by Laura Munson | Jan 28, 2022 | Motherhood
Last fall, on a family Zoom call with my adult children, my twenty-five year old daughter said,
“Let’s do Christmas differently this year. Let’s not spend money on presents or decorations or on our big Christmas party. Let’s have an experience! Just us.”
My twenty-one year old son said, “I agree. We have enough stuff. Let’s go somewhere and have an adventure!” And then he added, “Just us.”
It seemed like there was a bit more to it from both of them. A hint of: while it’s still just ‘us.’
I’ve never pressured them to get married nor to have children, but they have said repeatedly, unsolicited, since they were little, that they want to one day be married and have children. And in that moment looking into their cyberly translated faces, I realized that if this was to be true, the window for “just us” time might very well be closing in. Who knew how life would unfold for any of us, but it was true that twenty-year olds can go from being “under your wing” to fully fledged fast, and with that full-fledging comes responsibilities. New people in their lives, new commitments, new places, new roles, new traditions. New identity. New iterations of “us.”
I, of course, want that for them, if it’s indeed what they want. I have never been a grabby, helicopter-ish mother. But the more I considered their “just us” point on that Zoom call, the more I felt something like desperation…tinged with a bit of panic. I’d held our “just us” so dear for the last decade. Perhaps it owed to the fact that when a family with two parents in it becomes a family with one parent taking on new, foreign roles…and pulls it off against the odds…there’s a bit of a victory dance in order. A deep bow.
Maybe that was part of their plea? Or part of why I heartily and happily and quickly shed my traditional holiday contortions and said, “I’m totally open to that! Where do you want to go? What adventure would you like to have this Christmas and New Year? I have a special fund that I’ve been saving for something like this.” Maybe that “rainy day” was here.
With gaining emotion, I couldn’t resist catering to the pressing shelf-life of this “just us.” In fact, the more we discussed it, this trip/adventure felt like a necessity. One, lovely, memory-building, and even lavish, “last” adventure. It stopped me flat: This really could be the last time that we have a rich family adventure without anyone else but us. In our weird humor and propensity to laugh at only things we feel comfortable laughing at, just us.
After two years of a global pandemic and the subsequent lockdowns and travel restrictions, it even seemed dire. Afterall, the Delta variant was calming down. It seemed like the exact time to make this bold move into trusting the wider world again, and ourselves in it. Who knew what was around the corner, Covid-wise, on top of the next chapter of our individual lives? And we are travel people. I raised them this way. They took the baton. Now who were we out there in the world?
That pitter-patter of an ensuing trip upped my heartbeat. So I put something on the table. “How about someplace warm? Like Costa Rica? The Bahamas? The Maldives?”
Silence. Their eyes looked away from their screens.
“Or wherever,” I added. Card promptly taken off the table. I’d learned from practice that it’s best not to project, expect, and over-plan vacations when it comes to working with young people. A mother’s heart can get so utterly smashed by teenagers and even college-aged kids.
I thought about how to present or frame this “just us adventure” and came up blank. Not because I didn’t have countless ideas. But because I wasn’t sure I knew their definition of adventure anymore. When they were little, yes. But who were these young people now in the realm of their independence? What was the best meeting point with them? It dawned on me that I didn’t really know how to co-create with them at this stage of their lives, especially when it came to the holidays. We weren’t cutting out snowflakes for the living room windows. Or deep in the woods looking for the perfect Christmas tree. Or canning homegrown tomatoes for Christmas presents. Those mothering years were likely in the rear-view-mirror.
Who were we now? This “just us.”
It seemed like questions were the way to find out. Not controlling overtures, persuasive arguments, calls to action, or matriarchal mandate like early motherhood can require. So I put it out there: “What experience do you want to have? What’s your definition of a holiday adventure?”
I saw their eyes engage again, their minds cranking.
If we were going to have a successful adventure, I needed to go slowly. Let them have a say. Listen to their thoughts. Invite them to help plan. Let go of mothering patterns from the past. This was a time for “just us” to merge our minds and dreams and create a new bond for the future. And likely even a new way to each other.
It felt wonderful and scary. Don’t overthink it, Laura. Yeah, well, that’s a very nice thought in theory, but there was a lot at stake. A lot more than how full the Christmas tree is and how thoughtful the stocking contents and how good the nog. Those were controllables. Well, except the year the tree fell down in the middle of the living room and broke most of the ornaments, a lot of them beloved family heirlooms. That went from crushing to hilarious. It’s still hilarious. Makes us all belly-laugh.
I decided that more than anything, we needed belly-laughing. Life had become so serious. Ensuing college graduation and ensuing job hunt, Covid-challenged learning and athletic events, job lay-offs, paused business moves, cancelled book tour, and on and on.
A bit of motherly history: I’ve been planning itineraries for family travel since my children were babies. I’ve always been committed to the “be” mentality vs. the “do” mentality. Especially when they’re young. I wanted them to love travel. To be happy and curious and playful in a museum. A park. A restaurant. A city street (Montana spawn), a subway car, an airplane cabin, all of it. So I made sure that there were windows to just…be in those places. To go to a cheese shop and a bakery and everyone pick out one special nibbly bit, spread out a blanket in a park, have a picnic, and people watch. To go to the Art Institute of Chicago (my stomping ground) and choose a theme. “Let’s see how many birds we can find in paintings. We’ll keep a tally and whoever spies the most gets a special treat from the gift shop.” I wasn’t much for bribery, but they both knew I couldn’t resist a museum gift shop anyway, so it was a fun-forward game rather than a greed-based one. Usually they forgot about the bribe part anyway. We got lost in the fun. Mission accomplished.
