave a lot in your wake. Historically, when I’ve ask her how she is, she never responds with how she is. Instead, she reports what she is doing and what she’s done. Productivity is her value and her power. She used to scream at tennis balls when she’d hit them out or into the net. I always wondered why she was so mad at errant tennis balls. With hindsight, I’m fairly certain that she had her own version of the voice. Empathy always works better than blame. So no, I’ll take full responsibility here: Whether I created the voice or not, I listen to it. I give it power. I let it lord over me. Five decades in, I know that the voice is no one’s but my own. Which is what is so ultimately terrifying about it.
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Do you have your own version of the voice? I think that most of us do. Maybe we’re aware of it. Maybe we’re not. Managing it starts with the awareness of just how truly and brutally dangerous this voice is to our mental and physical health. I lead writing retreats, and while most of my clients are learning their craft and working on a writing project, many of them are really longing most of all to find a voice inside them that serves their authentic self-expression, not tries to kill it. A connection to the essence of who they are. After all, if we don’t have that connection, what we express won’t ultimately land in anyone’s heart. We have to start with ourselves. And I’ve found that writing is one of the best ways there is to do just that. So not long ago, I decided to give myself a dose of my own medicine and I created this exercise. It is highly potent. I hope that you will try it. Now. Can you afford not to?
A Writing Exercise that might change everything. It did for me.
So for the diligent, brave-hearted, and just-plain-sick-of-the-voice readers out there, I invite you/implore you to grab a notebook…I mean it…and take just an hour of your day to notice what the voice says to you.
Note: this exercise is not just for writers and it’s also not at all what I do with my clients on my writing retreats. This is just for us. I want your wonder to come back to you. It’s been waiting. And it’s full of kindness. It isn’t scared at all.
· As your hour unfolds, write down the words your voice speaks to you verbatim.
· Write down your response, whether it’s thought or spoken. Maybe you have a rapid-fire dialogue. Maybe your response comes slowly. Maybe you have no verbal response at all, like someone taking a beating. Write down whatever is your true pattern when it comes to how this voice speaks to you and how you respond to it.
· Now, write down how you feel as a result of your dance with your voice.
· You can choose a high-stress hour, or a low-stress hour. It’s interesting to try this exercise both ways. I mean, the voice can be very loud and mean even when you attempt to take a nap!
· Be kind to yourself as you track your dialogue.
· Be honest.
· And if you’re reading this and thinking, “My voice is all self-loving and kindness and cheerleader and wonder-lustful and peaches and cream”…good for you. I’d like to go on your retreat.
The next step is to ask and answer some good questions to help bring even more awareness to your relationship with your voice. Some of these overlap with the above exercise, but please trust that these questions are designed to help you really see how prominent your voice is in your life. So give them some thought, but be kind to yourself as you do so. They are not meant to give your voice even more fuel! As you answer them, check-in with your self-judgement. If you answer yes to any of the below, again, please be gentle with yourself. Just be sure to be honest. This exercise is meant to help you liberate yourself from what might be at the root of what’s in the way of your self-love and self-acceptance:
· Just who is it that you’re hearing in your head? Is it you? Or is it an outside force that you’ve let inside you? Is it a combination of both?
· Is it a real person from your life, or is it a completely fictional one?
· Is it a composite of various people?
· Is it more than a voice? Does it have physical attributes in your mind? If so, write those down. You might even draw it.
· Do you let it run you…and if so, to the detriment of your peace, happiness, well-being, wonder?
· Do you catch yourself in verbal dialogue with this voice? Is it something you hide? Is it something you do around other people?
· Why do you feel the need to respond to it or even to acknowledge it at all?
· Do you feel that you deserve this voice’s abuse? (You do realize that it’s abuse. Right?)
· Does your voice actually want to be in a dialogue, or solely a dictator with a whip in hand?
· Or is being sparred with your voice’s fuel to dole out more abuse?
· When you play victim to the voice, does it know that it’s got you on the hook? Does it like to see you struggle there, playing with you, letting you think you can swim away, but ultimately pulling you out of your waters? Dinner time?
· Would you be willing to see this voice not just as abusive, but as an inner terrorist?
· Do you somehow actually like the voice?
· Do you think it keeps you motivated to perform? Do you think it keeps you in check?
In my case, the more aware I have become of the voice, the more I see that it has my number, not my back. It makes high-pitched ringing in my ears a welcome distraction. For years I’ve tried to turn the voice into a soft, loving one. But that seems to only work for a few seconds. Maybe.
But then it’s back to the painful ping-pong:
What’s wrong with you!? You need to figure it out! Now!
I’m TRYING! Leave me ALONE!
Hah! Never! Work work WORK! You need to be better better better! You need to do more more more!
The voice is not just something that you can exile all-of-an-afternoon. At least not in my case. It takes practice. And this writing exercise helped me. I’ve learned to train my mind such that I’m aware of the voice and can attempt to calm it down and even replace it. But it’s taken me a long time, and I’m still not that good at it. The voice loves that about me.
When I look into the rearview mirror, I now see that this is a self vs. self fight that I’ve been in all my life, mostly without being conscious of it. I’ve prayed, meditated, written, walked in the woods, ridden horses, sang, read, played music, baked bread… And those things work for a while. But the voice finds a way to ooze in, just when I least expect it. I’m somehow able to keep the voice out of my writing life, which is perhaps why I’ve lived it with all my might for my adult life. Even when I wrote a whole memoir about managing that voice, I was able to keep it mostly at bay when my pen was moving, and practice liberation from it. I’ve given speeches about it to packed auditoriums. I thought I could shake it. Exile it, even. But it turns out, unless I’m in the act of writing…I just don’t seem to be able to. And in doing this exercise, I think I’ve figured out why:
The voice is made of fear and old programming. And those are very hard to erase. I still believe that it’s possible to re-structure your neuro pathways. But all truth be told, for me…the only thing that seems to work, aside from my writing life…is to run away for a while. To go someplace completely new and different from my regular life. A complete system re-boot. The voice doesn’t recognize me there so the voice doesn’t really know how to behave and what to say. So it’s on these solo pilgrimages, outside of my daily life, that I can practice the voice of loving kindness with myself. Invite in a new voice and get serious about habituating that new voice where the other voice can’t find me.
