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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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.
Haven Writing Retreats 2024
- March 20-24, 2024 STILL ROOM BUT FILLING FAST!
- May 1-5, 2024 STILL ROOM BUT FILLING FAST!
- May 28- June 2, 2024 NOW BOOKING
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by Laura Munson | Dec 14, 2023 | Musings
Featured in Huffington Post and Thrive Global
No one really knows what to say to someone when their loved one dies. You can say, “You’re in my thoughts and prayers,” and maybe that’s true. Maybe you actually know what to think or pray on that person’s behalf. Personally, I’m never sure.
You can tell them that you’ll be there for them—that you’re their middle-of-the-night-phone-call friend, and promise to sleep with the phone near your bed. You can write them a With Sympathy card and let Hallmark say something in lofty cursive and sign your name with love. Or make a digital card with organ music to have a more flashy effect. You can go to the funeral and wake and talk about all the good memories of their loved one, memorialize them with a slide show, give a toast, even ease the pain with some good jokes.
You can bring them soup. Bone soup, if you’ve been there. If you know how hard it is to eat when you are in emotional triage. It gets physical fast. And every bite needs to hold health.
You can use social media to show support, post by post. But do you “Like” an announcement of death? Do you “Share” it? Do you “Comment?” It’s all a way of observing your friend’s loss. But in the same place you share about what you ate for breakfast?
You can give them books: A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis, in which the minister rages against the loss of his beloved wife, himself, his God, and Who Dies, by Stephen Levine, especially Chapter 8, where he goes deeply into Grief as an ultimate vehicle of liberation, saying, “We are dropped into the very pit of despair and longing…an initiation often encountered along the fierce journey toward freedom, spoken of in the biographies of many saints and sages.” But most people are not open to that journey in the first place, and certainly not when their hearts are shattered into splintered shards.
The truth is, and it hurts in the worst way…that ultimately, the mourner will be alone in their grief, and who wants to say that? Who wants to bear the news that soon…people will stop Thinking, and Praying, and Liking, and Sharing, and Commenting, and bringing soup, and sending cards and emails and books. Even the phone calls and texts will fall away. The unspoken reality is: People go back to their lives and you are alone. You are in a club that you never wanted to be in. And that’s when you watch Renee Fleming singing “Walk On” over and over on youtube as loud as you can. And eventually…you do. You absorb the grief. And you start to see the “golden sky” she’s singing about. But you never get over your loss. Never.
There is the opportunity, however, to use it. If you’re in the club, you might as well be a steady and gracious club member. I’m in the club. And recently, one of my dear friend’s beloved husband dropped dead out of nowhere. She’d lost her grandparents in their old age. No one else. She was bereft. She asked me to write her a list of things that would help her, based on a phone call we’d shared. Her mind was in a triage fog, my words were helpful to her, and she wanted to remember them.
Here is what I wrote. I offer it to you, if you are a new member of this club. You are not alone. And I offer it to you if you are one of those people wondering what to Think, Pray, Say…do:
Hello, beautiful. I am thinking of you non-stop. Thank you for calling on me to be in your circle at this impossible time. I am not afraid of this, so I’m glad you called me in. I will be there for you. The books you asked for should be there by the end of the week. I will write some of the points I made on the phone here, since you asked for them. If my words on the phone were helpful, it’s only because you are open to them. I truly hope they help. Here is what has helped me and some of the people I know who have been through deep loss:
- First of all: Breathe. I mean it. That’s your most important tool to stay in the present, out of fear, and to sustain yourself. You will find yourself holding your breath. Try to stay aware of your breath no matter what and keep breathing…in…out…in…out. Deeply if you can. Little sips when deep is too hard.
- Lean into Love. Wherever you can find it. In your God. In friends and family. In yourself. Let it hold you for now. Call on friends and family to give you what you need. You cannot offend anyone right now. Let us know what you need and tell us how to give it to you. “Bring me dinner, please. Come sit with me. Read to me. Sing to me. Rub my back. Draw me a bath…”
- That said, be careful who you bring into your circle. Stay away from people who say things like, “He’s in a better place,” or “Everything happens for a reason.” They’re trying to help, and maybe those things are true, but right now you need people who are not afraid to hold the space for your pain. You need to find the people who feel easy and safe and not necessarily wise. Keep your circle small for now. It might be that you call on people very different from the ones you habitually have in your life.
