by Laura Munson | Nov 30, 2020
Join me for a reading and discussion from my bestselling novel, Willa’s Grove, with the Westwood, MA Public Library!
Willa’s Grove is a beautiful invitation to the question of “So now what?” Three women, from coast to coast and in between, open their mailboxes to the same intriguing invitation. Although leading entirely different lives, each has found herself at a similar, jarring crossroads. Right when these women thought they’d be comfortably settling into middle age, their carefully curated futures have turned out to be dead ends. The sender of the invitation is Willa Silvester, who is reeling from the untimely death of her beloved husband and the reality that she must say goodbye to the small mountain town they founded together. Yet as Willa mourns her losses, an impossible question keeps staring her in the face: So now what?
USA TODAY BESTSELLER! The perfect book for right now.
Click here to register
by Laura Munson | Sep 20, 2020 | Musings
I have never been more hyper-sensitive in my life than in these last six months.
At first I was ashamed of it. All my life, people have told me “You’re so sensitive” and not as an observation. Rather, as a criticism. There’s a lot of shame around that feeling for me. Even so, I’ve worked hard to keep my sensitivity intact, along with its siblings: empathy and curiosity, but I’ve learned how to not let it blindside me. I have an inner colander of sorts. And I am usually pretty good at running things through it before they lodge in me. I use this inner colander a lot when I’m in a city, the sudden onslaught of energy so different from my quiet Montana life. Since the pandemic, I’m having to use this filtering system more than I ever have, and now it’s not on the subway or fighting traffic on the freeway. It’s in my own house. In the tiny ablutions of life. The smallest spider dropping with its silk from the ceiling onto the kitchen counter…has my adrenals responding like I’m being mugged in a dark alley. A mouse running through the room? There’s a screaming woman running for her bedroom in Montana like she’s running for her life. As the months have gone by, it’s gotten worse. This hyper-sensitivity isn’t just flight or fight or freeze. Sometimes it shows up as a very new sort of disorientation.
Maybe this has been happening to you too. I wouldn’t be surprised. I think we’re all in some sort of shell-shock right now. Globally. Here are a few examples. Some of them are actually funny. In a sad sort of way. Maybe they’ll help you know you’re not alone:
I was having a conversation with my twenty-four year old daughter about college kids being back in school and about the likelihood of social distancing and how they could all so easily be sent back home, and about how all of this will affect them later on. And I was about to quote my WWII father, who used to remark on my generation (X) and all of our complacency and apathy and lack of patriotism when we were in our twenties, with this maddening comment…wait…what was it? I couldn’t think of it. It was something that I didn’t understand at the time and still really don’t understand. But with Covid, I keep thinking about his words and wanting their wisdom, and getting glimpses of it. I wanted to share it with her. Maybe we’d understand it together.
And I said a frustrated, “I don’t remember what I don’t understand.”
And we laughed. Because I didn’t mean it the way it came out. So tangled and maybe even metaphysical. I just meant that there was something my father used to say. And I didn’t understand it, until maybe Covid. And I couldn’t remember it just then.
But I don’t remember what I don’t understand is how this whole time in our lives feels to me. I wake up in the morning not knowing why I have this fist in my chest gripping all of my organs like they’re trying to fly out of my ribs, but with a fierce knowing that there are very bad things happening. I make myself try to not remember. And then I do remember. Just like I remember what my father used to say. “Oh yeah. He used to say, ‘What your generation needs…is a good war.’” Well we have one. We just can’t see the enemy.
Another one of these moments of disorientation happened in the laundry room recently. I was digging through a mountain of clean clothes for something I needed in order to get out the door and to the grocery store— because the cupboard is bare. Not even beans and rice. So I’m trying to get up the courage to brave the grocery store. And frankly, I don’t want that courage, because I don’t like going to the grocery store anymore. I thought I’d be able to see people’s smiles in their eyes above their masks, but I can’t. People aren’t really looking at each other anyway, never mind smiling. They’re in and out fast. Grocery store chats used to be one of my favorite small-town ways to connect with people. My kids used to hate that about me. They’d fume, “Mom, why do you have to talk to people? For so long? We’re starving!” So I’d go on my own time. It’s a little locally owned health food store where everyone cares about your gut health and your life health.