Exile Yourself:
To that end, I finally figured out a trick that’s become a sacrosanct, personal pact: if my voice won’t leave me for long stretches of time, then I get away from it. Once a year, I make a deeply deliberate solo pilgrimage away from my normal life, and toward something very new. Where it’s safe to stop “trying,” and let my mind, body, spirit, soul move the way it wants to as a collective whole…and at its own rate. I don’t think of it like a vacation, and it doesn’t have to be somewhere exotic and expensive. It just needs to be far away from my normalized life. I think of it as something that my very core well-being requires. I’ve done this for the last five years every January, in different iterations. It requires some major work/life juggling, but so far, I’ve been able to pull it off. And so far, it’s a magical solution to the voice vex.
The poet Emma Mellon writes, “allow yourself to be spelled differently.” That’s my goal. It usually takes a few weeks for me to unscrew my head, and un-spell myself, and two more weeks to fill my being with newness. Newness that hopefully stays for a while, and in loving kindness, at least through winter. I realize that not everyone can leave for a month. But you can find some solo time away if you really understand how critical this is for yourself. If you can manage to exile your voice in your daily life for days on end, again, I want to come on your retreat. For me, I need to get out of dodge.
This sort of self-preservational, deliberate exodus really pisses the voice off. It wants you to stay where you are and take your beating. Because if you move into another lane, with another perspective and other influencing factors, the voice stands the chance of losing you altogether. The voice wants you to try and try as fast as you possibly possibly can. Until you die. So the more you get out of its way, the meaner it gets. Like any good Narcissist. Meaner. And louder. And louder. It pushes you harder and harder until you forget that there’s any other choice but to allow it to be your lord.
Notice how it’s speaking to you right now. Telling you all sorts of mean reasons why there’s no way on earth that you can take solo time away from your life. It’s yelling at you with a litany of refusals, and judgments. It would be so so very selfish. It would be so so rude and bad. You are very very bad for even considering it. Go back to your work! Shackle up! Take your bitter medicine! Tick tock! Stop wasting your time on this nonsense! Stop reading this foolish drivel! Right now! Never do a stupid, selfish, rude, bad writing exercise ever again!
Could you please just tell it to shut the f*** up for a moment? One golden moment. So you can read on and maybe get rid of that tightness in your chest and that shallow breathing and those shoulders up to your ears?
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If you’ve gotten to this paragraph, good for you. It means that you got big and the voice got small for a moment. Let’s take it, because I have good news. Proven good news. I have tested and proven that there’s a method to this madness. This madness of not saying yes to the invitations of our lives which help us shed the mean, scared voice. The madness that tells you that you can’t leave your normal life, not for one second. The madness that says that you are a horrible human for even considering it. Here’s how to begin, and you can do it wherever you are, right now:
The First Step to Your Self-Exile:
· Wherever you are in your daily life, stop.
· STOP. (Try to say it with a loving voice: Sweetheart, could you take a moment to stop?)
· Could you take a moment and do nothing that the scared, mean voice is telling you to do? Just for one moment. Dig in your heels. Stay put. Just sit there and breathe. Drop your shoulders. Look around. Put your hand on your chest and imagine it relaxing.
· You’re REALLY pissing the voice off now. Oh well. It’ll be back.
· If it’s hurling huge waves of horror at you, just imagine ducking under it all for a moment. Let the voice terrorize something else in the room. I can promise you: your dog doesn’t even acknowledge it. Let the voice think it can pick on the dog for just this one moment in your life. Believe me, your dog is way safer than you are.
· Now…notice what happens when you stop.
· Has the voice finally devoured you?
· Or is your head strangely quiet?
· Try to be quiet for one, deep breath.
· Now, before the voice can attack, try to hear other sounds. Gentle sounds. Try to hear your breathing. Try to hear the wind. Try to hear the heater clicking on. Try to hear nothing.
Now:
· Could you ask yourself to stay there in that stillness and imagine what would happen if you took some extended time away from your life? To “allow yourself to be spelled differently,” whatever that means for you? To go somewhere far away and do something very different from what comprises your normal life?
· Think of a place that would likely confuse that voice. Where its constant berating has nothing to attach to. Maybe it’s not a whole month that you can pull off. Maybe it’s a weekend. But wherever it is, can you imagine a place you’ve wanted to go that’s very different from your normal life? Maybe it’s across the valley or in another neighborhood in your city. Let your mind land on a place very different from where you are right now. The more different, the better.
I live in an arctic snow globe all winter, so I usually imagine a place where there’s substantial vitamin D. A few years ago, it was Morocco. One year, a small hill town in Mexico. One year a tiny island with wild horses off the coast of Georgia. Another, a small cabin in the hills of New Mexico. This year it was the Galapagos Islands in Ecuador, where I’ve wanted to go since fourth grade when I wrote a paper on Darwin. I was fairly confident that the voice wouldn’t be able to find me there, and that part is crucial. I mean, what was it going to say to me in the Galapagos Islands?
You need to see more blue-footed boobies?
Dive in the water and swim with more sharks!
You’re not snorkeling hard enough, long enough.
You’re not the last one out of the water.
You’re pigeon-toed, even in fins.