- Make sure to eat. Even if you want to throw up. Please, eat. And drink a lot of water. You don’t want to block your natural energy flow. Your body actually knows how to handle this immense pain.
- Lie in bed with your feet up.
- Take a walk if you can, every day. Even if it’s short. Just get outside.
- Take Epsom Salt baths. Lavender oil helps. Keep some in your purse, put a few drops on your palm, rub your hands together, then cup your hands to your nose and breathe deeply when you need grounding.
- Write. If you can. Just a little bit. If you have it in you, at some point sooner than later, it’s incredibly useful to write down your vision of what was “supposed to be.” I heard those words come from your deepest place of sacred rage and I believe that to write that story, as fully fleshed out as possible, would be an important step in one day sending off that “supposed to be” into the sea of surrender. So that you don’t have to hold it anymore and you can live into your future. Letting the supposed-to-be go doesn’t mean that you do it injustice or that it no longer exists in dreams and heart. But it’s important not to have it become armor of some sort. It’s not time now to surrender it. But I do believe that it would be helpful just to write it out with great details as a way to honor it. And one day…yes, to let it go. Writing is the most transformational and therapeutic tool I know and I think it should be up there with diet and exercise in the realm of wellness. Keep a journal by your bed. It helps.
- When the terrifying, claustrophobic, impossible thoughts come, do not let them multiply. Literally put up a wall that keeps them on the other side. They are not your friend. There is no making sense of this loss. Unless your thoughts are loving and forgiving and helpful, banish them. If you have to shout “NO!” then do it. What you let into your mind should feel and act like the very best friends and family who would never let you entertain fear, but only shower you with love. Love yourself. There is no thinking your way through this. This is a time to really find what it is to just…be. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. In out in out.
- There is no check list right now. There is nowhere to get. There is no goal other than to fully live in the present moment. You can’t skip steps with triage, grief, or healing. Grief attacks at will, it seems. Be gentle with yourself if you feel graceless around it. You have to feel it to shed it.
- Go slowly. Be careful. The only real wisdom I have gleaned from Grief is this: Grief is one of our greatest teachers because it doesn’t allow for hiding places. When we open to our sorrow, we find truth. Your tears then, are truth. Honor them.
That’s enough for now. The main thing is to be gentle with yourself. I love you so. And the love you two shared will never ever go away. He is Love now and he is all around you and in you. If you can’t feel him, feel Love and you will be feeling him.
Hope that helps. You can do this. I am here for you. I promise. If only just to listen to your tears and let you know you are not alone.
Love,
Laura
Love note: Many of the people who come to my Haven Writing Retreats are processing some sort of loss by using the written word. If you want to own this potent tool, consider coming on a retreat with me in Montana in 2024. You do not have to be a writer to come. Just a seeker. Email: info@lauramunson.com to set up an intro call.
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by Laura Munson | Nov 24, 2023 | Montana, Musings
Give yourself or someone you love a Haven Writing Retreat for the holidays! My next one is March 20-24, 2024 and it’s filling fast. Click here for the other 2024 dates, more info, and to book an introductory call with me!
I grew up in a suburb of Chicago with a town square flanked by shoulder-to-shoulder shops in brick and tudor. A fountain on one end, a Parthenon shaped department store on the other, a park with grass and benches, and a flagpole in-between. My goldfish met its maker in that fountain because I thought it a better life than the one he’d been living in a small bowl on my bedroom windowsill. I biked to that fountain every morning before school and met my best friend, and we’d sit on the side of it, eating donuts from the local bakery. I had a kiss or two in the dark at that fountain. I climbed that flagpole on a dare. I believed in the spirit of Christmas each December as I stood in that park, looking into the illumination of the crèche. We called it Uptown and it was an iconic yet controlled kingdom to us, the Downtown of Chicago being so vast and distant, thirty miles away. My house was close to Uptown, and after school every day, I walked my dog around its streets, memorizing every alleyway, every store window, smiling at the familiar faces of the shopkeepers who knew my family, our names, our stories.
