by Laura Munson | May 15, 2019 | Motherhood
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 perhaps that’s why I signed up for the marathon. To fill up my life so that I wouldn’t have to sit in my empty nest, alone.
My marathon went like this: a month in Morocco, traveling solo after consciously uncoupling with my beloved partner (sigh), leading a Haven Writing Retreat at the end, returning home, beginning the final editing process on my novel with my editor, leading a Haven Writing Retreat in Montana, preparing for Haven II– my advanced workshop for Haven Alums writing books which requires hours and hours of editing, leading Haven II, editing the final copy of my novel (coming out in March 2020—a very old dream), leading one day workshops in the homes of Haven alums in Minneapolis, leading another Haven Writing Retreat in Montana, and coming home to an empty house on Mother’s Day, Skyping with my kids, mother, and sister, and then lying in the sun listening to my Haven Muse Music list on Spotify all afternoon. And I’ll admit it, crying myself to sleep. Until I woke at 4:00 am. Then lay awake until now.
I cried because it is such an honor to be a holder of sacred space for people. I cried because I can hardly believe that this is where my life has landed, doing this work, and I can’t imagine my life without it. I cried because I am alone and miss the daily-ness of life with the people I have loved in this house, and yet I cried in gratitude knowing I am so not alone. I cried because while so much of my life is about creating temporary community now, that feeds people’s souls in ways that blow my mind every time, at the end…they leave. That’s the way it works. Just like the act of daily motherhood. It ends. I cried because I have spent six years with the four women in my novel and they have to leave too. They are real to me and I don’t want to let them go. It’s become the theme of my life: building community, and letting it go. And I need a flipside. I need a community that stays, and one that I’m not in charge of.
But where to begin? My place in this town has always had to do with my kids and serving their pursuits and the institutions and people who serve them. Where is my place here now? I know so many of us are asking this question, especially as single mothers in empty nest. How do we do this new chapter of our lives? I know this for sure: We shouldn’t rush it. We need to go slowly. And carefully.
So right now, it’s the Moroccan prayer rugs that bedeck the rooms of my house, the poppies, peonies, lupine, columbine, forget-me-nots, lily of the valley that are re-emerging from my garden soil, the nesting birds in their full-blown springtime purpose. The white-tailed deer in the tall grass at the edge of my lawn each morning when I open my door, that startle but that don’t run. The frogs in the marsh at dusk when I close my door to the first star. The spiders that spin in my windows and drop from my ceilings. The mice I hear in my walls, but lately don’t want to catch.
When I am not holding circles of women on retreat from their lives, full-freefalling into their beautifully unique voices, this slice of Montana is my current community now. And it’s a sacred one, though so so different from how it has been. I have to find out who I am with these empty rooms, and the same piece of lint on the laundry room floor as yesterday. The tea bag in the sink from this morning. The water bottle still on the porch from last week. Things have slowed to an almost standstill in my personal world—from not just my recent marathon, but a twenty-five-year-long marathon…to a full-stop—and I have to learn to be content with that.
That said, I need my own circle of connection. And, Steven Colbert and James Corden, as much as I adore you…you don’t count. Social media does feel like community in some generous and inspiring ways. But I need actual bodies to interact with. Causes to champion. In-between-time talks like I used to have in the parking lot with mothers and fathers after we dropped our kids off to school or after a board meeting. “Hey, want to grab a cup of tea?” “How about a walk?” That doesn’t happen sitting on your front porch listening to frogs.
Mine is a little universe that needs to expand in new ways. So, first step, and yes slowly…in a few days, after two brutal years of life without canine companions, I’m adopting two big dogs. It’s time. The dogs will bring me off the porch and into the woods, but also to the dog park, and the Whitefish Trails, full of people and animals interacting. They’ll bring new energy into the house, and since they’re adopted, it’s likely that they’ll bring with them a very special brand of gratitude, like the other adopted dogs I’ve had over the years. The last thing these dogs have to do is move on. And the one thing they both will want to feel, is safe and happy in their new pack. Like me. New chapters for all three of us.
And then, after that, it’s time to step back into my community. One foot at a time. But it can’t be just because I fear being alone, or need to feel purposeful. It has to be intentional and sustainable. It’s not about my kids any more. It’s about me and my gifts and how I can give back. And here’s the big one: how I receive. Someone asked me recently: “Do you know how to receive without giving?” It was a damn good question. “I’m not sure,” I said. “I haven’t had a lot of practice.” Maybe it’s that I haven’t created ways to practice.
But either way, giving and receiving require stepping outside of my comfort zone and consciously connecting. It means reading the local newspaper and stopping at community bulletin boards in the café and grocery store. It means showing up at fund-raisers and events and having conversations with the local movers and shakers and decision-makers and inspirers, and probably joining a non-profit board…but it means not filling my life to the gills so that I don’t keep anything for myself. Which means it’s important to create sacred space to be just me in my new life, in communion with self. Not running a marathon, but lying on the prayer rugs with two big dogs. And staring at the ceiling. But not sadly. Instead, full in the best way, having given and received and having been led…and maybe leading too.
I have no idea what my new place will be, and who will be in it. But I’m ready for it. To give to it. And to receive from it. Thank you, in advance to whatever and whoever you are. Let’s have a blast! But not a marathon, please.
Now Booking our fall Haven Writing Retreats 2019
You do NOT have to be a writer to come– just a seeker who loves the written word, and longs to find your unique voice. It’s here…in the stunning wilderness of Montana! Click for more info. (my favorite time of year. Still warm during the day. Fire in the fireplace at night.)
Sept 18-22
Sept 25-29
***note Both June retreats are full…
by Laura Munson | Jan 23, 2019 | Motherhood
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 glorious edge…all come at me catapult. I want to feel every bit of it. So I fight to keep my Montana filter-less-ness. I want to do a daring dance with empathy, staring it all down…knowing that I will have to turn away sooner than later, blur my eyes, hold my breath past remarkable stench and heart break. Still, I ask my heart to pound in pace with city vibrato, until I have to ask my better-sense to grab the back of my neck and force it forward. Downward. Observing only my boots and the sidewalk. You can’t take it all in, in the end, but I like to try for a wide-eyed aperture for as long as I can stand it.