What I’ve learned in these solo pilgrimages, is: if the voice is all meanness on the outside, but all terror on the inside, then it doesn’t know how to manage the spelled-differently brand of fear. So I have found that the voice can’t find me in the sorts of places I choose, because I choose places where I am already disoriented and scared. When I am far from home, allowing myself to be spelled differently, the voice doesn’t recognize the letters nor the language, so it can’t speak. And if it tried, it knows it would be powerless. Silly, even. Nonsensical. Like Oz. It might fume smoke out of its nose and threaten to blow me into oblivion with its terrorist attempts. But it knows that when I’m far from my normalized zone, I know that all that racket is just a little, scared voice behind a green curtain. With no true power at all. So I pulled out the binoculars, water shoes, rash guard, sun hat, got some heavy duty sunscreen, and prepared for the rare flora and fauna feast of my life.
Welcome the Plot Twists:
And then came the plot twist. And it makes me wonder if my inner terrorist has been conspiring with real live terrorists. Because after a solid year of planning and saving and juggling…the day before I was scheduled to land in mainland Ecuador for one night, Galapagos-bound the next, real terrorism hit. One of the country’s top gang leaders escaped from prison and a news station was taken, during live programming, as well as a university. Hostages. Horror. Hysteria. State of emergency. Curfew. All in the city where I had planned to stay. So why not an airport or a hotel? I knew that this wasn’t my year for blue-footed boobies and swimming iguanas, even though a part of me wanted to walk into that terrorism just to escape my own.
Instead, I found myself laid-over in Mexico City. A place I’d been warned about as “dangerous.” Much more so than Ecuador. Instead, miracles happened.
Stay tuned for Part II next week…or read all three parts now by subscribing to my paid Substack.
If you want to find your heart language, consider investing in one of my 2024 Haven Writing Retreats in Montana. You do not have to be a writer to come. Just a seeker. And a human who longs to wander in your words. Learn your craft. Find your voice. Haven truly meets you where you need to be met. I’ve seen it change lives over and over again. Email: info@lauramunson.com to set up an intro call.
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by Laura Munson | Dec 17, 2023 | Musings
I’m bringing back this essay that I wrote six years ago when I was in the throes of impending empty nest. Every time I read it, I weep and awaken… Especially this time of year. May it land in your heart.
Nothing that I planned for this Christmas season happened.
And then everything that matters did.
I’m looking at empty nest this fall, and so Christmas at home with the kids, in all of our best traditions, feels especially important. I keep saying I’m going to be fine in empty nest. But this time of year, I cry easily anyway. I’ve been a leaky faucet all December. I’ve been cooking with my daughter, like I’m facing my death, teaching her every single recipe I know “for the record.” I’ve been standing and chopping madly, so that I now have carpal tunnel and planter fasciitis. From cooking? Don’t athletes get that? I’m a writer. My carpals are used to my repetitive motion tapping keyboards. I guess just not my knife moves. And all this eating of all these “best of” meals has my stomach in knots. So when we had a massive weather “event” this week, my kids took to the ski slopes, and I took to my bed, hanging my Santa cap on the Christmas traditions that would certainly carry us in these next days.
It happened, avalanche:
- The family Christmas Eve party we’ve gone to for 25 years got cancelled.
- The place where we’ve had Christmas Eve dinner for 25 years couldn’t fit us in.
- My son announced that he has to work bussing tables Christmas Eve anyway.
- Ditto the night of the family game/caroling party we always have.
- All my daughter’s friends are home and vying for her attention. And even if they wanted to let me hang out with them, I’m no fun at all. Unless they want to lie on the couch and rub arnica salve into my feet and wrist, drink bone broth, and watch White Christmas and Holiday Inn over and over. Can’t quite handle It’s a Wonderful Life. I’ve had one too many George-Bailey-on-the-bridge moments in the last few months, and I’m sure, come Fall, there’ll be too many to count. So…sing to me, Bing and Fred.
- And so far none of the presents have arrived because according to the NBC Nightly News, UPS is “having a hard time,” (maybe they need Bing and Fred too). And let’s not talk about the news. It’s enough to make me want to curl into an egg nog coma through to New Years and beyond. Or more like a bone broth coma. Come to me, Clarence.
And then my friend had to cancel our annual Christmas shopping day with our friend, the Special Olympian, and all around lover-of-life and spreader-of-joy, Cedar Vance. This is the sacred day when we shop for her mother’s gifts using a carefully planned-out, well-budgeted, Christmas list, but one that in no way can I pull off solo, especially with a limp and a stomach that sounds like it’s churning butter. Let’s put it this way: Cedar puts the drop in shop til’ you drop.
She and her mom feed 30 head of horses twice a day on their Montana ranch, so she’s got…well…stamina. It was no surprise to anyone that she took home a silver and almost a bronze from the Special Olympics World Winter games at Schladming, Austria last year in the Advanced Giant Slalom for downhill ski racing. Cedar is a local hero in more ways than one. She has friends everywhere, and makes them wherever she goes. It’s like she’s in a constant parade when she’s out in the world. The more people the better. The more shiny glittery sugary things, the better. And so yep– you guessed it: she loves the big box stores. I, on the other hand, loathe box stores. Every year I try to convince her to support the mom and pops on Central Ave. in our little town, but she looks at me like I’m sooooo uncool, and so I give in to the box store pre-amble, and ply her with hot cocoa back in town at the end so I can decompress in our little shops and Christmas bells and boughs that hang across the street like George Bailey’s Bedford Falls, officially shop-dropped. She humors me, after her tour of Consumption Junction in all its…glory?
But Cedar isn’t about consumerism, per se. She’s about spreading Christmas cheer. Singing as absolutely loud as she can in the car on the way, to her favorite: Alvin and the Chipmunk Christmas album, which is…after the third go-around of Christmas don’t be late… you know…pretty heart-warming, actually. She’s got her Santa hat with the red Who-ville curlie-que on the top, and she loves to walk into every store saying a brisk, “Happy Merry Christmas!” and waving the Queen’s wave, which she’s done plenty of times because she’s been in about a hundred real life parades and got a kiss on the cheek from Mr. Shriver in the Special Olympics gala tour of Washington, D.C. before launching off to Austria, and, as she’ll tell you with absolutely no ego, received a hug from the Prince of Austria.