And now I just go in, grab a few zucchini and some chicken and maybe some white beans, and whatever else looks good and easy, and stand six feet away from everyone with my mask on and my glasses, which are fogging up so I can’t see anything, and when the nice woman at the counter speaks to me from behind the plastic barrier, behind her sunflower mask…I can’t see if she’s smiling or stressed that she has to be in the public all day trying to breathe with a mask on her face, and I really can’t hear her because my hearing isn’t great and I do a lot of lip reading, I’ve realized. And I know I need to go to the doctor but I don’t think I can bear the waiting room. It’s already scary enough. All that waiting for bad news. Or maybe good news. But these days bad news seems to be what we’ll get.
But I’m not in the grocery store yet. I’m in my laundry room. Looking for something that I need to clothe myself so that I can feed myself and all I can think about is how sad my little happy grocery store is and that I don’t want to go out in the world at all.
And I say, out loud, “I don’t know what I’m looking for, but I’ll know when I find it.”
Another one. These comments are meant to be mundane. But they are so symbolic and maybe even spiritual. I think they mean to be symbolic and spiritual. Need to be. I mean if happiness is an inside job, then it seems like most everything should be, especially during this pandemic. We don’t really have a choice unless we just want to watch Netflix all day. We are inside. We are sitting with ourselves. Whether we like it or not. We might as well try to learn something. (P.S. I was looking for a sock. I didn’t find it.)
To that end, I realized I needed to read a good book. One to help my hyper-sensitivity and my disorientation. I’d heard a lot about one called The Untethered Soul. So I bought it, and every morning I read a chapter before I get out of bed. This morning, I couldn’t find it. I rifled through my stack of books, felt between the mattress and the headboard, and looked under my bed. Nowhere to be found. This book has been a savior. I’ve been relying on its wisdom, underlining and writing all over its margins. And apparently not much has sunk in…
…because these words literally flew out of my mouth: “Where’s my mother f***ing Untethered Soul?!!”
And then I laughed, because how could you not laugh if those words came out of your mouth. Even if they meant to mean one thing, but maybe meant to mean something very different in actuality. One of the passages I have underlined and memorized from this book, is this:
“You are behind everything, just watching. That is your true home.”
Just watching. With life being stopped and stretched into this slow solitude, there is so much time to watch. Watching the forest fire smoke stain the sky. Watching the birds leave in V’s and churring flocks. Watching a face on a computer screen look back at a face on a computer screen, not at an actual face. Watching news I can’t take, and then cooking shows that make me hungry but not to cook for just me. Watching myself go out to dinner and remember that you can’t sit at a bar, so I watch myself sit at a table for one, watching people at tables for two, and eventually watching whatever’s on the TV over the bar, like football. I don’t watch football as a rule, but suddenly it’s my only company out in the world. I should have brought The Untethered Soul. But I don’t want to watch myself being symbolic and spiritual and sensitive. I want to watch myself eat excellent Manila clams and sip Sancerre, and chat with the other single diners at the bar. Instead, I’m watching myself eat two bites of my meal and decide to take the rest to-go. This is my true home: watching the movie that is conscious human life. I am not the movie. I know this. I just wish I liked what I am watching. Maybe I’ll see what Yellowstone is all about. At least I’ll be watching horses and Montana. Only the irony is: I have horses and I live in Montana. I watch myself say “no” to invitations to ride. I watch myself allowing that. Sometimes I say “Yes.” It has to do with how I’m feeling. Is it a sensitive day? Almost every day is. I startle so easily and this is new. Along with this disorientation.
I am startling so easily over the tiniest things. As a horse person, I’ve been trained not to startle easily. Startling easily can get you into serious trouble. You startle, the horse startles. And when horses startle, they run away from the danger. Fast. Sometimes they buck along the way. I understand them. They just want to get back home. Where they feel safe. And can watch for predators. Like me.
The other day I was outside, and I saw something in the sky out of the corner of my eye— something that pushed into my vision and psyche, dark and foreboding and fast, and I gasped. Some nefarious intruder? Some otherworldly winged thing?
It was a rain cloud.
I laughed and said,
“Since the pandemic, now apparently clouds can fall on you. And maybe even suffocate you.”
I tried to shake the startle out of me.