I try to make that filter-less-ness last as long as I can because I want to see who we’ve become. I want to see that screens and satellite beams criss-crossing invisibly around us haven’t wound us so tight that we won’t be able to find our way out of this world wide web, if need be. (I sense that there will be a Need Be.) I want to believe that these buttons we push without a click or a feel to them, are making our lives easier and our propensity to wonder about the person crossing the street, greater. I want to believe that because it is possible to know so much now with those buttons and those screens and satellite strings…that we’re using that knowledge to linger in our longing to know each other. Yes? To sit longer at a meal and ask an extra question of our colleague or daughter or friend. To smile on the subway, especially at sad eyes, or to meet them with our own sad eyes. To step out of the sidewalk sea and sit on a bench for no other reason than: all of this knowledge has turned us into supreme seeking beings and it begs us to stop. Watch. Feel. See. Know. I want to believe all of that. But sitting there on a bench, watching the sidewalk sea…I don’t. I see people walking faster and faster and the beat driving them harder and harder. So serious and so purpose-driven and so confident about what’s around the bend.
Last week in San Francisco, after leading Haven Writing Workshops, helping people to figure out how to write a book and how to find their voices and figure out what they have to say…I sat there on a bench and I asked myself: How purposefully and confidently can we really walk when we depend on a small rectangle of light and its buttons and arrows to tell us where to go right and left, and when to walk straight or take a slight turn…or re-calculate. Or push in a few numbers and have a car appear that takes us where we want to go so that we don’t have to look at all. We seem so cock-sure. But my Montana-ness knows that it’s such a thin veneer and I wanted to cry out, “Don’t you all know how incapacitated we have all become??? How reliant? How clueless? Don’t you realize how fickle our power is if it depends on a cord or a battery or a plug???” Where oh where is our true power?
Because if and when the beams stop beaming and we are released from the satellite string…nay, rope….will we look up and at each other and say, “Woah. That was a weird dream. I dreamed I was fine. Great, even. But I’m not fine. Or great. At all. And you don’t look much better. Let’s not even ask each other how we are. Let’s just be with one another. That looks like a nice park bench. Come, let’s sit for a while and tell each other our stories. Without looking at that little rectangle of light thingy, whatever it is. Let me see your hand. It looks tired from holding that flat ‘smart’ thing. Remember when your hand used to hold reins and gallop to the river? Or hold the plow? Or palm the seed by the light of the full moon? Was that better then? Did we look at each other more? Did we not know where we were going but for news from the next town over from a wayward traveler? Or from the way cottonwoods flank river beds across a valley? Or that the shape of a nine-month pregnant belly meant that the world around that woman needed to ready itself for another miracle? Get the hot water boiling. Sterilized rags. Call the midwife?
Is our midwife named Siri now? (At least mine has a British accent, so I feel “smart” to have a chum like her when I wander around at her discretion, muttering to myself, this is not the zombie apocalypse. This is not the zombie apocalypse.)
Because that’s the thing: I have to be careful not to pretend like I am above any of it just because I don’t live in the thick of it. If Montana has taught me anything, it’s that I know I’m not above anything. In fact, being so removed from our city civilization for twenty-seven years, often has me in a state of less-than, full-FOMO, feeling like an underconfident and yes, under-competent Rip VanWinkle. Like when I’m in the city, I’ve been jolted awake from my own deep sleep, the opposite dream, in which I’ve been too long nestled in the cleavage of Mother Nature, going days without speaking to anyone, my only witness, the white-tailed deer. My cell phone doesn’t even work at my house. My wifi is fickle and so is my power. The fireplace is not decorative. It’s a hearth that would burn if all else failed in the way of technology, and there have been plenty of winter nights when it’s the keeper of my hope too. And I lie there staring at its flickering coals and feeling its heat, thinking that fire is where it all started. Fire was the initial step that humans took to what has become our giant step into our current state of things. How different was that first spark from what happens in Microsoft think-tanks in Palo Alto?
So I wonder:
Have we always been like we are now, just with different gizmos and the same ambition? So cock-sure in our questions and so hungry for answers? Did we claw our way up the invention ladder to this world of technology that has become our norm, yes even in Montana, (though my best friend still has dial-up and doesn’t have a cell phone at all), and has our technology really made life easier? Has it really connected us? How do we really feel…alone in the dark with our little rectangular screens giving us answers about where to go and what to do and how someone else is feeling and what they are doing?
All week long, walking the city streets, I saw despair, is what I saw. Emptiness. A lot of people in comfortable, yet chic, shoes, a yoga mat slung over their shoulder, ears full of headphones, Bluetooth, earbuds, talking into the ozone. Loudly. I saw people looking into screens for answers, not into each others’ eyes. The conversations that came easily were with– get this: Uber and Lyft drivers…most of them new to this country and trying to figure it out too. And thus, also looking at screens for answers—shortest route, traffic, construction. But still, into the rearview mirror, asking me how my day was going. I didn’t tell them any of this. I told them “Great!” Like everyone else. I guess a filter can only last so long, unless you want your heart to break.
So before it did, with two more days in the city, I promised to linger longer at each table with my little rectangular notebook instead of my phone. Pen to paper I wrote what I could see and recognize about our city civilization that lasts, regardless of how we have, and will continue to, develop as a species. I asked myself: what’s been here from the beginning and what will be with us always, besides the fact that none of us is getting out of here alive.
It was the stuff you’d think it was. I wrote:
I believe in people’s central goodness. Just look at the way that man helped that older woman with the cane get to her seat, and waited with her until she was settled.
I believe in our need for community. Just look at the way this restaurant has a communal table and that it’s fuller than the bar.
I believe in our fear. Everyone’s talking about the earthquake last night and recalling 1989. And no one is cavalier. “Isn’t there a way for them to know when they’re coming?” I asked. No. Not even Siri can tell us that.