In those days, many families had charge accounts at the stores. So sometimes, I’d get permission to go on a little shopping spree: stickers or pens at the stationary store, ribbons at the dimestore, a Bonnie Bell Lipsmacker at the drugstore, a bike bell at the sports store, seeds at the hardware store for my vegetable garden. Not all at once, of course. But here and there on a blue moon, when my parents were feeling extra generous. I’m not sure if I loved the actual item as much as the phrase, “Can you please charge that to our account?” It filled me with a deep sense of belonging to my town. Not just anyone could have a charge account. You had to be local. Very local. I liked being very local.
The shops Uptown, were like icons to us. We had nicknames for them, like old friends. Helanders was He’s. The Left Bank hot dog spot was Pasquesi’s, because that was the owner’s name, of course. Walgreens was Wag’s and that’s before it became a multi-mega drugstore. We grew up with the family. It was local. These shops were our meeting places. Our stomping ground. Our stage. When my father died, the local grocery store, Janowitz, gave us a cart full of groceries for free once they heard the news. These shops were the bones of our goings on as a community. Not because they represented greed or even commerce to us. They were the places where our mothers ran into each other and gossiped and put together a meal train for a family in need. They were the places where we flirted with boys, dreamed up birthday parties, found the right card for a grieving aunt, played truth or dare over an ice cream sundae. A lot of these shops are gone now. Now the shoe store is a Williams Sonoma. The corner store is a Talbots. The hardware store is long gone, a Home Depot beckoning in the not-so-distance. Every time I return to my hometown, I feel sad about how many of the Mom and Pop shops have been taken over by franchises. Lululemon. A Starbucks on steroids. The only thing that’s left is the sporting goods store where all of us got our first bikes. I always go in just to see if it smells the same. It does. The owner’s son is there. He always smiles and says, “Everyone comes in for a whiff when they’re in town.” The Lantern bar is the other establishment that’s still there. Still has the best burger in town. Some of our pictures are on the wall. Over the years, I have been proud of the way my hometown values its local shops and supports them, even with so much bright-light-big-city so close. But now there are so many fallen soldiers in the way of local, family-owned, commerce, and it saddens me. We belonged to those places. I don’t feel like I belong to my town square of origin anymore.
Somehow, I ended up living in, and belonging to, another small town— a mountain town in Montana. When I moved here thirty years ago, it was full of economic hardship. There are three blocks of Mom and Pop shops in our town. Over the years, I’ve watched as the shop owners of Central Ave. struggled to make ends meet and keep their doors open. I’ve known most of them the way I knew my hometown shop owners. I watched as they took their vision and made it a reality. They wore their pride because in our small mountain community, these shops hold deep importance. There is no option of city. People drive a long way to stock up on feed for their animals, paint for their barns, winter socks for their kids. Not long ago I was proud to say we didn’t have a Gap in the state of Montana. Or a Target, a Best Buy, a Home Depot, a Lowe’s, a Walmart, a Costco. That’s changed now. It’s here. Consumption Junction we call it. And it’s tried very hard to kill our local small businesses. Which is why I choose to do all my grocery shopping at the local health food store and other small markets, buy shoes and clothes at our local outfitters. And even though I’m not a big shopper just for shopping’s sake…from time-to-time I’ll walk Central Ave., and pop into those shops, usually just to have a look around and feel like I’m part of a town center like I did in my hometown. I’ll buy a little something to show my support. And I am filled with such warmth and yes, belonging, every time. Those shop owners have worked hard to keep their inventions alive.
Sure, there are new sorts of shops— shiny ones that announce “we are on the map.” (BTW: we’ve successfully kept Lululemon out!) But I go into those shinier shops too, because even though they don’t represent the sorts of shops I’ve known and loved for decades in this little town, these people are store owners with a vision too. These shops are products of small town dreams. There’s a bar in our town that’s full of all the shop signs that didn’t make it. Every shop owner in our town knows that if their vision doesn’t work, at least the sign will end up on the wall at the Northern. Which, like the bar that lives on in my suburban Chicago town, will also never die. And that’s because it’s as much about gathering as it is about beer. And all the signs on the walls make good stories, because people in a small town, at least our small town, love to tell stories, albeit sometimes stretched. And so what. We get lonely in these here hills.