But how to plan a vacation with adult children, one still in college, in a global pandemic? With restrictions changing on a dime, country by country? Would we be able to interact with locals at all, in their neighborhoods and free-flowing vernacular, or would it only be hotel employees, on their best professional behavior? We wanted the real deal. We were hoping for small B&B’s where we could really connect with other travelers and families, swapping stories in an intimate setting. We weren’t interested in big hotels, which seemed to be the only option given all the closures.
They were on the same page. My daughter said, “Let’s go somewhere easy. We always choose challenging places. I mean, I want to climb mountains in Nepal. But how about we leave that for later. I just need a break. Somewhere happy.”
My son perked up. “I can’t imagine spending Christmas somewhere warm. We should go for cozy.”
“What about Ireland?” my daughter said. “That’s cozy. Singing in pubs and sipping hot whiskey…”
“Christmas in Killarney!” all three of us said and laughed. “With aaaaaaaal of the folks at home!”
Smiles x3. More please!
Over the next few weeks, we each added our dream druthers to our group text feed. I had to hold back on naming the feed Just Us. I mean…I want them to like me.
The opinions started to roll in, warning us against international travel with this new Omicron variant. We wondered: should we wait until life was back to “normal?” It’s a big trip from Montana, after all. Lots of airplanes and layovers, and large expenditures. We took heart in the mask mandates and proof of double jabs at all pubs, restaurants, hotels, and some shops, and that the country was much lower on Covid than many others. Still…
Maybe it was because of the unsolicited opinion roll-out that we started to act tribally, the three of us. The world can’t stop because of a virus. There’s no good reason not to go. Even if we get Covid, despite our vaccinations and boosters, and have to quarantine over there, we’ll turn it into an adventure.
Here was how our text feed went: (no attributions, but you can probably figure out who wrote what)
I’ve heard that the golf courses are pretty sweet over there.
I’ve heard that the Dingle Peninsula is a must.
I’m in it for the jigs and reels and sea shanties.
Guinness.
A city hit in Dublin for sure. I miss the city.
No language barrier. I miss really connecting with people in different cultures.
Distillery Tour.
James Joyce land. John O’Donohue land. Yeats land…
Irish Whiskey tasting.
I want to ride a Connemara horse on the beach!
Pubs.
100% pubs.
Pubs for sure.
Well, we agreed on that. Pubs. In different iterations.
Mine: I was in it for the full-blown, wind-blown pub scene. Gatherings with locals, in spirted, heart-swept, impromptu singing. A tin whistle. Fiddles. A bodhran drum. An accordion. Maybe after a long hike in the countryside, or a long coastal drive. I could just see us wandering into a roadside pub, lanterns lit in an otherwise moody, grey landscape, Irish eyes smiling and asking us if we’d like something good to eat and drink. Lamb pie. Black pudding. Kindred wanderers and locals all bellying up for the same reason. Have a chat. Have a song. Have a pint. Know that they’re not alone, at least in that communal moment that the Irish are known to do so well. Maybe even get some inspiration and write the beginnings of a novel on a Guinness coaster. Go home full. New. A revived confidence in human connection. Really, my very favorite things on earth. Especially after so much isolation these last two years.
That’s what I was in it for, anyway. And I was pretty sure that these young adults’ vision wouldn’t be far away from my own. We are extroverts. Who love live, impromptu music and singing. Who love to connect with strangers. And who aren’t shy around beer. Yes, we would go for the people and the jolly public house culture—the perfect way to get to know my young adults in an informal and fun way. Plus, the belly-laughing. I pictured us belly-laughing in pubs across Ireland after long days of sightseeing.
So I booked it.
Five days prior to our departure I called a family Zoom meeting: “Well, I have some good news, and some bad news. Hint: Guinness.”
That got their attention.
“Good news! Our holiday trip to Ireland is still on!” I paused a moment, not sure how to break the rest of the news to them. “The bad news is…the Irish government just mandated that the pubs and restaurants close at 8:00. Sooo…”
Them: Silence. Perhaps some muttered expletives.
“That’s okay, right? We’ll still explore the countryside and coast. We’ll still meet people. We’ll still have fun. We’ll still be just us.”
“But will there be fun music before 8:00?” one said.
The other: “I kinda doubt it.”
“We’ll have a blast no matter what! We all need a major change of scenery.”
They agreed. I have highly flexible and adaptive children. Of that I am sure.
So on December 22nd we boarded a plane to Dublin, double-masked, double-jabbed, boosted, and with all the papers to prove it.
As I awoke to the green patchwork of the Irish countryside, I looked out my airplane window, thinking: What if the ‘just us’ that we find is really just a manifestation of the past and not a vibrant present, much less future? What if we really don’t know how to be together at all? Not having the pub scene as our playing ground will have us really present with one another. I hope that’s a good thing. Jet-lag messes with me. I shook it out of my mind and put on my best “just us” face.
What I didn’t quite bargain for, was the large amount of driving I’d signed up for.