I believe in the collective. Otherwise, why wouldn’t we all do as my literary hero, and perhaps me too:
“The world that used to nurse us
now keeps shouting inane instructions.
That’s why I ran to the woods.”
― Jim Harrison
I believe in our ability to stay. Hold vigil. Keep the hearth warm, whatever that means for each of us. The tenacity of the homeless who brave the nights in doorways with one blanket and maybe some cardboard.
I also believe in our hope. When it’s time to take a new step in a new direction. And it might be a surprise step. I believe in our ability to believe that there’s something around the bend that might change everything, and it might change everything for the better. Better being a relative term.
And I think all of these core beliefs apply to any sort of living—country, city, suburban. But it does require us stopping from time to time, moment to moment, and removing the filter to check in on where our civilization is and isn’t. So find a bench. A stoop. Some steps. And stop. Take pause.
I’m about to go to Morocco for a month of it. Alone. This is my deep bow after all these years of day-to-day hands-on mothering. It’s also my call to action for what’s ahead—to live into it bravely and whole-heartedly. And who knows if my cell phone or my GPS will help me navigate the labyrinthine medinas and markets and if I’ll find my way effectively across the desert. I don’t speak Arabic, or even French. I’m going to get by on these core beliefs. I’ll be writing about it along the way. I think we all need to take a giant step out of our lives and see who we really are, alone in the world, without technology. Become disoriented and wobbly and look our fear in the eye and each others’ fear too. I found some good walking shoes. My daughter gave me a beautiful blank-paged journal for Christmas. I have a good book. I have my beliefs and I have my central goodness, which I have to believe is greater than my fear. Just like love. Just…like…you.
Bon Voyage.
Love,
Laura
Now Booking Haven Writing Retreats 2019
You do NOT have to be a writer to come– just a seeker who loves the written word, and longs to find your unique voice. It’s here…in the stunning wilderness of Montana! Click for more info.
March 20-24 (full with wait list)
May 8-12 (ah, the sweet month of May in Montana…darling buds and all.)
June 12-16 (great time of year for teachers. Time to fill YOUR cup!)
June 26-30 (ditto)
Sept 18-22 (my favorite time of year. Still warm during the day. Fire in the fireplace at night.)
Sept 25-29 (ditto)
***Haven Wander: Morocco (February 2019) is full
by Laura Munson | Jan 4, 2019 | Motherhood
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 language. Thoughts that spilled out as words when we weren’t looking. I loved every minute of it. No “can you set the table” or “get dressed–the guests are coming in half an hour!” or “you need a haircut” or “hurry—we only have ten minutes to get to our gate.” Just blah-blah-blahing in a way we haven’t really blah-blah-blahed in a long time. And a lot of it was because I didn’t put the puzzle off on a side table in a side room. I put it front and center on the kitchen table. At meal time, we just threw down placemats and ate with the growing assemblage of little pieces below us. I felt those puzzle pieces’ hope for wholeness. And maybe mine too.
I loved puzzles as a child, knowing that there was a complete story that had been “whole” once and had deliberately been parsed into pieces for me to arrange and put back together. Maybe I was co-dependent that way, or a “fixer,” or just wanted to have faith that life had pieces that were part of a whole that made sense. A world I could count on and maybe even control. I would sit there for hours, doing puzzles. My parents used to marvel at how “good” I was at it. How “patient” I was. How much of a “stick-to-it-er” I was. I got such satisfaction at being called “good” at putting things together, especially when it was hard.
I also loved my china animals and played with them in the woods, tucking them into the forest floor and having trillium and fairy slipper parties with pine needle upside-down-cake and stone soup. Inherently, they broke. So I spent a lot of time with Super Glue as a child too, priding myself on how you could barely tell that my little china wonders had broken in the first place. Later, I got into mosaics—saving every single broken piece of china in my life in a box that travelled with me through my 20s and 30s until I finally had a home that I could count on, and started making mosaics for my garden steps. In short, I’ve been the assembler of broken bits.
I won’t say that my family is broken. I’ve never been able to tolerate the phrase “broken home” even when I was married and had my little family pack intact. Nothing is broken when there is love involved. And there is so much love at this table of mine with these two kids. BUT…they don’t live here anymore.
So what do I put back together? The likely answer is: me. I need to fix…me.
What pieces do I need to fix? If I’m that little girl at the puzzle table…and I get very very real…well, I need to fix my fear. My fear of, now what. My fear of Who am I just sitting alone in my house with all these pieces everywhere? My fear of all these stacks and piles that have accumulated over the years when my motherhood had to trump everything else. And yes, my fear of table-for-one. My fear of just me and so many pieces to put together all on my own. All through the holidays, I felt this overwhelming sense of, “It’s all on my shoulders. And shit man—I have really sturdy shoulders. Maybe this is what I was meant to be: A master puzzler. (If Will Shortz is reading this, will you marry me? Or at least come over for the Sunday morning puzzle over some really great Earl Grey?)
A master puzzler. Because I can tell you: I am not afraid of the pieces. At all. I expect them, in fact. Don’t you? I mean, life comes in puzzle pieces. So…maybe it’s the whole, that I’m actually afraid of. Huh. Maybe I’m afraid to trust that I will feel whole again, just me. That really scares me.
But why wouldn’t we believe in our wholeness? Why is it so much easier to believe in our brokenness? Some of us don’t believe there’s a whole, complete picture. But I do. I’m just trying to live into it, knowing that it changes as it grows, if I’m living it with any faith. That’s where I need to put my energy: on faith in the future. Not fear of it.
So…the kids gone. Me alone. Do I keep cooking elaborate meals like I have all Christmas and New Years– table for one in my own home? Do I do puzzles by myself? I can’t imagine that. Do I sit in the silence and write and write and write and take walks in the snowy woods and remember to take my cell phone because what if I need help out there? Mountain lions et al. Do I furiously fill up my house with friends and other people seeking community? Book group on Mondays, friend pot luc on Wednesdays, movie night on Fridays?