Because that’s the thing about Cedar. She has no ego. She’s free like I’ve never seen free before. She rides bareback on horses I wouldn’t dare mount (mind you, her mother was told that Cedar would never be able to even run). She flies down ski hills and hugs her way through Walmart (Cedar loves her some Walmart) on a hunt for her mother’s Christmas present, mentioning that they could also use a new fridge. And I tell her, “That’s not on the list, my dear,” and she’s off, around the corner, holding a velvet pillow to her face and saying, “my mother would love this.” And I have to say, “I’m sure she would but she asked for a microwave.” And people look at me like I’m a bad person. So into the shopping cart the velvet pillow goes.
And she’s holding a rose, of course, because the woman in the floral department at Costco gave it to her, after she’s eaten triple cream brie, red pepper jelly, and crackers, cornbread, short bread, pretzels, nachos, ham, roasted chicken, and asiago squares and more crackers, and she confesses that she’s allergic to cheese and gluten. But she’s forgotten about that, because now she’s sure her mother needs a quick-dry hair towel, and I have to break the news that her mother has very short hair and probably would rather have warm socks for all the work she does outside in the bitter cold of winter, but she insists that her mom has plenty of socks and absolutely needs a quick-dry hair towel. And so…into the cart goes the quick-dry hair towel. And so it goes.
“Happy Merry Christmas, everyone!” she hollers, especially to people with Christmas sweaters on, and for those people, she includes a hug. And the whole world melts around her. Kinda like Eloise, only we’re so everly not at the Plaza, my dear.
So…we’re in the check-out line, our cart full of bags, ready to face the parking lot mayhem. We’ve crossed off everything on the list. And we’ve even found a few special things we know her mother will just love. Pony-tail holders, even. We have three dollars and seventy-three cents left and Cedar’s holding it in one mitten-ed hand, the red rose in the other, and she’s smelling it like it smells like the Garden of Eden, when we all know that Costco red roses don’t smell like anything other than hot dogs and three ply radial tires. And she says, “I’m going to keep this rose alive forever, just like in Beauty and the Beast, because of looooove.” And I tell her that she can also dry the petals in case it doesn’t live forever, and she looks at me like I am the Grinch who stole Love incarnate, never mind Christmas. And then…here’s where I shop ‘til I officially drop. Drop to my knees:
We walk through the automatic doors pushing our heavy cart, and there’s a Salvation Army man standing there, ringing his bell, and the hanging red bucket hundreds of box store be-dazed shoppers have passed all day. And Cedar stops at the bucket. Puts the rose stem in her mouth, of course, because where else would you put it, and carefully folds the three dollar bills in a sort of Olympic origami, and slips them, one at a time, into the bucket. And then the seventy-three cents.
“Aw…Cedar, that’s so good of you,” I start to say, but then I stop. Because that Olympian goes over to the man in the Santa hat ringing the bell, and stands on her tip toes and he leans in, and she whispers something into his ear, and hands him the rose, and they hug each other for what seems like a long time…and she waves at him as he holds up the rose, and she says to everyone coming through the automatic doors pushing heavy shopping carts, “Happy Merry Christmas!” and we sing Alvin and the Chipmunks all the way home, as absolutely loud as we can.
“Cedar, what did you whisper to the Salvation Army man?” I say, over hot cocoa on Central Ave. with the red bells and boughs over our heads.
She looks at me churlishly, elf-ishly, loving-ly, and says, “Laura Munson, what do you think I said to him? I told him Merry Christmas!”
Of course that’s what she said. And I think…of course, Cedar Vance. Of course it’s a Merry Christmas.
And then…wouldn’t you know…Christmas came, avalanche:
“We have a spot for you in the dining room on Christmas Eve.”
“We’re having our party after all.”
“I got my shift off, Mom, so let’s have our caroling party. And on Christmas Eve, I’ll be home by 10:00 after work so we can have our open-one-gift tradition then.”
Neighbor calls: “There are a bunch of UPS boxes for you over at my house. I’ll put them in your mailbox.”
And guess what? My stomach…it stopped hurting. And my wrist and feet too. Maybe there’ll be egg nog in my future after all. And maybe next year, we’ll do it all over again. And maybe when they return to the nest, their mother will be just fine. Better than fine. Maybe she’ll learn how to drop to her proverbial knees all the time in wonder and gratitude for the small moments of looooove.
Thank you, Cedar. Wink wink, Clarence
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by Laura Munson | Oct 2, 2023 | Motherhood
Sometimes we have to look in the rearview mirror for insights into how to move forward in our lives. The time of Covid lockdown, sick with the virus, on top of a job/income on pause, and a cancelled book tour for a novel that took eight years to write……isn’t an alluring place to look. But often, that which we resist, is the very thing we need to revisit. I haven’t wanted to re-read this essay in three years. Today, however, I woke up to the smell of toast, and with an exceptional gratitude that I couldn’t quite place. I lived alone, in a sad empty nest, for a long time, and I am a loyal pack creature. The truth is: I’m now in a deeply loving, and highly surprising relationship that just keeps getting richer by the day/month/year, and my nest is no longer empty. This morning I knew it was time to glean the lessons from that particular, and also surprisingly peopled time…to truly find gratitude for this one. I hope that it will help you do the same, wherever you’ve been afraid to look. I know that it’s not healthy to live in the past. But it’s a very good teacher. Please enjoy this essay:
April, 2020
I wake up to the smell of someone in the kitchen. Maybe it’s coffee. Maybe it’s toast. I don’t open my eyes and I don’t know why. I only know that I don’t want to know why. That this smell is a good thing and that there are bad things. Really bad things. And if I keep my eyes closed, I won’t remember what they are.