I always say, “You can judge a town by its hardware store.” And in the last little while…our multi-generational hardware store…got bigger! (And they still have their old fashioned popcorn maker by the front door. You can’t go by that popcorn maker without filling up a bag to eat while you shop, no matter how much of a hurry you are in.) And during the height of the Pandemic…not one Mom and Pop shop closed. Not one. Any upstanding local that I know will always go to Nelson’s before heading down the highway to Consumption Junction. To me, that says a lot about where I’ve lived and raised my kids. And is part of why they have moved back. They don’t make ’em, (and keep ’em), like our town anymore. They just don’t. But our small mountain community ain’t for everyone. It’s hard-living all winter long. Days and days of gray skies. And often, smoky summers. Not a lot of local industry. Still, we thrive. And Central Ave. reminds us of that very fact.
Whether we like it or not, in the summer, our sidewalks are heavy-laden with tourists. But in the off seasons, when it empties out to locals only, sometimes I walk those blocks and have a scary flash that one day Central Ave. will be like a ghost town of the old West, tumbleweed and all, the bars surviving because people will always drink away their woe. The churches surviving because people will always need to pray in public, knowing they’re not alone. Or what if it goes the other way? What if all the Mom and Pop shops are lost to franchises that don’t really understand what our town is truly made of? I deeply (and a bit desperately) don’t want to lose out to franchises, and thus, to what binds a small town in the way of common space: kids riding bikes to the ice cream store, parents lingering over coffee at the local coffee roaster after school drop-off, the kind of place where you know you’re always going to run into someone you know at the market, buying broccoli, and have questions about how (insert family name) is doing. The kind of town where they wrap your Christmas gifts right there, and with loving smiles. The kind of town where you pop into the toy store just to remember what it was to take your kids there to buy their friends’ birthday presents, and the owners catch you lingering in the plastic horse section and shed a smile and a tear with you. They remember too. When I go into a local shop on a mission of nostalgia or just plain curiosity, I usually buy a little something as a way of saying, thank you. I can think of a handful of times when I’ve forgotten my purse and the shop owner said, “Just pay us next time. We know you’re good for it.” I like feeling “good for it.” One time, at the local gas station, the guy behind the counter, who calls me by my last name, said, “Hey, Munson. You like horses, yeah? I got you something.” And he produced a brown paper bag from behind the counter. It was a glass horse figurine. “Was in a little shop the other day and I thought of you.” I wept in gratitude, and yes, belonging. It’s been front-and-center on my nightstand for years. Thanks, Murray.
Sometimes, I admit…I have no other option but to go to a box store. I loathe it, avoid it, dread it…but sometimes have to succumb. Like when I’m looking for doorknobs. Or light fixtures. Or a rug. (Even though I always stop by Nelson’s first!) I muscle through the experience, trying to remember that I’m still supporting the locals who work at those stores. I admit it though: I drive through Consumption Junction and I picture/fantasize a time when the box store will die. When our greed for unnecessary plastic items will fade, if it hasn’t already devoured us. We’ll stop filling up our shopping carts until they are brimming over, when all we came for was…well, socks. And maybe things will return to the old ways. And people will live off the land. And buy only what they need and only when they can afford it. And barter for what they can’t afford. I picture a time when a person with sheep has profound power, shearing them and spinning their fleeces, and a person who knows how to work a forge is the reason why transportation is possible, horses needing shoes— a means of commerce, not just a pet or a creature of recreation. And the Farmer’s Market will be more than a sunny place to listen to a singer/songwriter and buy a hula hoop along with your Swiss chard. In fact, around here, farms are growing and thriving. Maybe we’re closer than we think to the old way of life.