Or do I just let the pieces fall where they may and NOT pick them up anymore? What if I just let someone else pick them up? Or no one at all. I’m not talking about my bills and my taxes and my job and the pieces of my children’s lives that are still not totally independent. I’m talking about my heart. For all the times I judged women who came undone after their children left home, I’m now having a “sit down” with myself, as my grandmother used to say. I have not come undone. Not in the way that has people worried, myself included. It’s more in a way of finding what felt like a complete puzzle in an old drawer and breaking it apart so that I can do it all over again. Not cheating—but taking the chunks of whole sections and breaking them apart…so that they can become more whole. Starting from scratch. Only now, it’s not my little girl fingers. Or my mother fingers. It’s these fingers. They’re wrinkly and veiny and worn. I like these fingers. Now to like this puzzle of my life.
Here’s my solution: I’m taking off. For a month. Leave it all behind. Let the memories sort themselves out, let the well argue with the sceptic tank, and the pipes fight to stay warm all on their own. (please God). I’m going somewhere vastly different from where I live. I’m going to Morocco for the first time and I’m going solo. The more I plan it, the more I imagine myself in serious disorientation. Puzzle pieces on a table I’ve never seen before, and I’ve lost the box with the picture on top. Buses through foreign soil, small riads run by families and who knows if I’m their only guest– so it’s just me sitting there alone in courtyards in Fez, and Marrakech, Chefchaouen, and Essaouira, and gosh. Who knows who I will be.
I do know what I can count on, and that feels good. I know I’ll be hungry for delicious food. I’ll want to wander in nooks and crannies where not a lot of people go. I’ll want to sit at cafes and write. I’ll want to go to little artisanal shops and please don’t let me buy any more rugs. Well…maybe just…one. (I have a rug problem. c. Istanbul, 1986). I’ll want to ride a Barb-Arabian horse if I can find one. Preferably on a beach. I truly believe this trip is the antidote to my fear of what comes next in my life. Because I’ll be focusing on what I want, instead of what everybody else wants. And it won’t be considered selfish. I won’t let it be considered selfish. I’ll know, in my deepest heart of hearts, that it is absolutely mandatory for the next stage of my life. This is ME TIME, ladies and gentlemen of the unusually cruel jury that lives in my head. I’m going to go do what I want. Damnit.
If I back up to when I didn’t have children, I can say that I had more confidence in the complete puzzle. I saw it. I had the guy, the dreams, the house, the will. And BOY did I have the confidence.
Maybe that’s what I’m after: the confidence. Or maybe just the blind belief in it all. The complete puzzle.
Anthony Bourdain said he felt lonely a lot of the time, traveling around the world, having these incredible meals in these incredible places and not having anyone to share it with at the end of the day. Tony, maybe you absorbed our pain so that we can have a brighter future. (We miss you. I’m not sure that I’d marry you, though. In case you asked.) I want light now. Delight! What the holidays beg for: comfort and joy! I had it this holiday. Now to move into 2019 with more of the same. Just…me!
Yesterday, we shoved the Christmas tree out the French doors and put all the ornaments in the attic for next year. We finished the last puzzle. The first one was of doors. #symbolic. The last one was of a grizzly bear with a whole world of Montana, and of its tribe, in its body like it swallowed itself whole. And after they were all in bed, late night, I looked at it. Whole. And I thought, this is what I am now. This bear. I have swallowed my life whole, and now it’s time to swallow myself whole.
I felt lit from within. And I said it out loud. “That’s what I’m going to do. What my literary hero, Jim Harrison, declared for himself.”
I’ve decided to make up my mind about nothing, to assume the water mask,
to finish my life disguised as a creek, an eddy, joining at night the full, sweet flow, to absorb the sky,
to swallow the heat and the cold, the moon
and the stars, to swallow myself
in ceaseless flow.
To swallow myself in ceaseless flow. Whatever that means. If I find it in Morocco…I’ll let you know. I’ll hold the torch, in case you need it. In case you need to know that open doors await you if you just walk through. You are not alone in your fear or in your life. And really…I’m not either. We are in this together. We just have to get ourselves out into the world of puzzle pieces and try to put it all together best we can.
So happy New Year, everyone. May we step out of our fear and into our next…best…us.
Love,
Laura
Now Booking Haven Writing Retreats 2019
You do NOT have to be a writer to come– just a seeker who loves the written word, and longs to find your unique voice. It’s here…in the stunning wilderness of Montana! Click for more info.
March 20-24 (full with wait list)
May 8-12 (ah, the sweet month of May in Montana…darling buds and all.)
June 12-16 (great time of year for teachers. Time to fill YOUR cup!)
June 26-30 (ditto)
Sept 18-22 (my favorite time of year. Still warm during the day. Fire in the fireplace at night.)
Sept 25-29 (ditto)
***Haven Wander: Morocco (February 2019) is full
by Laura Munson | Jul 22, 2018 | Motherhood
Part One
Ten years ago, I watched my friend go through Empty Nest. Her solution: drive a massive ice-breaking truck at the McMurdo Research Center in Antarctica. She brought some home-made hula hoops too, and a few instruments, because she’d never go anywhere without those personal items. She faced Empty Nest with something more like…Empty Next— with the same electrifying spirit and adventure with which she’d raised her boy and girl…and now they were off to see the world. And she was too.
At that time in my life, my boy and girl were still thick in the throes of music lessons and sports events and homework at the kitchen table and weekend slumber parties. I couldn’t imagine letting them go, much less letting myself go. Not like that. I was sad for her, even though I knew she’d come back with tales to tell and more life experience under her frost-bitten belt. But I felt like she was avoiding the grief…going so far away. It looked like running away to me.
I mentioned it to another friend and she said, “Are you kidding? Motherhood is great. But you’re always a mother, even after they leave. It’s just different. Your kids are on to new things, and you should be too! And you get to have your life back!”
My life back? I felt like I was just getting the life I’d dreamed about. Being a mother was the most fulfilling thing I’d ever done. Sure, I’d travelled all over the place in my teens and twenties with a backpack on my back. Intrepid, stubborn, solo, and full of wonder. Writing my way through it all. But it felt like all of that was preparation for the most hair-raising, plot-twisting, heart-warming, soul-feeding work of my life: raising children.
