Laura Munson’s Personal Blog
Welcome to my blog: a place to learn how to write and about all things writerly, a place to get inspired by writing prompts, a place to take Montana and Motherhood adventures, a place to know that you are not alone…
Spread Love (not viruses)
I have letters from my family that go back to the 1918 flu epidemic. Many of them. And they all talk about the Grippe in a beautiful, dedicated, and terrified ink script: “Dear, Son. I knitted you this sweater. Please wear it and your wool overclothes that Papa and I sent along last Christmas, as often as you can. Soak in Epsom salts if you feel a fever coming on. Also, after this comes to you,...
Why I Wrote WILLA’S GROVE: Finding your So Now What?
As seen on Women's Writers, Women's Books Book ideas are always coming to me. I’m usually working on a few at the same time and always in different genres—different ways to find the truth. That’s what I’m after: truth. Each book begins with a central question—some quirk of humanity that gnaws away at me. Or something that fills me with righteous indignation, and I burn with it so hot that I have...
Taking Your Message on the Road
Dedicated to anyone who gets on stages with a message they care about. Pre-order your copy of Willa's Grove from your local bookstore or here for its March 3rd release! ***My new website, with all the event links, launches this week...so stay tuned! For now, all of my event info can be found on the above websites. Most every author I know both loves and dreads the book tour. I’m in the...
The (C)Harm in Asking: A You’re Welcome attitude
Why is asking for help so hard? These days I have a list of things I need help with, and it always brings up so many uncomfortable emotions: guilt (that I need help in the first place), shame (that I might not be worth it), fear (of being rejected), worry (that I will be judged)…and on and on. Maybe you can relate. My needs run the gamut from splitting and stacking wood, plowing my driveway,...
Sacred Solitude: a holiday date with your vulnerability
I write a lot about pain. I always have. Writing moves the pain through me and moves me through it. Some of that pain-processing stays in my journal, but a lot of it ends up in my newsletters, blogs, social media posts, essays, and books. Over the years people have asked me why I would be willing to be so vulnerable on the page. If you knew me when I was a child, you wouldn’t ask that question....
Community or Netflix: (get off your couch)
So this is new: going out socially as a single entity. I’ve never really done it. Not in my daily life. I mean—yeah—to the grocery store, or kids’ sporting events, or whatever quotidian life has required. But socially…I’ve always travelled in some version of a pack. And in that pack, I feel an innate belonging. When I travel, it’s the other way. I’m a solo act and I love it. I love to get that...
Finding Our So Now What
Pre-order Willa's Grove now! (from your local bookstore, or here) Book ideas are always coming to me. I’m usually working on a few at the same time and always in different genres—different ways to find the truth. That’s what I’m after: truth. Each book begins with a central question—some quirk of humanity that gnaws away at me. Or something that fills me with righteous indignation, and I burn...
The Magic of the Woods: A lesson in wonder
I love to wander in the woods this time of year, when the forest yields its last fruits: the river birches and aspens going gold, the mountain maples blazing red, and the larch starting to think about their green needles turning flaxen and carpeting the forest floor. After twenty-seven Montana winters, I always get this pioneer sixth sense at the start of October. Suddenly I’m scaling the forest...
The “Me Time” Medal: a week of wellness
What does it take, I wonder, to just…stop? To stop the madness of pushing buttons and swiping, clicking, scrolling from one screen to the next, taking trains, planes, and automobiles here and there and everywhere, booking that appointment up against the one before it and the one after it…instead of taking that hour to…eat? Take a walk? Stretch? Or not do anything at all except…breathe? I...
How to Survive Empty Nest (AKA: Mommy Massage Money)
For those of you who are looking at the last weeks of August with dread, clinging to what last licks of summer magic you can put in your proverbial jar and hoard in your proverbial pantry all winter…and especially for those of you who are facing Empty Nest for the first time, and ESPECIALLY if you are a single mother facing Empty Nest for the first time…this is for you. But it also applies to...
Creativity: The great fear-buster
Now Booking my Fall Haven Writing Retreats in Montana... September 18-22 ( one spot left) September 25-29 (a few spots left) You do not have to be a writer to come...just someone who is deeply longing to find your voice and set it free. Click here for more info and to contact me to set up a call... Running specials through 7.31! I wanted to name a child Haven. But when I met my children...
The Purge: Reclaiming my office. Reclaiming my solitude.
Do you have a place in your home where you let all the things you don’t want to deal with stack up? And then ignore it for so long that you can feel its teeth in the back of your neck every time you pass it by? I do. It’s my office. The room at the bottom of the stairs, one step removed from family activity. A place I could steal away to when I most needed it. The place that for years was my...
How to Not Hate Writing an “About Me” Page…
There is something that has been on my list for a month, and every time it finds its way to the top, it gets somehow pushed back into the mix. Okay…fine. I somehow bury it. Maybe you can relate. It’s the About Me section for my new website, and my Author Bio for my novel coming out next year—basically the same thing: capturing the essence of who I am and what I have done that might be of value...
Inside Out and Backwards
For the last few months I have been putting on my clothes…wait for it: not just backwards, but inside out too. Backwards and inside out. Over and over again. What’s that about? Is it the disorientation of Empty Nest? Is it a mourning period after a one month high of solo travel in Morocco? Is it that I’m alone for the first time in my LIFE on a consistent basis? Whatever it is, I finally...
How to Find YOU in Empty Nest
You know when you run a life marathon, and it’s over? And you’re lying in your bed staring at the ceiling wondering how to stop running? That’s where I am. Right now. It started with the moon last night, like a clementine section moving from window pane to window pane. And then with the first bird, calling me out of Mother’s Day and reminding me that they’re doing the nesting now, not me. And...
Mother’s Day
(as featured on BlogHer) Give your mother, your daughter, yourSELF the gift of a Haven Writing Retreat! Now Booking my fall retreats: Sept 18-22 Sept 25-29 The other day I was wondering about my great-grandmother and the land she came to Illinois to Homestead with her husband and eight kids. I have a photograph of the family in my office, all seated in their finest clothes around a buffalo...
The Art of Being Led
I went to Morocco alone for a month to find “that girl” again. I’d grieved my Empty Nest for the six months I gave myself. A grief “gift,” I called it. I observed the end of this stage of my full-time motherhood in committed vigil. And I realized that I can live with dinners for one and a very quiet house, (even if it’s been heavy on Mrs. Maisel, Chef’s Table, and Anthony Bourdain...
Sent from my iPhone by Laura Munson
I haven’t lived in a city since cell phones or emails or the internet infiltrated our civilization. So as much as I long for my inner-child Chicago city fix, especially in the deep midwinter dormancy of Montana, when I get that fix, I’m always stunned, disoriented, and frankly worried for our world. The romance of the city, the beat and brash and bravado, the sensory glut, the shiny slick, and...
The Complete Puzzle
My kids and I spent hours and hours of our holiday this year, doing jigsaw puzzles. It was their idea. I couldn’t really get them to do puzzles when they were little, but suddenly it’s “Mom, can we do a puzzle?” and I’m thrilled. No screens. No polite or forced let’s-make-this-moment-count conversations. Just hanging out, focused on putting something together…together. Laughs. Loose...
Come Together…Right Now.
There have been two events in the last week that have brought deep calm and hope to me where I didn’t know hope was missing. I hadn’t realized how much the news had been weighing on me. I’ve felt a responsibility to watch it, read it, try to understand it-- but I think that the current state of this country has been breaking me down from the inside out. Hard. And I now know I’m not alone. For...