I also know that this is a new ability I have: my mind on full stop, in my waking moments. And it’s not something I’ve learned from somebody in a hallowed hall, or holy place. Or from somebody whose words are in the stack of dusty books on my bedside table, getting dustier. Or somebody whose TED Talk I watched on my computer that is under my bed, ready to feed me today’s news, and remind me of my overdue bills, and deliver me my mother’s concern for my health and for her own, and all of the things that I’m not thinking about. Yet. Because they hurt. And I don’t want to remember why.
The not wanting to remember cracks the full stop spell. And I remember then why I don’t want to open my eyes. I’m not very good at this selective thinking. It’s only been a month.
But someone’s in the kitchen. I decide to think about only this, just for a few more waking moments.
This is not a game. This is how it has to be. Every morning. If I’m going to be safe, and well, and hopeful, and look for silver linings, and attempt what everyone is telling everyone to be and do right now. Including me. In this daily morning moment in this “difficult time of uncertainty and new normal,” still closer to dreams than consciousness or euphemism, I try for at least some of it.
So I keep my eyes shut, pressing lid to lid because they want to open, and my hand wants to grab my phone and my computer and a wise dusty book all at the same time, and my brain wants to careen through the newly-not-normal details of my life.
Instead, I implore myself to smell. Because I realize in this moment…I can smell. And I remember: I haven’t been able to for a while. And there’s someone in the kitchen making beautiful smells that have wafted up the stairs and under my door and into my bed with me. My bed, my new home office, my new mostly home.
I widen my nostrils and anchor my tongue on the ridge behind my teeth. Open the back of my throat. Let my lungs expand. My lungs are clear for the first time in weeks. But I don’t think about that. I think about this new gift that is in the back of my nose, and now in my sinuses that spread my cheeks into a smile that’s not really a smile. Or maybe it is. Sort of. I don’t want to think about smiling like I don’t want to read books or watch TED Talks or learn from holy people.
Toast.
Yes, definitely toast. Sourdough toast. From the bread we made.
We.
I hold the scent and allow the characters to ride in on it. It feels safe to let myself imagine these characters. It could be either of them: my daughter. Twenty-three. Home from her young adult life in San Francisco, still with a job. My son, nineteen, home from his sophomore year in college and a lost baseball season. I’m not thinking about why. Only that they’re home and one of them, or both, is making toast. I let myself think about that, full stop.
Toast.
That I can smell.
From bread we made.
From wild yeast starter that our neighbor left in our mailbox in a Mason jar.
I almost think about why it wasn’t a nice long over-due visit with tea.
I almost think about why no one in this house is going to the grocery store or anywhere else for that matter.
I almost think about how we wiped down the Mason jar with sanitizer before we brought it in the house.
But I stop the thought.
Toast.
I touch my face with my eyes still closed. I don’t think about why I’m not supposed to touch my face. I’m still smiling. That makes me smile more. With the scent of someone in the kitchen.
Someone-in-the-kitchen relaxes my eyes and helps me to think another calm thought. My daily motherhood is back. I let myself think about a month ago, when the hardest thing I was facing was a debilitating and shameful, and thusly clandestine, haunt that is commonly known as Empty Nest. An unpopular and unsympathetic malady. We choose to have kids and it’s normal for them to fledge. We want them to fledge. Right? So why all the crying and loneliness and abject disorientation?
In short, I was pretending I was fine. I wasn’t.
I was alone for the first time in my life in a farmhouse in Montana. I was holding the banister on the stairs— no one will find me for weeks if I take a fall. I was thinking that way. The grey on grey of winter didn’t help. The truth is: I was hardly eating. I was hardly leaving my bed. I was waking with my eyes wide open at all hours of the night and early morning and I was having a hard time closing them at all.
And then this thing that I’m trying not to think about happened. And I’ve chosen to stay in this room, in this bed, when all I want to do is not be in this room, in this bed. Be with my children who are across the hall. Take care of them. But it’s hard to walk down the stairs, banister and all. I haven’t had energy. And this cough…
I let myself scan the last weeks. I haven’t gotten one of the few Montana tests because I haven’t had a fever and though I have had some of the other symptoms, my doctor says to stay put. Health care workers need them. High risk individuals need them. She thanks me for staying home. And so I have. For a month, I’ve been more or less in this bed. Not heartsick this time as much as just sick. Afterall, I was on the East Coast on book tour, shaking a lot of hands, giving and getting a lot of hugs. Before the phrase I don’t want to think about kept us from each other.
When I need to leave my room, I do it with stealth even though I want to hug my children so badly. I get up in the early morning, make my tea and bring a plate of fruit up to bed, while they’re still asleep. I don’t want them to not be able to smell, never mind breathe.
I pass their rooms, their doors closed like it’s ten years ago and I have breakfast and bag lunches to make and carpool to drive. But they know how to do all of that themselves now. They have Zoom work calls, and online courses. They’re happy my bedroom door is shut. They’re not used to seeing me every day anyway. They don’t need me sitting on their beds asking deep questions. They’re just as disoriented as I’ve been, only in reverse. They’ve been on full fledge. Now they’re home in their rooms with the trophies and the stickers and the posters. This was not the plan.
They came home with twenty-four hours’ notice. “We want to get through this at home.”
Salve, not salt, in the mother wound. I’m glad I kept their rooms dusted.
But how can I possibly be glad for this personal gain? The world has stopped. We are in global pain and it’s a lot bigger than my little Empty Nest issues. People are dying from an invisible enemy. I know this about enemies: it helps to look into their eyes. To wonder how we are the same. To practice on those eyes— our love and our empathy, and yes our fear and anger.
This one has no eyes.
I keep mine closed and admit my dirty secret to myself: I am so deeply grateful that my house has a family in it again. And I am the mother of it. I’ve missed it so. I wonder how many other single mothers are feeling this way right now, their adult children suddenly at home. A guilty pleasure. I feel like a glutton. Like I’m hoarding my children. Like I’ve somehow kidnapped them. Like…don’t admit this don’t admit this…I don’t want this to be over.