And I did it. I did it well. For twenty-two years.
And here I am. In a few weeks, my boy will go to college. My daughter just graduated from college and moved into an apartment in San Francisco. She’s got a great job, great friends. He’s got a great roommate and will be living out his dream playing baseball at an institute of higher learning. I couldn’t be more proud. We’ll move him in. My daughter will go back to the city. I’ll come back here to my house in Montana. It’ll all be over. That part. And I’m afraid of the grief. I’m not afraid of my future. I’m just afraid of who I’ll be without them. Here. In my empty nest. In short, this last month has been excruciating. And I want so deeply to appreciate these last weeks.
This helps: (maybe it will help you if you are a parent with a child soon leaving…)
So…just like my friend…I anticipated this pain. About two years ago, I started imagining the next chapter of my life. The fear of Empty Nest had me by the throat, even then. But I took my friend’s lead, and my other friend’s comment, and I decided that I was going to grab this next chapter by the ponytail and yank the weeping woman attached to it back out into the world. To trust-fall into travel and adventure, only as the woman she is now. Exactly as she is.
So this winter, I’m hitting the road. I’m going to live my own version of breaking the ice on Antarctica, only for me…it’s with my journal. I’ve started a new Haven Writing Program: Haven Wander. First stop: Morocco.
My primary Haven programs are still here in Montana, and you can bet that I scheduled four of them back-to-back for this fall with the express intention of healing Empty Nest in my own back yard by doing the nurturing work I most love outside my motherhood– helping people to find their voice through the power of the written word.
But for people who are less writing-focused and more travel-focused…I have a new adventure and it utilizes yes, my experience facilitating meaningful small group experiences in the grandeur of the Rockies…but now in exotic places around the globe!
For my first Haven Wander, I found the perfect place and the perfect people to help me plan this remarkable, priceless, uniquely local Haven program, and it lands us in a small village outside of Marrakesh, Morocco. With the help of these fabulous and inspiring locals, I have spent the last two years putting together a week of intentional wandering around Morocco, using the Haven Wander Portfolio as our guide. It will be a feast for the senses and soul, and with a component of giving back through Project SOAR, to empower young women in finding their voices. I’m going first to get the lay of the land, my journal and me, so that I’m rooted and ready when the women join me for our first Haven Wander.
Personally, I do want to see who that stubborn young dreamer was with that backpack on her back, traipsing around the former Yugoslavia and Turkey, and all over Europe in the mid-’80s. I know she’s still in me and I do want to see what her confidence and curiosity is all about. And I also want to meet her with the wisdom she’s gathered along the way as a mother and as a woman and an author. I want to scoop her up and tell her that she doesn’t have to do it alone. She can do it in the company of kindreds. Because I’m pretty sure that the nest travels with you, wherever you go. And you don’t have to live it empty. You can live it with a small group of women who are just as curious and just as hungry for connection with the world outside their front door as you are. Who long to have their senses activated in a rich and deep way, and who want to learn and fill their souls with powerful and meaningful experiences.
I want to sit her down on benches and on Mosque steps and in public gardens and seaside café tables…and ask her to be still. To watch. To listen. To be. After all, she never had a cell phone. Or a screen of any kind in that backpack. She had a journal. And curiosity. And courage. I want to scoop her up and merge with her, and tell her that she becomes a very good mother of exceptional beings who fledge well. And that she gets to have a new chapter of her life. And it’s going to be wonderful.
So Haven Wander: Morocco is hatching this February. I’m taking seven women on a one week journey of intentional living and being, using writing as our guide. As for me, I’m going to take the whole month and write my way through this first blush of Empty Nest. I’m going to start imagining who this next me is. Who she’s always been and who she became and who she is becoming and will become.
In this next chapter, I want to wander all over the world. I want to go to places that scare me a little, that feel exotic, and I’m going to do it with these small, temporary communities of women who need this as badly as I do. The sky is the limit. Uruguay. Ethiopia. Kathmandu. Thailand. But first…Morocco.
Part Two
Before that, though…first and foremost…when I get back home from college drop off, to this empty nest, (and even this Empty Next)…before the back-to-back fall Haven Writing Retreats and Haven Wander: Morocco…I know I need a very deliberate and very serious pause between chapters. A full stop to honor it all.
So I’m borrowing from the Jewish tradition of sitting shiva. I’ve always been fascinated by the power of this tradition of sitting shiva for a week after someone dies. Of stopping your world and observing the loss and your grief, and the life that has left. I’m going to have my personal version of it. But not in uncomfortable chairs. I need soft pillows for this.
I’ll light a candle and sit on my screened porch in my favorite chair, and reflect in thought and prayer, and write in my journal. No TV. No screens at all. Just observations of my motherhood and who these children of mine have been:
I’ll sit my personal version of shiva for my babies turned little ones turned big, and my mothering of them. I’ll sit shiva for all the learning to crawl and learning to walk and learning to speak and running barefoot in the grass and swinging on the swing set and making mudpies.
I’ll sit shiva for piano lessons and guitar lessons and school plays and orchestra concerts and soccer games and track meets and football games and baseball baseball baseball. I’ll sit shiva for all the birthday balloons on the garden archway and all the streamers taped to the corners of the porch and the dining room and down the banister.
I’ll sit shiva for the pony rides in the front yard and the badminton, and the croquet, and bocce, and backgammon and cards and Farkle and Scrabble on the screened porch by candlelight. For all the bonfires and marshmallows and star-gazing in sleeping bags on the dewy cool grass. For every ahhhhh to every shooting star. And every ooooo to every falling one.
And then, I’ll borrow the rest of this Jewish custom. On the seventh day, I’ll take a walk around my land, all four corners of my twenty acres, and then return to my front porch to symbolize my return to society. I may even call my rabbi friend to read these customary words from the Old Testament:
No more will your sun set, nor your moon be darkened, for God will be an eternal light for you, and your days of mourning shall end. (Isaiah 60:20)
My kids always say, “Mom. You walk so confidently without having any idea where you’re going. You even walk confidently in the wrong direction.” They’re making fun of me, of course, in their own way. Millennials. They’ve never navigated directions without their noses in their GPS screens, robots telling them when and where to turn. I doubt they really know their right from their left, frankly.