It was cold then, and so I decided to make a fire because I haven’t had the heating ducts cleaned yet for winter and refuse to turn on the heat. God knows what’s been living in those ducts all summer. I don’t need hantavirus blowing all over my house. Especially during whatever other viruses might be amuk. I prefer a fire to gas forced air anyway. I like something alive in my living room besides my dog and me— something that casts light and warmth my way. That’s contained and feels economic and that also makes me feel brave for building it. Going out to the woodshed with the wheelbarrow and loading it up. Chopping kindling on the big larch round that’s been there for thirty years. I brought a load into the woodstove hearth, and stacked the logs with kindling and ripped up cardboard like I always do. And then my knuckle hit the top of the woodstove and it burned. But there weren’t any flames yet. It was like my knuckle was pressed against a hot ember that wouldn’t let go, and I realized that I was being stung by a wasp.
I shook my hand and saw it land on the hearth, still alive. Then I struck a match and let the fire burn, left the wasp, and went into the kitchen to find the baking soda to make a poultice. It stung and I felt very violated by that wasp. Is there a wasp nest in the chimney now? I want all of these uninvited visitors out of my home. Normally, I think these displaced creatures are sort of sweet and brave. I would never kill a spider. I’ve killed mice. They eat my electrical wires. I don’t have the heart to kill anything now. I’ll live in the dark. But I won’t be cold. Even if I get stung by wasps when I’m making a fire.
That’s the thing. It feels like nothing is safe.
One morning last week, I woke up to smoke in the sky. The smoke from the current heartbreaking western inferno finally hit Montana. We’ve been lucky this summer in the Flathead Valley. But there’s lightning in the forecast. I’ve wondered what I would take if I had to evacuate, like so many in the West have had to do in the last months. I can’t think of one thing. One thing becomes boxes of things, and there wouldn’t be time for boxes of things, and passports and birth certificates can be replaced. My grandmother’s piano, and all of my memories cannot. I think I would just grab the dogs and run for our lives. Leave it all behind. My house is my safety. I can’t bear to think of losing it.
So I go the other way.
I stay in bed and realize that my sheets are old and pilly and have holes in them, and some of the pillows don’t even have cases. And suddenly I find myself online buying high thread count percale pillowcases from Italy. I never splurge on things like that. Maybe a trip somewhere or a nice dinner. Experiences. But not really things. The pillowcases come in the mail a few days later, and I wash them, and dry them, and put them on my old sad limp pillows. I rest my head on them and I feel safe. But then it’s more than that. It’s that I feel luxurious. Like I’ve gone somewhere I’ve saved for and planned for and am finally there. Only it’s just my bed. Where I am every day. No long commute. No peopled place, exotic or not. And I think, Well it’s something. So I buy the matching duvet cover and sheets. Even though they are on sale, they are all out of my Covid budget. I’ve never had nice sheets anyway. Not like this.
And I say, aloud, “Why are you buying these?” And then I say, “I don’t know. I’m just lonely.”
Part of me feels like ending this essay there. With that last line. “I don’t know. I’m just lonely.” Because I know you feel it too. Even if you aren’t living alone. Even if you have a house full of people. The loneliness from not being able to connect with the world in person, is causing adrenal burnout. Mis-firing neurons. I’m no scientist, but I’m pretty sure that’s what’s going on with not just me, but so many of us. I’m disoriented. I’m feeling everything and all at the same frequency. And I know: I can’t feel the whole world. I would live in a constant anxiety attack. I just need to feel myself. But it helps me to know that behind the feelings, there is the watching. The knowing that I don’t have to be or become any of this. I can be and become instead, the observer of it.
“You are behind everything, just watching. That is your true home.”
I’m just glad that I have really great linens on my bed for now.
yours,
Laura
Sunday, October 25th, 10:00-3:00 MST
Using the powerful tool that is the written word…
We will spend the day digging deeply into:
What you want to let go of
What you want to embrace
What you want to dream alive
You do NOT have to be a writer to come
You DO need to want to find the answer to this question: So Now What
You can be very private and introspective, as it’s not a highly interactive workshop
All you need is a pen and some paper and an open heart. I will guide you through every minute of it!
The time flies by and you come out feeling new, with direction, energy, focus, hope!