There is a road here called Farm-to-Market. It’s a pretty Sunday drive. When I take that road, I think about how it once was a bloodline for this community. Blood sport. Many broken hearts along its fences. Countless dashed dreams and false hopes. The kind of road where you sort out what you’re going to say to your wife when you come back with a full cart, someone else’s tomato crop being what it was, and sauce to put up for winter. It’s not that I defy modern technology or progress or the possibilities of button pushing. It’s that I don’t trust us to know what to do with what we’ve created. I trust humility more than greed. And as much as I appreciate that I get welcomed into Costco and that I could get a 24 pack of gym socks for my kids and Swiss chard both, and still get back in time to pick them up from school, as much as I know that those are local people working those jobs, in honesty and humility with dreams of their own, sorting out their own stories to tell their spouses or loved ones…I want us to stop.
I want us to go to the local hardware store and eat a bag full of popcorn while we discuss paint color and drill bits, and talk weather while we do it. And what about that school bond and what about that new city councilperson? I want us to drop our spare change into the Mason jar to help with the middle school teacher who has Leukemia. I want us to go slowly again. I want us to wonder about each other. I want us to ask, “How’s business?” and hear that it picked up this October, which is usually a slow time— better than last year. To nod and smile at that good news and feel like we’re going to be okay. We won’t lose our hats along with our dreams.
This holiday season, I want us to stop. Not take our turkey hangovers to the early morning, standing at a Target ready to run in like monkeys on a zoo break. I want us to continue the gratitude of the day before. I want us to sleep in and maybe take a walk into town later to see what the local shops have for sale. I want us to have those conversations. I want us to go Uptown instead of Downtown, and especially I want us to steer clear of Consumption Junction. Even if it costs a bit more. Even if it is a little less shiny. Even if it means we buy less, or go to three stores to find that one thing our kid asked for. I want us to stroll down Central Avenue. And say “hi” to each other. Maybe even stop and have a surprise conversation full of more questions than answers. Maybe even ending with a hug or a long-called-for, and unexpected, handshake. I want us to be thankful for our town centers, and our backyard businesses, and see ourselves in the reflection of their holiday windows. Here’s to Main St. everywhere! Happy Holidays.
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by Laura Munson | Nov 19, 2023 | Musings
Well, Thanksgiving is almost here and many of us fear the gravy.
Fear NOT! You don’t need flour. You don’t need to reduce anything. And for heaven’s sake, you don’t need some powdered packet from the grocery store. I have been playing around with my gravy for years, and this is where I’ve landed. It’s a commitment, but you will be having “some turkey with your gravy” by the time you take your first taste. Enjoy, and remember to tell the people you’re with on this holiday what you appreciate about them. And if you’re far away from your loved ones, here’s some inspiration for your own feast, even if it’s a feast for one!
Laura’s 30 years-in-the-making Delicious Coveted and Begged-for
Turkey Gravy Recipe
(Not heart smart, but who cares. It’s one or two meals a year!)
The secret to this liquid gold requires some prep time but it pays off. Oh, does it pay off. The idea is this: you dice an abundance of vegetables and line the roasting pan with them, cover with a rack and rest the turkey on the rack so that the juices drip into the vegetables during the cooking process. Then, while the turkey is resting, you puree the entirety of the pan ingredients, grease and all, in a blender, and that is your gravy thickener! It should be illegal. The base is your reduced giblet stock. It’s so easy and no stress and no raw flour ick and no corn starch yuck, and no intimidating de-glazing and no gizmo-dependent grease/juice separating… I’m telling you. It’s the BEST. Don’t be intimidated by the prep work. I chop all the vegetables for the pan and for the stock the night before and put them in respective zip-loc bags so that Thanksgiving morning, I don’t have to do any more chopping than necessary for other preparations, like stuffing etc. I strongly recommend this. I never used to do this, and always was stymied by how long it takes to do this prep the morning of. Cuts down your turkey morning prep by an hour!
Ingredients for roasting pan:
(if you do this the night before, put all of the vegetable out-takes (see parenthesis below) into a zip-loc bag for your giblet stock, so that you have 2 ziplocs– one for stock, one for pan)
Peel and dice:
1 Turnip
1 Rutabaga
1 Parsnip
2 Carrots (use the ends plus another carrot for giblet stock)
4 Yukon Gold Potatoes
2 Celery stalks (use the outer tougher stalks for giblet stock)
2 Shallot cloves
2 Garlic cloves
1 Leek (use the white part, and some of the green. Wash and reserve the tougher top greens for giblet stock)
1 yellow Onion
4 crimini Mushrooms (reserve the stems for giblet stock)
1 cup chopped (Yep): Parsley (Italian flat leaf), Sage, Rosemary and Thyme—fresh (use the stems/twigs for giblet stock)
1 stick Butter
1 cup dry white Wine
Ingredients for final touches:
Madeira
Sea salt and fresh ground pepper to taste
Liquid:
- Melt butter in small saucepan and add white wine. Turn off heat once combined.