“I know where I’m going,” I tell them. “Essentially. I like taking an unexpected turn. I like asking actual human beings how to get to the train station. Siri and Uber have done our civilization a grand injustice! I can’t tell you how much I’ve learned about the world and humans by asking strangers questions. And heck, if I really need to be so exact and so punctual, I have my phone, or I can research it prior. There’s this thing called making plans, you know!”
They part laugh, part roll their eyes. They don’t seem worried about me in the least, for this next chapter.
“The truth is…I’m sick of racing to get everywhere on time,” I tell them. “I’m sick of being so responsible. Of having a life where everything has to be so full and stacked and go go go. I just need to wander again. I need to have room in my life to stop when I want to stop. And sit. And just…be. And to do it…in a very meaningful way.”
Their faces fade a bit. Maybe the way mine did when my friend announced her Antarctica adventure. They think that it’s nice, their mother wanting to travel in this way. But probably a bit depressing too. This gung-ho fling-the-windows-open mother I’ve been, pushing us all out the door on to our next adventure. They think that maybe I’m…giving up…by wanting to wander so slowly. Wanting to luxuriate in the senses and in connection with people and place. That maybe I should go break ice for penguins in Antarctica!
But that’s exactly what I need to do. Give up. In the best sense of the phrase.
Give myself to this next chapter.
Let go of the last, onward. Upward.
There will be that week of sitting with it. Honoring it. And I’m sure there will be a lot of tears and nostalgia and wanting it all back, those little ones, that young bright mother. I’m sure I’ll sit in both of their rooms, bawling my eyes out, rocking in a corner covered in their blankets and pillows and maybe a stuffed animal that made the cut that I’ve dug out of their closet. I’m sure I’ll be a mess.
But here’s the thing: I can’t get it back. It’s not possible. And I don’t want to be miserable. This last month, I’ve been miserable, watching the last of everything. The last graduation. The last family boat ride of the last summer. The last bonfire with his buddies. The last home game. The last the last the last of this long chapter of our lives.
I want to feel my joy again-– the same joy I felt when they were little and we had a whole day in front of us with so much possibility and learning and wonder. Wandering in the woods for Calypso orchids and morels. Singing. They say it goes so fast. It didn’t for me. It went long and to my core, and it makes it hard to remember who I was before it all. I was a joyful young woman, without children, loving life. I want her back.
Now I’ll be wandering in spice markets for tangines with a world-renowned chef who will show us how to authentically cook with them. Wandering in the Secret Garden, learning about the history of tea. Wandering on the beaches of Essaouira and maybe even riding a camel. Wandering in the Medina and learning about Moroccan history with a local guide who knows just where to take us so that we can follow and let go and pay attention and let this colorful country give itself to us…writing our way through it all and sharing at the end of the day about it. And maybe we’ll even get a little lost. And a lot…found.
Next chapter, please. Empty NEXT, indeed!
For information about the February Haven Wander: Morocco, click here!
For more information about Haven Writing Retreats, Montana click here! We have few spots available for the 2018 fall schedule!
To arrange for a phone call with the Haven team, email: Laura@lauramunson.com
by Laura Munson | Jul 5, 2018 | Motherhood
Now booking the fall 2018 Haven Writing Retreats!
From book writers to journal writers and everything in-between, Haven will meet you where you need to be met! Come find your voice in the woods of Montana!
September 19-23 (FULL)
September 26-30 (one spot left)
October 24-28 (two spots left)
Well it’s summer and likely, if you’re anywhere over ten years old– actually even if you’re ten and under…you’re managing expectations. Your mother’s, your father’s, your sisters’ and brothers’, your boss’, your children’s, partner’s, house guests’…everyone’s expectations. And it’s also likely that you feel like you’re letting someone, or a lot of people, down. It’s also likely that you feel that someone is letting you down.
Except for maybe the Culligan Man. He showed up this morning and I looked out the window hearing that familiar diesel truck moan and sputter, and I smiled and ran to the front door because I knew it was for one thing and one thing only: to find out if we have enough salt in the softener. Salt in the softener so that we can have the best of our well water. And then maybe he’ll check the filter to see if our reverse osmosis thingy is working well, or whatever he does in my basement.
All I know is that he shows up with big bags of salt like he’s Santa, smiling– always smiling, takes off his shoes at the door, knows just where the light switch is for the basement, (I’ve lived in this house 20 years and I’m never sure which of the three switches it is on the panel, but he does!), and marches down my stairs. He doesn’t balk at the mouse droppings, or comment on the disarray of my son’s Man Cave. He plows right through it all to the mechanical room that I try to enter as seldom as possible, and does whatever voo-doo he does. I don’t follow him. I don’t micro-manage his little tete-a-tete with the bowels of my home. He has it under control. He knows we need him, and it’s his job to show up and he does, like Swiss clockwork. I even feel the house being relieved that someone competent and consistent is in charge of its digestive system. The house has expectations too. I try to meet them. But sometimes…I just fail. The refrigerator, lawn mower, and front stove burners are all currently broken. The gutters are spilling over, and there’s a significant ground squirrel problem under my porch, and I missed last month’s electric bill. I just can’t do it all or be it all. I have to fail something or someone.
As I explained to my daughter, home for the Fourth of July: you just can’t be all things to all people, even the ones you love most. You’re just gonna let people down from time to time. Even and especially when you’re doing your best. Something’s got to give. But there’s no shame in that. You have to learn to let yourself off the hook. And to let others off the hook. And sometimes…all the people you think should be there to help you, won’t be. And you’ll need to pay people instead. Or you might be surprised at who shows up when the primary people don’t. Or can’t. Or won’t. No matter how hard we try…people fail each other. You’re going to fail people. And I hate to say it, but ultimately…it’s not your problem. It’s theirs. Even if it’s your mother. Or your child.