For more information and to register, click here.
by Laura Munson | May 19, 2020
To Register, click here!
CONNECT & SHARE: So Now What Virtual Writing Workshop!
Join the founder of one of the top-ranked writing workshops in the US, Laura Munson:
We are all facing the question, “So Now What?” right now, more than ever. Many of us go into isolation, shame, or pretending we’re okay during these crossroads moments, usually out of fear of being judged or rejected altogether.
Let’s create a new community now, as the women in my novel Willa’s Grove have done. I deeply believe in intentional, “bridge” communities with people who aren’t necessarily in our daily lives, but who are also at a major “So Now What?” crossroads. I believe that together we can welcome our crossroads moments, honor their lessons, and use them to move forward in our lives. My hope is that by doing this work we can more powerfully and authentically re-enter our lives, and welcome our futures.
We can’t gather in person but I can bring us together virtually by using the most powerful tool I know: the written word. As long as you can put pen to paper, you can do this work. You do NOT need to be a writer to come! I have said for years: “Writing should be up there with diet and exercise in the realm of preventative wellness.”
The “So Now What?” Virtual Writing Workshop is a powerful step in this path of your self-discovery.
We will work with guided writing prompts to help you with:
• Mind awareness — how it serves and sabotages us.
• Finding your unique voice
• Inviting your stories, past, present, and future — parsing them as truth or myth.
• Vision: getting them out of you onto paper for your eyes only, so you can look at them and see what’s next.
In this class you will also get:
• Instruction in the theory and practice of writing
• Guided writing prompts that build upon one another to provide a map for your next steps
• An intentional journal-writing practice that you can use forever as you navigate all the “So Now What’s?” in your life.
• THE SUPPORT YOU DESERVE, especially during this trying time. We need the power of self-expression in a safe, guided setting from someone who has helped people find their words for years, and wants deeply to help you!
Your investment in YOU:
$250 for the 5-hour session
To Register, click here!
by Laura Munson | May 18, 2020 | Musings
I’m a hugger. I love that long, hard, heart-to-heart, arm-ensconced, deep-breathing moment of physical connection.
It doesn’t matter if it’s with an old loved one or a new one, or frankly, in certain circumstances, a stranger. People who like to hug aren’t picky that way. We just like a moment to stop everything and enjoy some significant touch. Hello, human being. I can open my heart to you. My protective bubble. I can trust you to be safe and thank you for trusting my ability to do the same. Let’s not be afraid for just this moment. Whether it’s a concave shoulder hug or a full-frontal convex one, there’s no correct hug. A hug is a hug is a hug. It’s an allowing and honoring of personal space.
Right now, as pretty much every single human being on the planet knows, hugs are dangerous. If we’re very lucky, we have a person or two in our homes who we can safely hug due to sheltering-in-place. But even then, if we’ve been to the grocery store or anywhere in public, even with social distancing, a hug is a hazard. And so most of our globe is hug-less and has been for months. I worry about the things we’re all worrying about in this pandemic, but I worry about this perhaps most of all. What are the repercussions of not touching one another? I suspect vast. Hugs are innate. Look at children on a playground. They hug each other before they’re done with their first twirl on the merry-go-round. Hugging is part of how we do life. And I miss it.
So it’s no small surprise that I’ve been dreaming about getting hugs lately. Not giving them. Getting them. Asking for them. Finding just the right person to get them from. And it’s always somebody from my past who represents safety, non-judgement, and true unfaltering kindness.
Last night it was a poet friend from my Seattle days, when we’d meet and read our writing to one another, and cook Italian food. She gives the best hugs. Long and lingering and solid, and usually with an apron on and a wooden spoon in her hand, something lovely simmering on the stove.
I’ve also been dreaming about sitting on a sunny, white-washed deck on a Greek Island with a table full of friends eating and drinking and laughing on a lingering, lolly-gagging weekend afternoon. These people are strangers, to me and to one another, but we all love each other and we feel like we’re a part of something special, clandestine, a yet timeless. And that just makes it more these-are-the-good-old-days-esque. We’re wayward travelers and we’ve each come upon this restaurant on this white-washed deck in the sun, and we know how lucky we are and that’s why we’re going to sit here all afternoon. Eating and drinking and laughing. And as the day goes on, hugging. I miss that too: how any gathering can yield so quickly to hugs before it’s over. How many times have you met someone with a handshake, and after just one conversation, said goodbye with a hug? Happens all the time to me.
