My Crew

Finally back at my café and I open email to find a lovely note from Michelle O’Neil that made such a difference in my morning. Admitting (in a comments section of a blog) that I whipped a full bowl of cereal – a Bob the Builder bowl of cereal – at the wall in front of my toddler, she revealed that she, too, had broken something recently and that Bob the Builder was a nice touch.

Alone with my thoughts this morning, weepy, I think: what mother does that?! Except my mother, god.

These few days, between Carrie’s recent posts about incredible acts of endurance and mothering, Jennifer’s wonderful offering about emotion, Holly’s latest sharing, and Michelle’s Zen retreat, I feel held in a dynamic web of living and growing. I walk the edge, read these women’s words, and am pulled back to center.

Center being the acceptance of what IS, with the knowledge of the freedom to make a choice to remain present in the face of challenge.

Because really, preserving everything for the writing, is a tricky thing. In my experience, memoir requires true connection. True connection is a lived reality in the body, emotion in the peptide of every cell. I close my eyes in a dark theatre, built just for this, and I am there…not back there. But right here with all the feeling and the way the feeling has shaped every turn of sinew and expression in my eye.

Thanks, Jess, I’ve been roaming through music for the last hour. In the circle already, all these women, and I’m on the writing train, looking out the window and it’s everywhere I’ve ever been.

My gratitude to the circle of writing women in the blogosphere who help me to navigate. Down the river, in the rapids, the unknown around the bend, you help me to find my balance in the boat regardless.

Love and blessings to you all.