I can say this to her…but do I really believe it? Truth is: I haven’t had that much experience royally failing someone I love. Recently, I had to. I had to choose: Move my mother? Or move my daughter and son?
Pretty much every primary person in my life is in a major transition right now: moving, going to college, going from college into the work force, down-sizing from house to apartment, changing jobs. Everyone needs each other’s help and no one has the capacity to give it fully. They can barely give it to themselves, teetering in the untethering.
Some of this is help we can pay for. But a lot of it isn’t. Like who gets Dad’s World War II army blanket? And who gets Mimi’s crocheted afghan, lovingly knit with arthritic fingers, even though it’s in every shade of diarrhea? And who gets the monogrammed wedding tray? And what to do with the old letters? And who will meet the roommates and get just the right toiletry case and put the Montana flag on the dorm wall, or christen the apartment with a bottle of prosecco after getting the right kitchen table that exactly fits the nook. And who will drive the U-haul through the streets of San Francisco? This isn’t just stuff you can do with a credit card online. This is stuff that needs a daughter, a sister, a mommy.
I’m all three. And I just can’t be all three right now. Not well. My plate is so full, it’s over-flowing. I can barely be one person, never mind three. I have to choose. I have to say “no.”
Sure, I can take on a portion of the help that’s been asked of me, but not all of it. Most of all, I hate that I can’t freely offer it, because I know it’s hard for people to ask—even loved ones. I have to leave it to them to divvy up their needs with other people, paid and volunteered. No matter how I shake it, no matter how much I know that I have to say “yes” where I must and “no” where I must…still, there’s shame. Guilt. Because I know that there are old, engraved, ingrown expectations attached to every request, especially the ones which are non-verbal. People show up for people they love. That’s just the way it is. Especially family. Especially when they are in big transition. They get on planes and roll up their sleeves and help pack boxes, and bring tea and food and comfort and love to the one in need. They don’t say, “no.”
Until this summer, I have never been in a position where I just…can’t…give everyone the support I want to give. My physical world won’t let me. No matter how hard I try to juggle my life, it’s just not possible. I have to say, “no” to most and “yes” to the ones who truly are incapable of doing what they need to do, without me.
That means that I just drove a fifteen-foot U-haul through the streets of San Francisco with both of my kids in the front seat, to move my daughter from college into her apartment. Yes, I drive a horse trailer, but not on insanely-vertical urban hills! Where you have to parallel park! I was afraid to drive a car in San Francisco, never mind a U-haul! But I pulled it off. She asked, and it was the best answer I could give. “Yes.” That was what I had to offer. That’s what needed to get done. My daughter: the organizing and packing. My son: his strong back and football-honed muscles, the heavy lifting. And in a few weeks, my daughter and I will do it all for him when he moves into his dorm room in college, thankfully midwestern-flat. As for my mother’s move, thank God for my other family members and the professional movers. I’ll come later to help settle them in to their new apartment. I’ll do my best to manage their expectations then.
So far, I’ve been met with grace. But I still feel awful about it. Just awful. Even my mother’s “Don’t worry. I have help now. You have enough on your plate with the kids and work. You can come later,” doesn’t feel all that great. I should be there. I should. Period. But I do feel a little less guilty. Thanks, Mom.
Here’s the lesson in it: when I say, lovingly, responsibly, that I just can’t…people figure it out.
Or someone else steps in.
The world doesn’t rely on your shoulders’ ability to hold it up. And it doesn’t end if you give it a much-needed shrug. And…so far, no one dies. And I’m not the bad guy.
I have to choose the expectation that I can actually manage, have to manage. And let the others go.
Maybe the world works that way when we claim our truth and let go of our guilt.
So today, thank you, Culligan Man, for managing mine. You do it so well. I don’t even know when you leave, I trust you that much. I just hear that moan and sputter down the driveway, and know that I have good water to drink. May we all have at least a few expectations that manage themselves as easily as that.
Come wander in your wonder with me this February in Morocco! To learn more, click here!
by Laura Munson | Feb 4, 2018 | Motherhood
“I’m going to be fine in empty nest. Don’t worry about me out here in Montana in my farmhouse. I’ve got my writing. I’ve got my writing retreats. I’ve got my horses. I love my land. I’m going to travel the world. It’s time for me again.”
That’s what I tell people.
That’s what I tell myself.
Inside, I’m terrified. It seeps in at 4:00 a.m. when I wake most nights, when the fears are immune to my internal motherly “hush now.” My mind isn’t just racing, it’s hauling ass down every dark alley I am able to avoid in daylight. It’s trapped in this labyrinth of panic by Fear incarnate and it wants OUT. And it’s not bills and health and aging and the other usuals. It’s this dwindling last flame on the last wick of my motherhood. And it’s the last light out of this Fear-mongered labyrinthine haunt.
How am I going to do this ‘being alone’ thing? How am I going to feel secure without that last child’s room full? That boy who wakes up in the morning and wants an egg sandwich, and a lovingly filled lunchbox– his sandwich cut in half and a Honeycrisp apple, not a Gala. A little bag of carrots and that note that I sometimes write, but not usually anymore, because I don’t want to embarrass him around his friends. Or make them feel sad that they don’t have a mother who does that for them. I’m letting my motherhood go. I feel it. Some mornings I make his lunch the night before, and put out cereal on the kitchen table with a note: Have a nice day. And I peek my head into his room in the glow of computer and cell screens and say, “I’m going to sleep in tomorrow. I have a long day of work and I need my sleep.” But what I’m really saying is, “This thing is crushing me. I need to prepare. I can’t go cold turkey. I need to know that you can do this on your own. I need to know that I can do this alone.”
