One Rich Life
“Although some use stories as entertainment alone, tales are, in their oldest sense a healing art; and the best, to my lights, are those who have lain with the story and found all its matching parts inside themselves and at depth. In the best tellers I know, the stories grow out of their lives like roots grow a tree. The stories have grown them, grown them into who they are.”
Clarissa Pinkola Estes
On this day thirteen years ago, I wrote the following entry in my journal.
“I love the winter landscape when the eye of God seems to be everywhere, and snow is a white backdrop for the dark forms of trees. I see things I never notice in the summer … fallen trees, leaning trees, trees growing up tall and straight. The tension in the patterns. When there is no snow, we see only gray on gray, brown on brown, black on black. The smallest details fade, melt into the background. Today would be a perfect day to go for a walk in the woods, to pay special attention to the visual structures the snow provides.”
While I love bold colors and the warm seasons, when the garden is filled with flowers over a lengthy span of months, I also love the contrast of winter. It is when there is snow on the ground and the trees are bare, that I become aware of black, white, and the multitude of grays in between. I consider the composition of the landscape that I miss during the other seasons when it is hidden by foliage.
At no other time of year is the structure of the natural world so observable. Just a few days ago, when the sky was an ashen gray and rain splattered through the gutters along the roof’s edge, I examined the silhouette of a trees dark branches against the colorless sky. From my window, I marveled at the way the limbs spread out into empty space. I was reminded of blood vessels in the human body or the bronchioles within our lungs, that branch out from larger vessels, then taper off, narrowing into the smallest of twigs where buds burst forth as spring unfolds.
As I work on my memoir, I read through old journals … words that I wrote long ago, during other seasons of my life. I am struck by the patterns and structure … the way my thoughts form on the page. Though time speeds by and I am miles from where I was thirteen years ago, the footprints and observations I chase after remain as they were and the mysteries I follow never end.
Do you keep a journal? Do you go back and read them again, years later? What do find that has changed? What has stayed the same?
“Some writers … Charles Dickens was one … write seven or eight hours a day. I’ve done this a few times in my life but haven’t liked it at all. For me, there’s too much else I need and want to do. Knitting sweaters. Reading cookbooks. Baking biscotti and bread. Walking. Taking long hot baths. Sitting and staring at the trees, sky, and clouds. (But not cleaning out closets. Or organizing my drawers. Or ironing.) For me, writing is an important, essential part of my life, but it is not my whole life. Most everything we do finds its way into our work somehow. And even makes us better writers.”
Louise DeSalvo, Writing As A Way Of Healing.
“This is a work in progress, a process of uncovering our natural openness, uncovering our natural intelligence and warmth. I have discovered, just as my teachers always told me, that we already have what we need. The wisdom, the strength, the confidence, the awakened heart and mind are always accessible, here, now, always. We are just uncovering them. We are rediscovering them. We’re not inventing them or importing them from somewhere else. They’re here. That’s why when we feel caught in darkness, suddenly the clouds can part. Out of nowhere we cheer up or relax or experience the vastness of our minds. No one else gives this to you. People will support you and help you with teachings and practices, as they have supported and helped me, but you yourself experience your unlimited potential.”
Pema Chodron, Freeing Ourselves from Old Habits and Fears
I’ve been rolling along working on my memoir for the past couple of weeks with little difficulty. Words have been flowing like a mountain stream spilling over its banks with snow melt. I’m more sure than ever about the structure of my story and where I’m going with it. It’s about my relationship with my mother, and how being her caretaker during the last seven years of her life forced me to take a closer look at my own life and how I’m living it.
Two days ago, starting on the seventh chapter, I hit a brick wall and was stopped in my tracks. I sat in front of the computer for several hours for two days, typed in a couple of paragraphs and immediately trashed them.
I was feeling pretty bummed out about it, because I’ve set myself a goal of having a finished draft of the book in nine months. I did what I too often do … immediately started worrying and beating up on myself, fearing I’d begin getting behind and never make my September first deadline. Then I started calling myself names for being worried and giving myself so much grief. It’s the kind of thing that can just go around and around in circles until I throw up my hands and consider eating a pint of ice cream and/or several bars of delicious dark chocolate.
I was trying to write about a particularly difficult time in my life, which I apparently blocked off with several layers of cinder blocks and three or four layers of concrete. I could remember the time period, but could not find the words to describe how I felt and what it was that had made it so difficult.
I decided I’d go back through my journals and reread a few to try to figure it out what I was missing. But they are stashed in a storage bin we rent, way across town. Working around other appointments and warnings of a major snowstorm heading our way, I stopped and picked up a box of journals dated with the two years I was trying to recall. When I got home I realized I had mislabeled the box and those dear, yellowing journals were not the ones I needed.
Foiled again, and unable to return for more journals, I told myself I’d simply make myself start writing again. I figured words would come to me if I didn’t get in the way with all that worrying crap. Sitting down again at the computer and pulling up the ridiculous stuff I’d written the day before, my fingers began moving and words started forming on the page. It was painful stuff about things I’d completely erased from my memory tapes. It may or may not have much to do with what I was trying to write about, but it certainly cleared the channels and I feel good to go once again.
Writing memoir can be very challenging, but I’m finding it to be one of the most healing things I’ve ever done. Revisiting the past has brought so many new perspectives on the people and experiences that have helped to shape my own being.
I’ve been journaling for years. But writing memoir is helping me to explore even more deeply the way of the world and the person that I am still becoming. I understand how precious the gift of writing can be. Should my written words never make it into book form, I will be forever grateful for the words that have found me and the time I’ve taken to write them down.
Zoe and Noah in a tree on the Outer Banks, North Carolina, 2007
“A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called ‘leaves’) imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time, proof that humans can work magic.” – Carl Sagan