Lining your roasting pan: (gravy gold)
- Dump the diced veggies into the roasting pan.
- Pour a cup or so of the warm butter and wine mixture from stove. Salt/pepper.
- Stir with a wooden spoon or rubber spatula so that all the veggies are coated. (you don’t want them to dry out during the cooking process, so remember to baste them as well as the bird)
- Add any additional chopped herbs. This should coat the pan about an inch thick.
- Put the rack on top of this, flat.
- Put turkey on top and cover with additional butter wine, salt and pepper
- Bird stuffed, racked, seasoned, ready to shed its love on its veggies below…
- Giblet stock for gravy base
Giblet Stock:
Ingredients: (Don’t cheat and use canned broth. This stock has a very specific flavor and makes the gravy sooooooo good)
Giblets (The gross stuff in the turkey cavity, but get over it. Your hand is in a turkey cavity! That’s already gross.)
Whole pepper corns
Out-takes from all of the above vegetables and herbs (described in parenthesis above. Best to put them in zip-loc bags while dicing the rest for the roasting pan the night before, to make prep time faster on Thanksgiving morning.)
Additional sprigs of rosemary and thyme, roughly chopped, stems/twigs included
1 garlic clove– crushed
1 medium yellow onion quartered
1 Yukon gold potato quartered
- Heat a large saucepan, add olive oil, not butter—too greasy. When hot, put in the liver. This needs to be cooked through first. Then deglaze the pan with Madeira—1/8 cup or so. This stuff has a lot of flavor and you don’t want it to overwhelm, but it’s perfect for this feast. Let it cook down—you don’t want the next ingredients to stew in pan, but to sear like the liver seared. (you might have to add a bit of olive oil again to give it something to cook in)
- Add the neck and other organs—brown
- Now add the veggie out-takes plus the additional veggies/herbs described above.
- Cover with water, a cup of wine, and add a few tablespoonsful of whole peppercorns and a few bay leaves.
- The trick to any stock is to bring it to a boil, and then drop the heat down so that it is just simmering. This is going to simmer all
- day. If it gets too low, then add more water. Taste it as it cooks to make sure the flavors are coming along. Add salt/pepper to taste.
- Keep to about 8 cups total
Gravy:
(drum roll…HERE IT IS!!! My very own special, time-evolved gravy recipe!)
- When the turkey is done, remove from the rack and let rest, covered in foil.
- Remove the rack and put all the pan-liner veggies/fluids in a blender and puree
- Put a large bowl (preferably one with a pouring spout) in the sink with a colander on top of it.
- Strain the giblet stock.
- Pour the stock into a small/medium saucepan—should be about 8 cups of stock
- Add 3 tbs. or so of Madeira and lots of fresh ground pepper (a tbs. or so)
- Cook down for a few minutes.
- Now grab your whisk, and whisk in the puree, little by little until you get the right consistency.
- Swimming in turkey goodness. Now for the blender…
- Veggies from roasting pan to blender– pureed heaven
It is absolute magic and you never need any flour or anything else for thickener!!! Secret shared! Now pass it on to future generations! Say you learned it from an old friend who wrote.
- And here…it…is!
-
Gravy happiness. Happy cooking to all! May you share it with loved ones!
For more information and to set up an introductory call with Laura, go here.
You do not have to be a writer to come to Haven. Just a word-wanderer, who is serious about finding your voice and learning your craft, no matter where you’d like to see it land. Ultimately, it’s about building the bridge of authentic self-expression to YOU! From there…you can go anywhere…
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by Laura Munson | Aug 3, 2023 | Musings, Uncategorized
***Still a few rare spots left on my October 24-27 Haven Writing Retreat! To book an intro call, go here.
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