And he can. Of course he can. I always said I was raising adults. Flexible, adaptable, adults. I let them use knives early. I literally touched their fingers to the hot stove so that they would learn. On my terms, I guess. I wanted to get it over with. But what about me? Am I going to take to my bed? Am I going to have long dark nights of the soul like I did after my father died? I can’t bear those. Will I feel unexplained joy, the way you do when your motherhood gets served to you in surprise heaping plates—when they crawl into bed with you on a Sunday morning, all six feet of them, and want to just “hang out?” When they come into your office and sit down in the same chair they used to when they were little, and start talking about their day, on and on, knowing that you care, that you’ll listen, that you are their only and forever mother? Are those moments all over now? Will I have to manufacture them on the phone or on vacations? The mundane, the holy mundane, of my motherhood is going in five…four…three…two…
You know when you are about to leave a relationship or a place, and you start to look at all the things you can’t stand about it? How you’re going to be better off without it? “Never liked that neighbor. I’ll be better off without all that ridiculous traffic. Can’t stand the way he eats. Never wanted a cat anyway.”
I’m doing that with my motherhood.
And I think my son is doing it with his childhood.
We’re butting heads where we usually can find humor. We’re finding fault where we normally make spaciousness for each other. I’m getting rip-shit-mad over dishes in the sink. I don’t get rip-shit-mad as a rule. I am a Talker-through-er. A Let’s-sit-down-and-have-a-heart-to-heart-er, kind of mother. Some would say too lenient. But I have always set my sites on trust and not blame. Trust is what will bring my relationship with my children into the future, fortified and stalwart. My go-to line: “We all screw up. It’s how we act around it that matters.” I know that when people get rip-shit-mad it’s because they’re afraid. So here I am…being afraid. Apparently dishes are as scary as that dark 4:00 a.m. Fear monster.
I remember my daughter acting this way her senior year. Nothing I did was right. And when your offenses are small, it’s like, “I can’t believe we have to have lamb chops again. And why are they always medium rare? And why do you have to have that stupid jazz on in the background? And why do we have to go to Belize for Spring Break when all my friends are going to Cabo?” And now, neither of us can barely remember that blip in our relationship. Now it’s all humor and love and forgiveness and open-heartedness. I have every faith that it will be that way with my son. He’s ready to fly. I know. I know. But still…
Last night, I lay there at 4:00 a.m., the Fear chasing me down those dark alleys: no more boy in the house. No more impromptu dance moves around the kitchen—and he can finally dip me! No more “Let’s meet in town and have a special dinner, just you and me.” No more “Mom, I have an orchestra concert. You should come.” No more baseball. So much baseball. I’ve measured my life in innings every spring/summer for the past twelve years. I love it and I loathe it. My life is already so sedentary as a writer. All that sitting. My back is already a wreck.
And my eyes blinked open wide. No more baseball. Hmmm….
What else is there going to be no more of?
Well heck— might as well.
And I grabbed my journal from my bed-side table and went for it. It’s raw, but I’m sharing it with you. Maybe it will help you. Don’t judge.
No more mayonnaise at 7:00 a.m.
No more moldy lunchboxes showing up on the counter.
No more “Sign this form. It’s already late. Hurry.”
No more fifteen pairs of sneakers strewn in the breezeway.
No more being ignored for the glow of screens.
No more “Why don’t we have any food?” when there’s an entire freezer and pantry full of it. (#malepatternblindness)
No more “I forgot my cleats. They’re under my bed. Can you drop them off at the office? Like…in ten minutes?”
No more “Can I stay out until 1:00 am?”
No more “No way. Midnight, latest.”
No more “Calm down. Everyone else is allowed to stay out until 1:00.”
No more “Will the parents be there?”
No more “I think so.”
No more “Midnight. Drive carefully, please. The roads are icy.”
No more “I’m okay, but the car isn’t.”
No more teenaged lumps lying on couches until noon on a Saturday, eating pancakes with hooded sweatshirts on and sometimes a thank you. Sticky plates in the sink.
Who am I kidding.
I’m going to miss those sticky plates. I’m going to miss those thank you’s when they come. I’m going to miss driving in to school to save the day. And yes…I’m going to miss baseball. I’m going to roam around those stands when he’s gone, and wish I could sit all day in the blazing sun hearing all that “Go kiiiiiid” and “You got this, kiiiiiiid,” and “Bring ‘er home, kiiiiiiid.” Who am I kiiiiiding.
It’s morning. It’s Sunday. He’s on a bus going to an Orchestra showcase in Bozeman, Montana. Probably with his sweatshirt hood over his head, drooling on his baseball pillowcase, headphones on.
So I call him. And he answers.
“How are the roads?”
“Not bad. But it’s snowing pretty hard.”
Quick prayer to the bus driver. “What are you doing?”
“Trying to sleep. Listening to tunes.”
“I hope not Rap. And not too loud. You’re going to ruin your ears.”
“Calm down, Mom. I’m listening to the Brahms song that we’re playing.”
Gulp. “Brahms wrote the lullaby I used to sing to you every night.”
Silence.
Not gonna cry. Not gonna cry. “I’m really going to miss you next year, you know.”
“I know. I’m going to miss you too.”
“We going to be okay. We’re going to be better than okay. Onward!”
“Yeah. Onward.”
“Text when you get there.”
“I will.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
So now what? A Sunday morning in early February. I’m alone. In bed. Propped up in old smelly pillows. What’s left of my tea is cold. The snow is gently falling. Do I sob? Because you can bet, I’m crying writing this. I could sing that Brahms lullaby and spend hours bawling my eyes out. But I don’t think I will. Not today. I have a book to write. And a quiet house. All day.
A quiet house.
So I go downstairs to make my second cup of Earl Grey tea, sending a whisper to myself next February. You’re going to be okay. This isn’t going to hurt as much as you think. Go cup of tea by cup of tea, page by page, word by word, gentle (and yes motherly) thought by gentle thought. It’s time to mother yourself now.
But for now…I’m scared. And I’m taking all the advice I can get from those who have been here. Comments appreciated!
Love, Laura
Come wander in your words at a Haven Writing Retreat in 2018!
You don’t have to be a writer to come. Just a seeker who dearly longs for your voice.
Now Booking Haven I Retreats 2018! Click here for more info.
February 28-4 (full)
April 18-22 (still room)
May 16-20 (one spot left)
September 19-23
September 26-30
October 24-28
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