And that’s another reason why I don’t want to open my eyes. If I open them, and face the day, I have to face this too. Of course, I don’t want people to die. But I don’t want my daily motherhood to die again either. I feel despicable.
I try to imagine this enemy’s eyes so I can say to them what millions of people are saying all over the world: “GO NOW!”
And if I could look into those eyes, I’d add a small secret whimper: “Thank you for bringing my children home. It’s been the gift I never knew I’d be given. I’ve loved cooking all our family meals and laughing about our family jokes and talking in our family way with these older, wiser versions of my little children. But seriously…it’s time to leave our planet alone, silver linings and all.”
I truly try to picture those eyes so I can stare them down. Instead, I picture health care workers’ weary, woeful eyes above their dirty masks, and I want to drop to my knees at the side of my bed and thank them. That’s the gratitude I should be practicing right now.
And for this: I’m feeling better today. I have some energy. And I can breathe. And I can smell. “Thank you,” I whisper to every force of love and goodness I can conjure.
Now I hear this: Get on your knees.
I’ve only heard this a handful of times in my life, and when I do, I obey. My grandmother was on her knees by her bed with her hands clasped every night of her life.
I keep my eyes shut tight, and slide to the floor, and on my knees I give thanks for these people who are fighting this eyeless enemy which has taken so much and so many. And I give thanks for my returning health.
And on my knees with my eyes closed, it occurs to me that I need to give thanks to this enemy not just for my children being home, but for what it has given to our world too. Dolphins in Venice. Greenhouse gas emissions down. Air quality up. Dogs getting adopted. The elderly getting phone calls. Gratitude for our teachers— not just a mug or a plant on Teacher Appreciation Day. Gratitude for open space, parks, wilderness. Birds. Not just on Earth Day. And this word we throw around: community. Global community. Never have we globally had to face head-on the same common crisis. My father used to say, “The problem with your generation is that you haven’t had a world war.” I never knew what he was talking about. I do now.
With the exception of this Empty Nest thing, I’m a silver lining kind of person. So I say it out loud. “Silver lining.” And then the dark cloud comes back in. The thing that I am on my knees cursing and thanking.
“Go now,” I whisper. “We are limping but we will learn your lessons. It’s time for you to go.”
I kneel there and wonder what force I am speaking to with such conviction. The Covid-19 enemy? God? Mother Nature? Myself? It doesn’t much matter. The fact that I’m on my knees does.
Now I definitely smell coffee. When did they get old enough to want coffee? It was hot cocoa two seconds ago.
And I get this Christmas morning feeling in my belly, and a flood of thoughts rush in all at once, no observance of the dam I have worked so hard to build: What will I cook for them today? What new thing will we learn? Maybe they’ll say yes to a slow walk in the woods to test my energy. The fresh air will do us all good. Maybe it will be a beautiful blue sky day. Maybe we’ll read a book together. They used to love reading books with me. And singing and playing instruments before they got driver’s licenses and left to be with their friends. Like normal teens. But maybe they’ll be like they used to be today. Maybe they’ll want to be with me.
I squeeze my eyes tight against this nonsensical longing.
And maybe it’s because I’m on my knees, or because my eyes are still closed, but my mind starts wanting to hug the whole world: We have bread. And coffee. And a family in a house. None of us is alone. Imagine the mothers whose young adult children are alone. Imagine the single mothers who are alone without their children. Imagine the single mothers who are at home with their small children. Out of work. Or trying to work from home. Or pivoting their entire businesses with no food in the cupboard. Imagine being the mother of a brand new baby, born into this time of global unrest. Imagine being pregnant right now. Imagine being in a hospital delivering a baby without your loved ones. Imagine being in a hospital dying without your loved ones.
The same voice that told me to kneel, now says this: You can’t take on the world’s pain. But you can let go of your own by feeling past your own small room. Feel what there is to feel. But don’t sit in it so long that you forget how to heal. Or forget that you can heal. At some point, you have to open your eyes.
It sounds remarkably like my motherhood voice. And I realize that this month in solitude and sickness with none of my usual jobs or usual anything has turned me into a wallowing mess.
And sometimes…we need to wallow.
The door opens then.
My eyes open.
I stand.
There are my son and daughter. He’s holding a tulip in a vase. She’s holding a tray with a cup of tea and some toast on my favorite plate.
Our toast. That we took turns stretching and folding and baking.
I smile, get back into bed, and say, “Thank you!”
They place the tray at the end of my bed and sit in the window seat where I used to let them sleep sometimes when they were little and sick. I measure. Six feet away.
I take a bite of the toast. “You know, you could live on this bread. The sourdough ferments the flour and it’s full of all sorts of health. Funny how bacteria creates life. But you have to feed the starter to keep it alive. So it can do its work.”
They look out the window at the trees and into the hills like they haven’t seen this view in far too long.
I want to freeze time. But everything must move.
I sip my tea and force myself not to break this moment with mothering. Just to observe silence and togetherness and calm.
But I wonder so many things. I wonder what this virus will create in the way of living. For the whole world. And for my world. When I’m the one in the kitchen and the only smells that come from it are made by me. Because that will happen again sooner than later.
I look out the window too. At the view I have seen exclusively for months, and secretly all winter. I decide that when that word alone comes in with its haunt, I will remember this: I have a Mason jar of life in my home that needs to be fed.
And I’ll remember this too: there are always people who like a loaf of homemade bread, once we can see people again. Touch them. Hold them. Look into their eyes.
I look into my children’s eyes and say, “Thank you.”
“You look like you’re feeling a bit better,” my daughter says. “You needed to take a break and rest, Mom. Maybe this has been a blessing in disguise.”