On the other side of the road. The steering wheel on the right. And while both of my children are great drivers, the rental car agency wouldn’t approve them, given their age. So it was all me. And that was okay. I’m a confident and good and adaptive driver. I mean, I drive Montana roads all winter. I can do anything, right? I thought, as I nearly backed into a post leaving the parking garage. I was hellbent on not being your typical clueless American driver. I’d get this other side of the road thing figured out in seconds flat. Just you watch me. I stared into the first Dublin round-about with steely reserve. And then the next. And the next.
I’ll paint you the picture; spare you the details:
It was roundabout after roundabout and all in the “opposite direction.” So it wasn’t just linear learning. It was a life-threatening matter of clock-wise vs. counter-clockwise. I’ve never been good with clocks. I didn’t realize that I am also, most definitely, directionally challenged. And given the time of year, each day our return drive was in the total dark, often with very little street light, giving the optical illusion that you are about to get in a head-on every time you pass a car. Stone walls on either side. No shoulder. And for some crazy reason, at the suggested speed of 80 kph? That’s around 50 mph. There is honestly no way you could drive those windy, dark roads at 80 kph. Not even if you know them like the back of your hand. Again, I’m an excellent driver and I’m here to say: People who are used to driving on the right side of the road should be required to take a course for driving on the left. And vice the verse. Serious.
On a lighter note, because remember, that’s what our little trio was going for:
Think: Mr. Magoo, circa 1970s Saturday morning cartoons.
Nary a scrape, but a couple serious close calls.
“MOM! You almost hit that SHEEP!”
“MOM! You almost hit that ROCK WALL!”
“MOM! YOU ALMOST HIT THAT MAN!”
“MOM! THIS IS THE WRONG LANE!”
“MOM! MERGE! NOW! NO! NOT IN THAT DIRECTION! GO THE OTHER DIRECTION!”
“MOM! GO LEFT! I MEAN RIGHT! I MEAN SH**! THAT WAY!” Pointing with both hands in opposite directions like the Scarecrow in Wizard of Oz. Apparently it wasn’t just me that was directionally challenged.
It’s one thing to be told where to go. But I’ve never been good at being yelled at. Even though they were correct to do so! I mean it was dangerous!
But to yell at someone who is trying like the dickens to keep herself calm…doesn’t work for me. At all. I started to retaliate. Plus, I didn’t need the stress! What about this “just us” thing? Frankly, this felt like a blood-sport version of their teenaged years. But the truth was, and we all knew it, that there was no possible way I could have done it without them. Which started to churn and bubble in me. I’m an independent, highly competent woman. Did this mean that I wouldn’t be able to pull off a driving trip in Ireland solo? Or the UK? Or Australia? And if that was true, what about more challenging places in which to drive. With a language barrier. Completely different customs. Like…Beirut. Should I check Beirut off the list? I really want to go to Beirut. Would I have to stick to New England for fall foliage or Napa for wine-tasting crawls? Was I going to be an old lady on a bus tour???
“MOM! Are you seriously considering parallel parking right now?”
“I’m an EXCELLENT parallel parker! Watch me!” Failed attempt. Directional brain explosion. “Just kidding! This is like Groundhog Day Opposite Day!” That got a laugh.
At one point my son, wearing his airplane neck pillow, dozing in and out like he was in a video game, said, pointing to his sister playing navigator in the “passenger seat” front left: “Well as far as I can see, no one’s driving the car at all. So there’s that.” And went back to sleep.
“MOM! Stop ducking and gasping every time you pass a truck! It’s freaking us out!”
“FINE! I’LL SING DANNY BOY then! Operatically! If that would make you FEEL BETTER! This driving on the left side of the road thing ain’t fer sissies!!!”
Silence. They really don’t see me on full freak out mode very often. Because I don’t go on full freak out mode very often.
Then, from my son: “What even is Danny Boy?”
“It’s an Irish song. If the pubs were open past 8:00, you’d know it well. Grrrr…”
My son chimed in again. “How do I know that song?”
“I don’t know. But every Irish grandfather sings it at weddings and cries.” And then a massive semi careened by, and I held the wheel and sang in my best Pavarotti, Oh, Danny Boy…the pipes the pipes…”
“MOM! Stop singing and DRIVE!”
Son again, just before dropping off to sleep. Again: “Oh I know! It’s the song that Jay sings on Modern Family.”
I wanted to be back at the hotel with a nice Irishman delivering me a pot of nice Irish tea. In front of a nice peat moss fire. The nice Irish chauffeur at the ready for tomorrow’s driving adventure.
Ha. Ha.
But there was one moment which was the confluence of it all.
And it secured our future in just the pitch perfect way, sans fiddle, tin whistles, bodhran, accordion. And with me at the steering wheel.
It was broad daylight. We were driving the Dingle Peninsula. We were wind-blown-away by the beauty. The ancient beehive huts. The ocean foam. The cliffs, all accompanied by the sea shanties we’d cued up on our playlists, pub music or no pub music. We were happy. We’d gotten over the original stress of the driving and navigational challenges and had settled into a family of three “just us” rhythm. But nature calls…and sometimes suddenly.
In tandem. “I have to pee!” They could have been five years old.
“Why didn’t you go when we got gas?”
“We didn’t have to pee then!”
“That was only like fifteen minutes ago!” Grrrrrrrr…
Of course there was no gas station in sight. We were in the middle of a windswept coast with sheep and endless loose stack rock walls.