Now even a handshake is dangerous too. So I dream about touch and togetherness. Not sex. Just…basic human touch. I wake up so happy. I have never dreamed about such happy, light, lovely things in my life.
Historically, I have haunted dreams that wake me with a pounding heart, gasping for air, and I know I’ve been holding my breath in my sleep, that’s how scary the dream is. It’s usually about some giant dark force announcing itself in a terrifying jumbotron in the sky, sending down non-human troops of giant evil heartless machines to take over our world. Steal us from our families and friends and life as we know it. Take over our hugs. I don’t watch scary movies as a rule. And these dreams are so exact, it throws me off kilter every time that my mind even knows how to go there. But it does. Often. And maybe that’s why I’m dreaming about hugs and happy gatherings. Because my nightmare, for a time, has come true. In a way. Only the enemy is invisible. Until it is upon us.
I guess that when hugs are abundant, our subconscious can peer into our deepest fears. And when they are not, we peer into our greatest longing.
When I was on book tour in early March for my new novel, Willa’s Grove, everyone was still shaking hands and hugging. Soon it became clear that we needed to stop. And it became clear to me that I needed to come home and live a virtual life with virtual hugs. I’ve never thought more about real hugs in my life. My young adult kids are home, thank GOD. I ask them for hugs. They sort of roll their eyes but allow the hug, and I hold them hard enough, and long enough for them to say, “Mom, this is getting weird.” I hold on anyway. I fear for those who can’t get a hug, “weird” or otherwise, at all.
When I think about the hugs I long for, I think about how hugs were changing before we had to stop giving them altogether. In the last years of post-empty-nest travel, domestically and internationally, I noticed that people hug differently. They hug with a side-to-side rocking, like they’re trying to calm a baby. I don’t like that kind of hug. It’s like they’re afraid to hold the hug, solid, and true. Like they’re trying to get out of it early. I’ve also noticed that when people are finished with a hug, they’ll tap your back. Okay. That was nice. Now it’s time for it to be over please. I always notice that I’m the last one holding on. It’s always been that way, whether I’m in a relationship or I’m single. I’m simply a hugger. If you know me, you know that about me for sure. Sometimes, I forget that it’s not everyone’s cup of tea.
To that end, at my Haven Writing Retreats in Montana, for years I would walk in to our first social gathering and greet each person with a welcoming hug.
One time, about three years ago, one of the women said, mid-hug, with a tepid tone, “Oh. You’re a hugger.” And I let go. It didn’t occur to me that some people don’t like to be hugged, even if they’ve come all the way to Montana to take a deep dive into their heart language. Hugs seemed like part of what they’re after. But since then on my writing retreats, I always ask people privately if they are the hugging type before I offer a hug. In a group of eight people, usually one is a little ish-y, and it makes me realize how many hugs I’ve given in my life that aren’t necessarily wanted. And I feel sort of bad about it. But not that bad. People need touch. And to me, a hug in a safe place from a safe person is so innocent and fulfilling. I wonder if the non-huggers out there right now are secretly relieved. Their bubble is secure. No one putting out their hands for a shake or arms for an embrace. Phew. I don’t judge them. I just worry for them. And now I worry for all of us.
Whatever is your Rorschach on hugging, I think things are going to be very different when we can gather again, safely.
And I don’t mean in this stage of countries and states slowly, and hopefully prudently and responsibly, opening up. It’s too early for hugs. Please, please, please…keep your distance. Give loving air hugs and waves for now. Hold your hand to your heart. Loving kindness can be expressed without touch.
But one day, and I have to believe it will come, we can go Woodstock again. The huggers will safely hug again. And I imagine that even the non-huggers might just be like the dreamy love mongers in the park at the end of Pike Place Market, who stand holding cardboard signs that say Free Hugs. Every time, I watch as people line up, smiling, for a free hug. I usually do too.
Maybe it won’t just be the Hippies and the street-love crusaders doling out the hugs. Maybe it will be a global playground of people giving Free Hugs everywhere. Until then, from my heart to yours however it’s delivered safely, here is my best hug.
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