Category Archives: Uncategorized

We moved houses last year. My husband and I had last moved in 2003, so it was a pretty major endeavor. I spent all of October sorting and winnowing through our stuff, giving away things that still had use and discarding or recycling things that did not. I spent all of November finishing up this task and also starting to pack the things we had decided to keep. The last day of November, movers arrived at our old house and spent the day lugging all our boxes and furniture onto two trucks and then into our new house. December first found us in our new house, thankful, happy, and also more than a little dazed.

Throughout all this time, I didn’t write, not really. I wrote emails to friends, posts to friends on social media, but no poems or essays or even journal entries. It felt like a relief to take a break. It felt freeing to focus on something else instead, on the massive project of getting us moved into our lovely new home. And then once we were in the new house, there was the massive project of settling and unpacking. I enjoyed that too. When that was done, it was almost Christmas. I told myself I’d get back to my writing practice in January.

January came, and I did not get back to writing. February came. Then March. I wasn’t panicking exactly. I know myself by now, at the age of nearly-50. I always come back to writing. I take breaks, and then I return. It is the way we work, writing and I. But I did know that my writing break needed to end soon. Enough.

April first began, and I surprised myself by writing a poem. Just a rough draft of a poem, an idea of a poem, but a poem. I thought maybe I’d try the April poem a day thing. So the next day I wrote another poem, and the day after that another. The days kept passing by and I kept writing poems, and I wrote something else too.

In the new year, I was recruited to join my Unitarian Universalist church’s Radical Generosity committee and to do most of the writing for that committee as it prepared its yearly pledge campaign. I was a little apprehensive about the request. That is NOT the kind of writing that I generally do. But I thought it might be good to stretch myself, and to be of service, so I said yes. My first assignment for the committee was to write a series of 400 word profiles of church members who are generous with their volunteer time. This would require interviewing people, and then writing up what I’d found. I’d never interviewed someone before, or written a profile, and I wasn’t sure I could, really. I’m an introvert. Talking to people I don’t know takes a lot of anxious energy.

But I tried it anyway. I sent out a couple emails to church volunteers, and started corresponding with them. On Tuesday, I spoke to one of them on the phone. It was a good conversation, interesting and pleasant, and then towards the end I fumbled with my words and said something a little bit vulnerable, and in turn they responded with their most honest and vulnerable reply yet. I knew it when I heard it — this was my hook. As soon as we ended our phone call, I wrote. I wrote in that trance that is so satisfying and so difficult at times to achieve. By the end of it, I had a 500 word profile which I felt really good about. I then spent some satisfying time cutting and winnowing my words until I had just below 400 of them. And there it was, my first profile. I looked at it, felt proud, and then drafted my poem for the day.

Today, Thursday, I did some final revisions to the profile and then emailed it off to our church’s monthly newsletter. Then I drafted a poem, my 7th so far this month. I feel comfortable saying that I’m writing again. My break is over. It was a good break, a break worth taking. But now it is good to be back to the page.

This Sunday I experienced a new first. My essay, “I Am Afraid/I Am Not Afraid” was featured in a sermon given at my Unitarian Universalist church by my minister, Angela Herrera. She had contacted me a few weeks before, complimenting the essay, and asking permission to refer to it in an upcoming sermon. I said yes, gladly, and felt honored. The upcoming sermon was a special one. Our church has been meeting virtually over Zoom since March of 2020 but on Sunday September 12th of 2021 the church was going to have its first in-person service since the pandemic began. The sermon she was working on was about “embracing possibility” and was going to be given twice on this special day — once during the 9 a.m. Zoom service and once during the 11 a.m. in-person service.

Our family chose to attend the Zoom service. We don’t feel like we’ll be ready to rejoin everyone in person until our nine year old son is vaccinated and Covid numbers go down in our area. But a part of me longed for the experience of going to the in-person service, of seeing everyone in real life, of being inside the church’s sanctuary with its lovely mural. I know the first time we’ll return in person I’ll cry with the joy of it, and a part of me wished that day could be on September 12th.

That day wasn’t September 12th, but in a way it feels like it was. The sermon opened and closed by referencing my essay, and a couple paragraphs were quoted directly. I wasn’t in the sanctuary this past Sunday, but my words were. That means a lot to me. I’m so glad that a part of me was there, in that large light room full of people with love in their hearts.

I’ve been thinking I ought to have an author’s website for awhile. I’ve been slowly increasing my publications, and it seemed to me that I ought to have a place where people could find them all, and also contact me if they wished to. I sat on this idea for some time. Imposter syndrome told me having my own website was silly. Inertia told me setting it up would be a lot of trouble. But I’ve been working with a writing coach lately and she suggested it was time I put together a site where people could contact me and find all my publications. Having that little extra push was enough to get me moving, and here I am. I wrestled with WordPress for a good week, trying to figure it all out. And I’ve ended up with the simplest possible design, as I couldn’t figure out anything more complicated. But here it is, my website, and it includes this blog, where I’ll periodically update people about my writing life, and perhaps small bits of the rest of my life as well.

While I was writing the above paragraph last week Thursday, my phone rang. I saw it was from my son’s grade school, and I fumbled the phone as I picked it up and answered it. It was the school nurse, and I don’t know what I said at first in reply, but she responded by saying, “I know. Take a deep breath.” She proceeded to tell me that my son was running a fever of 101.8 and I needed to come pick him up as soon as possible. So began a long weekend of worry, and Covid tests, and more worry. Now on the other side, I am glad to say that his sickness passed quickly, with the only symptoms being spiked fevers and headaches, and that his Covid tests were negative. He’s back at school this morning, and was happy to go.

Such is the writing life, always interrupted by the rest of life. I’m trying to learn to keep writing despite it all. I’ve done a good job of it the past few months, even managing to keep up a daily writing practice while my son was on summer break and had no day camps or other care. He cultivated a Prodigy Math habit on his computer, while I cultivated a writing habit on my computer. Ironically, I’ve found keeping up my writing practice more challenging since he started school. I have more time, but I also have more worry. I’m trying to learn to write through the worry as well. I even wrote a piece about that worry, which came out in MUTHA Magazine recently, “I Am Afraid/I Am Not Afraid.” It felt good to take my anxiety and shape it into something outside of myself.

Now I’m back to working on my long manuscript, about parenting with bipolar disorder. Again, I’m trying to take a piece of my life and shape it into something outside of myself. It is satisfying work and I feel proud as I see that manuscript grow. I’ll update here about how that project is going, from time to time.