“Can’t you wait?”
“NO! I’m going to pee in my pants if we don’t stop. Just stop!”
Grrrrrr…
I looked for a place to pull over, Montana style.
Picture a tiny car on tiny roads. Golf cart sized roads. Surely this wasn’t a public thoroughfare. So I made a varsity move and pulled into a small, muddy gulley, hoping we wouldn’t get stuck or offend a sheep herder. Surely nature’s call was universal, but leave it to the Americans to sully the otherwise unsullied landscape.
“How about here?” I said.
“Fine!” they both yelled.
They leapt out of the car and suddenly it all became hilarious. I’ll spare the TMI details, but suffice it to say that all of the stress of the driving, all the bottling it up inside of me, all of the victim thoughts of why do I have to be the only responsible adult, and likely years of unprocessed junk…combusted. I went stand-up. Full-on crazy woman. Screaming at her children on the side of the road, mocking them, flinging shotgun expletives their way, letting it all rip so over-the-top red-faced and loose-lipped that sheep were staring at me. Luckily not herders. All this from the driver’s seat.
The kids got back into the car. They thought it was hilarious. Mommy has come un-done. Their laughter put me over the edge.
As I rounded the last lap of my not-so-tongue-in-cheek rant, something to the tune of: “So if I’m not driving exactly perfectly, then you can SUCK IT because I’m pretty sure that I’m pulling off one freaking INCREDIBLE trip of a lifetime vacation JUST US! So you can go…”
And then I stopped short. Because in that moment, in the side mirror, I saw a woman walking down the lane, holding a small child’s hand, behind her, a man, with a baby in a front papoose. Where on earth did they even come from? No houses or towns for miles??? They both instinctively shielded their children from the insane woman parked in the gulley, not at all understanding that it was all a big loud ugly American Mommy joke.
So I screamed out, (because surely that would help the situation), “I SWEAR I’M NOT CRAZY! I’M JUST YELLING AT MY ADULT CHILDREN! IT’S A JOKE. WE’RE ON HOLIDAY AND WE’RE JUST BEING SILLY! I PROMISE!”
They squinted at me like I was landing an alien spaceship on their otherwise bucolic landscape.
I tried to come up with something that would make them understand but came up empty. Only this, and pointing at them with ferocity:
“JUST…YOU…WAIT!”
That was the first belly-laugh. All the stress turned into explosions of nervous laughter. That “just us” belly-laugh bloomed one after the next all the way through our holiday, and back. We shared our belly-laugh stories with our friends upon return. They got smiles. Not belly-laughs. Guess you had to be there.
And so, it was a bit sad this morning to see this news, not because I wasn’t overjoyed for pub owners and employees and all who frequent them, but because we had so much fun, so much singing, so many Irish smiling eyes, and so many family laughs…well…before eight o’clock. Pubs and restaurants are back to normal in Ireland, for now.
And despite it all, we had our own “normal.” Just us. Who knows what comes next… We’ll be there to ensure belly-laughing!
- March 23 – 27 (one spot left)
- May 4 – 8 (one spot left)
- June 8 – 12 (filling fast)
- June 15 – 19 (filling fast)
- September 14 – 18 (now booking)
- September 28 – October 2 (now booking)
- October 26 – 30 (now booking)
by Laura Munson | Jan 8, 2017 | The Writing Life
So now what?
Not very long ago, I was told that I would lose my life as I was used to living it. “Fasten your seatbelt,” someone said—someone who’d recently been through a divorce, lost her house, her children half the time, her dignity. Her face had the map of near-catastrophe to show for it. As I looked down the unconscionable barrel of divorce, another recent divorcee said, “Out of the two of you, I put my money on the pony that is you.” I looked at her dumbfounded. I had never been the bread winner. I was the hearth keeper and full-time mother. That was the agreement from the beginning and for twenty years, and I had put all of my security and dreams into the life we had created, the house, the land, the marriage, the co-parenting. So, I was fetal with fear, trying to figure out how to get out of bed and have the courage for tea, never mind total reinvention worthy of a good bet.
According to statistics, my parting husband, the mediator, and most everyone I knew, I was going to have to down-size. The house was in foreclosure, I didn’t have health insurance, savings, a job, or any income whatsoever. How was this possible for a smart, savvy, well-educated, well-raised, feminist mother? That’s what I asked myself on a rolling tape that tsunami-d over me until I was barely holding the weeds at the bottom of the ocean of fear, and worst of all, shame.
Another divorcee said, “I promise you…in one year’s time…your life will be better than you could ever imagine it. I promise.” I hate when people act like they have a crystal ball. But I held on to that promise, because I wasn’t sure what else to hold on to except the fact that my kids were thriving and my motherhood was too. That’s all that mattered to me. Getting out of bed, facing the day, getting through it with some level of grace, and being there to be the mother that I had always been, even when they weren’t with me, even when half of their lives was totally outside of my control.
In those impossible moments, their bedrooms empty, no homemade dinners to serve, no sleepy morning breakfast heart-to-hearts, no lunches to make and wrap with little loving notes…I surrendered myself to the foundation I had given them and the fact that they’d eaten enough organic food to counter-balance whatever they now were being served—they could survive on fruit cups and Jello and supermarket rotisserie chicken, and whatever else was now their reality…couldn’t they? In those grueling dark nights of the soul, I took heart. One year from now. Better. How was this possible?