“You should take it easy though,” my son says in his worried voice.
This is one of those moments that a mother of young adults can so easily ruin by wanting too much from it. From them.
But I don’t care. It’s worth the risk. I haven’t hugged them in a month. And I need this exact version of a hug.
“Can I read you a story?” I ask, looking at my collection of children’s books on my bedroom bookshelf.
They look at each other. I can tell they want to roll their eyes and say no. But this is the time of Covid-19. What else is there to say but, “Yes.”
I ask them to pick a book.
They pick one of our old favorites and pass it to me across the rug.
I reach down, where I have just been kneeling, and I open the book, smiling, not crying.
And I read.
And they listen. Really listen.
And I promise myself:
To get on my knees more often.
To make bread.
And to eat it. Alone or not.
To be well.
To stay safe.
To believe in silver linings.
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by Laura Munson | Aug 3, 2023 | Musings, Uncategorized
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As seen on Maria Shriver’s Sunday Paper
Montanans like to say, “You won’t know that a mountain lion’s stalking you until you feel its teeth on the back of your neck.”
For years, I felt that stalking— those teeth. The thing is: I rarely felt that way in the woods. Instead, I felt that way in the grocery store, in my office, doing the laundry, lying in bed at 4 a.m. with my eyes wide open. When the stress of life spiked, I could feel this way for weeks at a time. And I knew that it had to stop.
If you are someone who works very hard, whether in a profession or passion or role of any sort, it’s likely that you know what I mean. And it’s likely that you are keeping it all inside. Smiles on the outside buying broccoli, but duking it out in your mind all-the-while. And on top of that: you know better. That’s the worst part: knowing better.
For years, each morning before I got out of bed— before the fangs threatened to set in my neck— I tried to create a calm and steady clean slate for the day. I had (and still have) different methods: prayer, meditation, breathing, reading poems, writing in my journal. These modalities would start to catch, and I’d feel that liminal lifting into a free, calm place that I hoped I could sustain all day. I figured the more I practiced, the more I’d be free of those seemingly ever-present fangs, and live in serenity and balance. It felt like a matter of life or death.
But all too often, sometimes before I’d even finished brushing my teeth, my ears would be ringing, my brain buzzing, my stomach churning. I’d catch myself holding my breath. My shoulders up in my jawline. My teeth clenched. And again, what made it even worse: I knew better. This quieting of the mind and body seemed insurmountable, no matter how hard I tried. And moreover, I couldn’t keep lying to myself about how severely this pressure (that I put on myself, by the way), ran my life.
There’s nothing like a warning from a dear and dying friend who, two weeks before she died, told me: “You feed that mangy wolf. You don’t have to. I know you and you’ll still create what you need to create. But you can do it differently.”
Her memorial service is what began my quest to find that “differently.” There was a lot of talk about the mangy wolf (which is what she called her cancer). And me with my stalking mangy mountain lion. I walked out into the world after that gathering, and with tears in my eyes, I said, “I will not feed you. Not for one more second. I am not going to compartmentalize my freedom any longer.”
So, I started asking the wise, passionate (and yes, busy) women in my life how they managed their wise, passionate, busy lives…
I realized that I’d been spending too much time talking with the ones who were running from the fangs, like me. Instead, I chose the ones with the true smiles buying broccoli— the ones who say they’re fine and mean it.
I started with a friend who is one of the best balancers of stress I know, as well as the busiest. I ranted: “I love my job. I love teaching and leading writing retreats. I love everything about helping people find their voice and their flow and their ease, using the written word. But every single day I look at my Google calendar and I feel like I need to fasten my seatbelt. There’s too much on it and I’m letting it run my life.”
She paused, giving me time to digest my words. “You can change that if you really want to. The question is: do you really want to? Or is being crazy-busy part of your identity? Have you normalized this behavior because it somehow serves you? That’s the question.”
The heavens opened. “It is not serving me.”
It all started unraveling then, as epiphanies tend to do.
What if I stopped running in this race against myself? Would the sky fall? Likely not. I’d likely still get to my destination, just not out of breath, on fumes, in adrenal blowout, feeling like I’m about to be attacked.
Then my friend said, “I’ve heard you speak about your relationship with your muse. That your writing is your free zone and the way you breathe. Once you’re in the act, there’s no inner critic. The stress is gone. And you’re like a child at play in the field of wonder.”
“That’s the truth,” I replied. “The inner critic— she’s the greatest stress spinner of all. But not while I’m writing. I don’t let her anywhere near that. Same with the retreats and all the teaching I do. Sacrosanct, wonderous, ground.”
My friend’s eyes widened and her smile spread. “So why not treat your whole life the same way? Why not just put down that sword you’re carrying around in all your roles. You’ve proven yourself. You can let yourself breathe now. You can work just as hard, and get just as much out of it, but with self-kindness. Curiosity. Wonder. Calm. Balance. Even freedom.”
Sounded possible. But honestly…improbable. Then I remembered that years ago, when I started leading writing retreats, I asked a wise, veteran, retreat leader friend for some advice. I knew I would be fine in the usual departments: leadership, inspiration, craft-instruction, editing, positive energy, and group dynamics. My concern stemmed from a fear that I wouldn’t know how to keep myself from taking on each individual’s emotions and problems. People who want to write are usually working through high-stakes emotions and high-stakes problems.
She said, “Give half of what you want to give, and it will be more than enough.” It took me a while before I really put her wisdom to work. Once I did, it was metamorphic.
So I made a date with her. “I know how to have good boundaries at my retreats. But not in my relationship with the stressors in my life.”
“Try this.” She put her palms out flat, one to the sky, and the other to the ground, and she stretched her arms as far as they would go in each direction. Then she did the same thing to both sides of herself.
“Ah,” I said. “Protection.”
She smiled. “It’s more than that. Protection implies that there’s something to protect yourself from. Think of it like you’re creating space for yourself that’s only yours. Claimed space. At work. At play. Everywhere you go.”