What wings?
What could make life better? I was told I had to start looking at condos in town. I would lose the land that held my little family and all our sledding parties, birthday parties, Christmas caroling and luminaria, a million walks with six dogs, raptors riding thermals over our heads as we picked splinters and told jokes, played cards by candlelight, coyotes echoing it all back to us in the night. A condo in Montana? I couldn’t think of anything more counter-intuitive for the life I had set up, curated, procured, and which gave me infusions every day, as a once wife, always mother, and woman who needs her muse to run naked in the woods.
I have always been stubborn and when I lack the practical common sense behind my convictions, there is a question that I ask and it has guided me well since I was a little girl: What can I create?
So sitting there in my house one day, crying in fear and desperation, I asked myself: What can I create? How can I keep my house, my land, my children’s lives from unravelling any more than they already have? This was never something I imagined for them, or for any of us. How can I make this work? What do I know how to do?
At that point I’d published a New York Times and international bestseller, and as always was working away on more book projects, but even so, the writing process takes time, and the publishing world is complex. The long and short of it was that I was in deep financial trouble with no immediate practical way out that I could see. I’ll spare you the gory details. And myself too. Here’s where the hope lives and why I’m sharing this with you: On that day, I put my fear and shame to the side and opened my mind to the world of possibility. If my friend said she’d put her money on the pony that she said was me, and my other friend promised that my life would be markedly better in a year…what could I see for myself? What did I know how to do that could be fairly and significantly monetized? But not find me selling out my dreams, my writing, my total dedication to my true purpose. My sole true purpose was mothering and writing, wasn’t it? What else was congruent with who I am?
Open your heart, mind, arms…and jump! Trust in your wings!
Well…I knew how to write. I knew how to sit myself down and write no matter what was going on in my life, and always had. It had gotten me through hard times and it had resulted in published work that landed in people’s hearts. I could speak about perseverance and dealing with rejection and the practical application of philosophies I’d learned along the way in the realm of emotional freedom and empowerment. I could be transparent, vulnerable, heart-in-the-hand honest and loving. I was natural at leadership and well-seasoned in the dynamics of intimate groups and how to keep them safe and healthy. I could create and hold the space for people to find their way to these life-lines which had been my guide for years. And I could come up with very relatable and inspiring exercises to help people learn what I’d learned– to help people give themselves permission to find their unique voice and express it, using the power of the written word. And as if in Shakespearean choir…a few other friends with crystal balls had whispered Writing Retreat in my ear for months. I hadn’t really listened until that moment when I knew I could not live by fear any longer if I was ever going to get to the other side.
Without a whole lot more rumination, (I’ve found that fearlessness works best that way), I put it on Facebook: Anyone want to go on a writing retreat in Montana with me? In two hours, twenty-four people signed up, and Haven Writing Retreats was born. Five years and four hundred people later, if there was a race to be betted on, and a winner’s circle and wreath of roses around my neck…and a lucky person who gambled on the longshot, I can say with humble-pride that maybe some people deserve their crystal balls. I can say that I am grateful for their confidence when I didn’t have it for myself, never mind my future. And I can say that it is absolutely possible that you can take exactly who you are and turn it into a business, a career, and even financial stability.
Winged Victory!
Whether you’re a single mother going through a divorce, or recently fired from your job, or in re-invention without a view into your future at all…ask yourself this powerful question: What can I create? It may be right under your nose. And it may be some of the most important work of your life.
And even if you’re not, even if you have all the security in the world in the people, places, and abundance of your life…never take it for granted. Don’t live in fear of the rug being ripped out from underneath you. But do know what your passions are and live them with all your might. I’m glad then, that my passions were in a row when the rug got ripped out from under me, even if my ducks weren’t. Passions are mine-able. Anyone can be an alchemist, if they have something powerful to work with. And the most powerful matter I know…is the truth of who you are, the special way you have of showing up in the world, where you find the ease of true power and purpose, and give yourself permission to live it, use it, be it.
The field of possibility…
Happy 2017 from my family to you!
So as we enter 2017, to all of us who are toiling to see brightness in our future, or a future at all…take heart. If I could have seen that day in my world of hurt, what this Holiday season looked like, I wouldn’t have been able to believe my eyes. I would have seen a mother and her children in Paris, eating macarons in a beautiful boutique hotel, old and new friends feasting over long dinners of delectable food, laughter and love, toasting and fond reminiscing. Smiles that beamed as bright as the Eiffel Tower at midnight, and as deeply and wisely as the Mona Lisa’s, and as mystically as the Gregorian chants in a candle-lit Notre Dame. I would have seen a mother and her young adult children– a trio so powerfully woven as they walked the medieval streets of Bruges, Belgium holding hot chocolate and Gluhwein, basking in the Dutch countryside, caves and chateaux where earls and knights once lived, writing wishes for each other on slips of paper for 2017. And I would have seen them in a holy pause for a week in Amsterdam in a 17th century little house around the corner from the Westerkerk that kept Anne Frank’s hope alive, chiming every fifteen minutes as if to remind us that we are here, and we are together and we are not just thriving. We are happy.
P.S. And I kept our house…and am deeply into three books, hopefully coming to your bookshelf sooner than later…
A Slice of Haven Writing Retreats: [slideshow_deploy id=’9411′]
Now Booking Haven Writing Retreat 2017 (ranked in the top 3 writing retreats in the US!)
You do NOT have to be a writer to come…just a seeker…looking for your VOICE!
February 22-26 (one spot left)
June 7-11
June 21-25
September 6-10
September 20-24
October 4-8
October 18-22
by Laura Munson | Jun 16, 2016 | The Writing Life
If you liked the essay, you’ll love the book:
“This Is Not The Story You Think It Is”
After so many people, literally millions, read my Modern Love essay in the New York Times in 2009…and after so many people didn’t receive its message, it is just plain manna for this writer to listen to the fantastic, spot-on, podcast that the NPR Boston station WBUR, the editor of the column, Dan Jones, and the actress Alysia Reiner put together. That essay, called “Those Aren’t Fighting Words, Dear,” was reproduced all over the internet, and to date, it is the #2 Modern Love essay and the #1 most read article in the history of The Week. And now…it has the kind of support and integrity that I always wanted it to have. My deep gratitude goes out to the whole team who gave their hearts and elegant minds and voices to my essay.
What many people don’t know is that the essay was the short version of a memoir I wrote in real time, during that six month period, called This Is Not The Story You Think It Is: A Season of Unlikely Happiness. 
While the essay was written in hind-sight, the book shows a woman going through a deep time of rejection with a very different, and in some ways counter-intuitive, approach to well-being. My book shows a woman, in her daily life, working with what it is to live in the moment, right there at her kitchen sink, driving her kids to school, in the mundane…with a commitment to emotional freedom. How? By becoming aware of the way the mind works, recognizing how it does and doesn’t serve me, and choosing to claim responsibility for my emotions. Whether they were fear-based, or joy-based, confused or ashamed, I learned in that time of my life, that nobody can control my mind or my heart and that I have choices in response to the things people say and do to me. Emotionally, that is. My message was never a strategy about how to stay married. It was always a philosophy about how to live your life, no matter what hardship you face. Thank you for listening, and thank you for receiving this message. Click here to listen to the podcast!
To buy the book, click here.
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Subscribe to the Modern Love podcast for more illumination!
by Laura Munson | Dec 23, 2014 | Musings
My friend and fellow seeker/Huffington Post Blogger Marina Illich and I like to untangle the hard stuff. We call it Five Minute Manna. This is what has our hearts and minds activated this holiday season: Re-defining Family
Find Your People by Marina Illich
Holiday time is family time. But what exactly do we mean by family? So many people live three times zones – or an ocean – away from their parents and siblings, turning travel “home” into a costly or time-sucking ordeal. Then there are the divorced parents left to create “family” plans on their own, while the kids spend their holidays with the ex. And elders? So many of them are repaired to an assisted living home far away, making it virtually impossible to get back to the ranch.
Meanwhile, those who do get back to the ranch often wonder why they traveled the distance. We all know the uncanny way that holidays resurface old resentments, reactivate buried fault lines, and turn festivities of cheer into an endurance test of patience and poise. Inside the dim welcome, one can almost hear singer/songwriter Damien Rice crooning those signature lines – “Why do you sing hallelujah, if it means nothing to you? Why do you sing with me at all?”
Too many of us suffer enough from the predations of modernity – the divorces, job losses and job insecurity. The kids’ over scheduled lives and “underperforming” scores. The long commutes and dusty dreams. The loss of friendship and the loss of self. We don’t need the added pressure of enduring the holidays.
So what’s the alternative? I suggest it’s time to update our idea of family. Let’s dispense with the imperatives to feel whole and happy inside a story of “family” that leaves us frail or frazzled. Let’s dislodge our commitments to stoicism and endurance that leave us walled inside towers of loneliness. And let’s disband our loyalty to conflicting demands that run us ragged when what we simply want is…to be received exactly as we are.
Instead, let’s find our people. Let’s find those like-minded individuals who turn up in odd corners of our lives, who share some or none of our biography, who perhaps celebrate with fish when we celebrate with ham, or intone silent prayers when we devote ourselves to tracking the market or reading the Times. People who – for whatever logical or improbable reason – see, hear and feel our pulse with the gravity and gratitude that has us know we are at home. Let’s find those people and make those peoplethe family we arrive to in our stillness and frenzy, our hope and harry. And let’s make the gathering of that familythe ritual we behold – at whatever time of the year – to signal the holidays are here.
Let’s make thatfamily – geographically dispersed and culturally-spackled though it may be – the home inside which we eschew all the should’s and must’s we internalized along the way so that we can discover what we really are all about.
And let’s do all of this precisely so that when we do go back to our family with its far-flung network of third cousins, step-sisters, and in-laws, we behold them, once and for all – without indictment – exactly as they are.
Then, perhaps, we will find that whatever the season and whatever our destination, we are surrounded always and only by family – those relatives, friends, mentors, students, strangers and perhaps even adversaries – whom we recognize long, like us, for one simple thing: to be held and welcomed into our home exactly as they are.
A Family of One by Laura Munson
It’s the holidays, and no matter what’s in that wisdom quiver of ours…things are likely fraught. Why is that? Well, once-upon-a-time, we believed in something that someone told us, or preached to us, or wrote about, or filmed about, or photographed… on the meaning of family. And we bought it. And there’s a good chance that “family” looks very different to us now. There’s an even better chance, that with that difference, we find pain, disappointment, and even shame. Especially during the holiday season.