Huh. Space for myself.
I tried her technique but couldn’t quite fully pull it off. The mangy mountain lion still found a way to break through.
I am a word wanderer. Maybe it was a word that I needed, as the anonymous 14th century Christian mystic prescribed in The Cloud of Unknowing.
“Take a little word of just one syllable to help you focus your attention. The shorter the word the better…Choose a word like ‘God’ or ‘love’ or any other word of one syllable that appeals to you and impress it indelibly on your heart so that it is always there…”
I’d read that book decades ago, written about it, used it as a practice, and lost it along the way. One word. One word that would become a hymn that I could never not hear. A word that played itself inside me, ringing through the rafters of my ribs and sending sound ripples throughout my whole body and whole being.
I thought of my friend’s space-creating practice, and I brought in the word space. Space around me. Space that no one could infiltrate. Space that was pressure-less. Stressless.
Each morning I spent time before I opened my eyes, repeating the word space in my mind, and imagining this free space around me. Not my physical being. My unseen one. My soul. It worked, sort of. But space is such a, well, spacious, massive, unending creature. So, I welcomed other words…and then one day, my Word came to me: room.
Room felt better. A place I could occupy. Room in the way of space, but also a room around me that was all mine. No one was allowed in— like my childhood treehouse. I realized that this is exactly how I feel about my writing, my retreats, and everything I teach…where no mangy mountain lion dares to enter.
Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own” made new and utter sense to me. A room can be a physical place, and I believe that everyone needs a sacred, impenetrable space for themselves, no matter what they do. Even if it’s very small. But suddenly I looked at a room as an inner holding— one that I could fill with the essence of myself.
Because the essence of myself is not running scared, waiting for life to pounce. The essence of myself is in co-creation with something hungry for something entirely pure, joyful, and free. I think of that Word— room— and say it in my mind, and I am instantly centered in this calm, gentle, playful, wonderous, safe inner-worldly (and inner-wordly) place. May you find your Word, too.
Still a few rare spots left on my October 25-29 Haven Writing Retreat! For more info go here.
To book an introductory call, talk about your writing dreams, and how Haven could be a match for you, email me!
You do not have to be a writer to receive all that Haven is. Just a seeker. A word-wanderer. Come finally find your voice, set your writing on fire, and get the teaching, mentorship, and community you deserve! All in the glory of The Dancing Spirit Ranch in stunning Flathead Valley, Montana.
TESTIMONIALS:
If you have always wanted to share your ideas, thoughts, stories through writing or become a better writing coach/teacher Laura Munson’s Haven Writing Retreats are for you. I can honestly say that in all my years as an educator, and as a learner, I have never had such a loving, giving, and deeply moving learning experience as I did under Laura’s expert instruction. Being a writer is such a complex task, and Laura breaks things down so expertly, creates safe spaces, and ensures that you are given the kind of feedback that lifts you and makes you a much better wordsmith than when you first entered her magical place in the Montana mountains. I highly recommend this experience for anyone, no matter where you are in your writing path. What an experience that I will never forget. Thank you, Laura and your Haven!
—Misty from Maine (Educator, School Principal, Director of Curriculum, Coach for Educators, Writer)
Attending Laura Munson’s Haven Writing Retreat fulfilled a bucket list item for me. The Haven experience gave me a new level of validation and confidence I’ve been needing over the last several years. The connection I was able to make with my Haven group was both healing, enlightening, and inspiring. We wrote and read and ate and laughed and cried together. For the first time in my writing life, at Haven, I heard my own voice clear and distinct because I also heard theirs. I understood how and why the way I choose to communicate is not only unique but also important. Laura’s program and approach also helped me make significant progress in solidifying my next writing project. I have a million ideas daily, which is often overwhelming. Attending Haven set me firmly on my current path; now I’m going forward. I highly recommend Haven not only to writers, but also to anyone who needs to take a true beat, to re-connect with who they are, and where they are going.
—Penelope from PA (Author, Professional Speaker)
My experience at Laura Munson’s Haven Writing Retreat was indeed life changing.
I signed up at a point in my life when I wasn’t quite sure if I was a writer, but I knew I loved it and decided to take a leap of faith. I am so incredibly glad I did! I left the retreat knowing I am indeed a writer and with a newfound commitment to tell my story. Laura is a fearless leader, a visionary, and a brilliant teacher. Each day was intensely focused and I found myself having an “aha” moment nearly every hour as, with her guidance, I figured out who I am as a writer and how best to express my story. The sense of community was immediate, and the opportunity to sit in a room of supportive people was a first for me, as I’m sure it is for many. Laura leads critiques with a fearless and positive tone, carefully considering each person’s individual needs.
I am so incredibly grateful for the beautiful Montana location and for Laura’s grace and open hearted joy in lovingly leading a group of writers to the next page in their journey. No matter where you are as writer, at the very beginning, or published multiple times,
the Haven Writing Retreat will expand your soul and stay in your heart forever.
—Lisbeth from Malibu, California
(Composer, singer, songwriter….and writer!)
Whoever declared “Haven is an MFA in five days!” was bang on. This surprising retreat delivers a wealth of publishing information, writing sessions that inspire, sage guidance on narrative structure, gentle while exacting feedback, and, to boot, ongoing writerly support. The setting is a stunning expanse of land, cared for in a sacred way. And all led by Laura Munson, twice over bestselling author, with her fierce command of how to teach writing (by every eclectic means thinkable). What fun we had! And how hard we worked!
If you want to open up your future, I urge you to jump in (and there’s often financial wizardry for those of us penniless, through the Haven Foundation).After five days retreating, a little solo steeping time is suggested before reentering family and community. But when you emerge, words will come with you—words and words and words!
—Kathleen Meyer, author of How to Shit in the Woods, Victor, MT