I come from a long line of documentarians. My mother lovingly made photo albums and home-movies, featuring every first day of school, play, dance, graduation, in addition to the annual Christmas card—all of us posed just-so, sent out to hundreds of people as proof that we were a family. A solid family. I loved all of it, especially our Christmas card, gazing at the ones we received from other families—a community, of sorts, to tout and hold dear. It gave me an intense sense of belonging.
So, as an adult, I took the photo-album-video-Christmas-card-baton, and raced to the finish every year with a family Best of book. If the house was burning down, that’s what I would take—the Best of books.
It takes me hours to make these books, reveling in what we’ve created in the last year. Making sure I have that perfect photo of every baseball and soccer game, every award ceremony and orchestra concert, every pinnacle moment, as, yes, proof of my amazing family, but also as proof of my motherhood. And on Christmas morning, I love sitting with my family and flipping through its pages, ooing and ahhing over the past year’s achievements, high points, adventures, folly.
A few years ago, my family-of-four turned into a family-of-three. My husband and I needed to end our marriage. It was sad and shocking and deeply disorienting. People told me that we were “still a family—just different. A modern family.” But I didn’t sign up for a “modern family.” I signed up for a family with a mother and father as a united force. It rocked me to the core.
I’m often asked if we’re okay, especially if the kids are okay. I’m not sure what okay means. We’re still feeling joy, inspiration, pride. We’re still on adventures. We’re still having pinnacle photo-worthy moments. But during the holidays, in these post-divorce years, it’s all so difficult. My gut says, Go slowly, keep it gentle, tuck in with your little family-of-three. Time to re-boot your whole orientation of family. So: No Christmas card. No Christmas party with the half-mile of luminaria and the carols around the piano. And no Best of book. Instead, I’ve focused on creating magic with my children, cozy around the fire, playing games, eating soup, pressure off. This is living time, not documenting time.
But on those dreaded days when I can’t actively practice my motherhood, or “family-hood”—when my children are with their father and not in the other room, and I am alone….my productive (Best of) mind kicks in, almost breathless: Go to a soup kitchen, visit a nursing home, find friends who are alone too– create a new tribe of “family.” That’s usually the way I fly—carry on, hope-springs-eternal. But for now, I’m listening to my gut instead, because I know that my new concept of family needs to find itself out of flow, not fear…and the truth is: I’m very very afraid of who I am alone. I can reason my way around this with great aplomb, but reason doesn’t help. If I am going to move forward in a truly authentic way, I need to find refuge in myself. And those alone Christmas moments are a good place to cut my teeth.
My gut says, Become your own family. Learn to take joy in the things your hands touch and deem holy, even if there’s no one there to witness it. Smell the paper-whites in the window and have it be enough that it’s for your nose only. Light the expensive candle and feel grateful for the way it focuses your gaze, fills the room with the scent of amber. Put on special clothes and don’t care if you’re photographed in them or witnessed at all. I trust my gut. I have to find the light in my own eyes, alone. I have to believe, once and for all, that I am okay, alone. It all begins there. And perhaps ends there too.
So tonight, alone, in a cashmere robe, candle lit, I created a Best of book of these post-divorce years. And something magical and Christmas-kissed happened. Scrolling through my files of photos, I didn’t look for achievements and winning moments. I looked for light in my children’s eyes, and mine too. I looked for sacred. If I saw it in a baseball championship or an Honor’s Society handshake, then I chose that photo. But only if there was light in those eyes I love so much. Including my own.
Which means that as we leaf through this book Christmas morning, on top of all of my children’s radiant moments, there will be photos of me leading my Haven Writing Retreats, riding my horse, growing a life that is outside of the family I’ve fostered, and perhaps…in-so-doing, finding new “family.” Maybe we can’t really move on…until I do. Alone. Maybe the definition of family is really a radical acceptance of self. And once we accept that, both my mind and my gut tell me, we will find our family community thriving, even if it looks entirely different than we ever thought it would.
Marina Illich, Ph.D. is a Bay Area-based executive coach and leadership consultant and the co-founder and principal at Broad Ventures Leadership. With a doctorate in Buddhist Studies, she spent five years in Asia studying Tibetan Buddhist practices for developing self-awareness, focus and resilience. She was recently appointed to the California Commission on the Status of Women and Girls by Gov. Jerry Brown. Marina can be contacted at: marina.illich@gmail.com
Laura Munson is a New York Times best-selling author and founder of the critically acclaimed Haven Writing retreats. She lives in Montana with her family of three (and one!).
by Laura Munson | May 30, 2014 | The Writing Life
You never really know where life will lead you, but if you live with pure intention and feed what you love with all your might, consistently and honestly…you might find yourself in places you’d never dreamed you’d go.
That happened to me in 2009 when I published the essay version of a memoir I’d written in the New York Times Modern Love column. The entry point was a marital crisis, but the book and the essay were not really about marriage. They were about being responsible for your own well-being no matter what’s going on in your life. They were about focusing on what you can control and letting go of the rest. And they were about powerfully choosing to not play emotional victim to the things that others say and do to you.
The book (This Is Not The Story You Think It Is) became a New York Times and international best-seller, and that essay went viral. Today, five years later, the essay is having a resurgence all over the internet and in The Week magazine where thousands of people have made comments, and over 200,000 people have shared it. That number is increasing by thousands every hour. (At this moment of writing, it’s at 214K. When I finish this post, if it is going the direction it’s been going, we could be at 22K, and I write fast!) It has been the top read article for days on The Week, sparking blog posts and ribald conversation on social media platforms from Facebook to Twitter and beyond.
Normally, I don’t follow this sort of stuff. I’m a writer and a mother and those things take up most of my time. I’ve learned that media often manipulates the meaning of my message and unfortunately a lot of the press I’ve gotten spins my essay/book to make it about how a woman saves her marriage. But it’s not about that. It’s about saving yourself. Turns out, people aren’t easily open to that message. People are used to playing emotional victim, and society re-enforces that. I see things another way, and when you offer new solutions, people oftentimes not only don’t want to hear them, they go on attack mode. I don’t have much room for that. I wrote that essay and that book to help myself process a difficult time in my life, and I wrote it to help others do the same. It has helped people all over the world and when I wonder whatever possessed me to be the main character in a book (I normally write fiction), I take heart in the knowledge that I have been true to my author’s statement: I write to shine a light on a dim or otherwise pitch black corner to provide relief for myself and others. If I have helped one person out there, then it’s all worth it. And I’ve heard from thousands of people who tell me my writing has done just that.
I walked a line of integrity throughout the whole experience of book promotion, not exposing my family outside of their comfort zone, not naming names, and turning down major media when my gut told me that it wasn’t right. And I mean MAJOR media. My message never has been about staying in a relationship. It’s about taking care of yourself and stepping outside of emotional suffering to do so. Moment by moment. Thought by thought. Breath by breath. Stepping into the most powerful question I know and that’s: What can I create? You don’t have to suffer, even under fierce rejection. Even when your spouse says, “I don’t love you anymore.” I’m here to tell you—this is the exact time to find the greatest emotional freedom of your life! You don’t have to take that personally! Nor do you have to take “You’re fired” personally. Or “You’re a jerk” or “You didn’t win the prize.” These are just words. I’m not always good at it, but it’s a practice I’m dedicated to because it works. It’s truth. I own what there is to own, set boundaries for myself, and mind my own business. It’s actually easy once we gain the self-awareness that it’s possible to choose our own happiness no matter what’s going on in our lives. And that usually begins with getting in touch with our own self-talk. Most of us speak to ourselves ten times worse than we’d speak to our enemies!
That’s new news to a lot of people and so now I find myself in the Wellness realm, speaking about the subject of non-suffering through self-awareness and creative self-expression at conferences and at my Haven Retreats, and I’m happily working on three books that have nothing to do with marriage. I have moved on from that time in my life, and while the end of the essay and the book leave my marriage in a place of healing, that marriage needed to end, and it did. Again, it was never about staying together. It was about taking care of yourself in a time when society says that you should suffer greatly, fight, splay yourself supplicant. I refused to do that. I felt that it was his crisis, and my job was to focus on what I could control and let go of the rest, which included the outcome of my marriage. I gave myself a stopping point. And eventually we stopped. And now we are divorced. Amicably. We are on to new chapters. All the players are thriving. And I’ve been given the opportunity to re-live the messages in my book/essay from a new angle. They still apply and they are still lifelines. And I can say that I know, without a doubt, that happiness is within. I’ll leave it at that.
But in the light of this break-neck resurgence of that small essay I wrote what seems a lifetime ago, I am moved to respond to a few things that might help you wherever you are in your lives—in a crisis, post-crisis, free zone. With the recent inundation of intimate, bleeding emails these last few days, for the most part about a painful marriage…thanking me for my essay on The Week, which indeed provided relief for people, and perhaps a new way of looking at life…I am moved to investigate this phenomena of the collective We.
We are in pain.
We are looking for hope.
We are looking for empowering messages.
We are looking for these things from every-day people.
We want to know that We are not alone.
We want to re-invent our relationship with pain.
We want to know that to fight is not always the best way to win.
We want to know that the only real winning is in our ability to step outside of suffering and into emotional freedom.
We want to know that we can powerfully choose our emotions.
We want to know that no one can really make us mad or sad or feel guilty. Or even happy.
We want to know that life is daily and that we don’t have to go to the top of the mountain to find enlightenment. It’s right where we stand. Even at our kitchen sink.
We want to feel connected to our loved ones, but sometimes the best way to connect is by stepping out of their way.
We have forgotten the power of deep breathing. A long walk. Candlelight. A hot bath. A singular flower in a vase on our nightstand.
We have forgotten that pain can be a terrific guide when we breathe into the groundlessness of it.
We have forgotten that life is about endless possibility. And endless Yes. And THAT’S where the real power lives.
Writing helps. I have used my writing to process this beautiful and heartbreaking thing called life since I was a child. I did it in my published memoir and essay so many people have read, are re-reading, or reading for the first time and sharing with their loved ones.
It’s for precisely this reason that I started Haven Retreats which were recently listed in the top five in the country! Now I help others dig deeper into their creative self-expression on the page. I invite you to write your way through the difficult times in your life. You never know what might happen…
One hour later. 219K shares. We are 5,000 hungry for these messages and counting…
Note: As of June 4, 2014 there are now over 300,000 shares at The Week so it looks like we’re in this together!
Now booking Haven Retreats in gorgeous Whitefish, Montana.
For more information email: Laura@lauramunsonauthor.com
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