BornWilder

Author. Certified Coach. Catalytic Speaker

Win at Life

On Pause

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Visiting Guano Point, located on the Grand Canyon’s west rim, was a lesson in walking meditation. With the 3,800-foot cliff only steps away, I walked slow and deliberate. I felt every wisp of breeze on my face. My mind expanded as it reached into every nook of stone carved from the power of flowing water.

It was spiritual. It was a natural high. And pictures don’t do the experience justice.

When I walked away, I thought I might get in line at the café. My eldest son was with me–a mother-son trip postponed from May 2020–and we needed to eat. Still feeling the expanse of the canyon, my mind floating in and out of ravines, I couldn’t get in the too structured, too confining line. I walked around, waiting to come down and feel my feet on the ground so I could move on to the next human thing.

BornWilder Blog Pause

There is an endless amount of pauses in life. The two most recent for me are the pandemic pause and the rearing young children pause–two momentous pauses that, like Guano Point, make me walk slow and deliberate, my mind floating in and out of daily life. But I’m pushing these pause buttons back to play–the kids and the pandemic don’t need my micro-attention, and I’m ready for the next phase of my writing and entrepreneurial journey.

I’ve mentioned all the big-picture thinking and movement since last fall, and it’s time to get the details worked. BornWilder Blog content will reflect my business changes, but it won’t be too different. The goal is to be more focused and clear, which I desperately need.

If I have book or event news over the summer, I’ll send a quick note. Otherwise, I plan to restart the blog in September 2022. Thank you for being on the other end of the blog/newsletter. The writer-reader relationship is a sacred space.

All good things to you this summer.

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This is not the first time
This has happened
This is the only time
This has happened

Quote from unpublished poem “Season 2022” that won first place in the Burlington Writers Club 2022 contest. Image and text by author. All rights reserved.

On Teetering

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Teetering. To teeter. To wobble, toddle, sway. From Old Norse titra, meaning shake, shiver. From titra to titter to teeter–an unsteady waver; indecision.

The teeter-totter I shared with my sister had a curved half-moon base instead of a teeterboard placed upon a fulcrum. Neighborhood kids flocked to our yard. Two at a time, we sat at opposite ends, rocking higher and higher, trying to flip the other person off. Everyone held on tight. I was no more than seven.

My husband calls them seesaws, as do most people. But a seesaw is simply a back and forth, a jarring from one direction to another. I can’t adopt the term seesaw. It doesn’t capture what happened in my yard–my first desire to float knowing there was an eventual fall. With every up and down, I shivered and wobbled. My head was swimming, unsteady. Excitement, anticipation, fear, triumph–teetering jolted me into an awareness where I wanted more.

What a difference four decades makes. Of bearing witness to the ongoing teetering in everyday life. The day-to-day preparation for the eventual falls. A building exhilaration with every rise, the tantalizing pinnacle. The hours of trying to make the right decision, of accepting other people’s decisions no matter how much they hurt. The joy in finding balance. Within myself. With the constant flux of the world.

My desire to float has not wavered. I just make sure there’s a soft cushion around. How far I am from my childhood yard, now that my preferred teetering is within poem-making. Where I shake and sway and waver, learning that not knowing is a path toward acceptance, an awareness that what I have is enough. And when I reach high and low moments, letting go is exactly the thing to do.

The last virtual book launch question answered.

Cheryl, how do you feel tonight, finally getting this story out into the world, via your gorgeous literature?

The book launch was deeply satisfying. To say that I felt all the emotions tied to “teetering” is an understatement.

Today, I feel something akin to the moment when one moves from teetering to steady. I never lied about my story. And yet, it’s not the kind of story one shares in casual conversation, or at dinner parties while getting to know new acquaintances. It’s a downer story. When I did share, it often sucked the air out of a room. So, though I never lied, I didn’t always share my full truth.

In my twenties, when I first started to write about the crash, I told myself that it was my job to write the hard stuff. Through writing, I could carry other people’s burdens. Let me do that emotional heavy lifting for you. And I wasn’t altogether incorrect. I’m a poet, after all.

With age, I learned I cannot carry other people’s burdens. My job is to help people feel less alone. And shame is lonely. In my experience, it’s an overlooked emotion that causes roadblocks in personal growth. In addition to obvious offenses (like my story), small offenses build up over time, unnoticed–a thousand paper cuts. Forgiveness is a remedy to shame. And yet, the path to forgiveness can feel impossible, especially when the person you have to forgive is yourself.

Though I dealt with the crash in my personal life, I didn’t know how to handle it in my writing. In my story, I’m the unreliable speaker–the offender. I crafted the book so readers could trust the speaker and see her guilt. You can imagine my elation when I read this comment at the book launch: “I’m struck by the trust you’ve learned to have in your readers, trusting us to see the humanity in your story and the connection we all have with tragedy.”

Now, I can talk about the book in casual conversation, providing me a conduit to talk about the crash. More importantly, writing the book removed a roadblock in my writing. I needed to tell this story, and now it’s told. I’m relieved the story is written. I have so much more to say.

Quote and photo by author. (From “Xing” in Anything That Happens.) All rights reserved.

On Plenty

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Recently, I came across Henry David Thoreau’s well-known quote, “The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.” His sentiment inspired a Google search where I found Just Enough is Plenty by Samuel Alexander, a book that examines Thoreau’s alternative economics.

“Just enough is plenty” has been circling my mind ever since, reminiscent of how I felt during quarantine on April 3, 2020 when I wrote:

I relearn what is essential,
balance worth on payday
by my smile lines.

In his book, Alexander examines the events leading up to Thoreau’s journey to Walden Pond, “the young Thoreau was confronted by those great economic questions all of us must face when trying to establish financial independence in a world of scarce resources: How best to earn a living? How much time should I spend at it? How much do I need to live well and to be free?“

Thoreau wanted the poetic life. But how?

How to live?

Thinking about Thoreau’s “vocation of crisis,” I reflected on a few of my own decisions when faced with how to live in the society I was born in to. Like Thoreau, I wanted to be a poet but didn’t know how to live like one.

My first economic decision was whether to pay my bills on time. After high school, I lived with roommates and worked part-time in a trophy shop. I knew I’d pay bills until I was dead. The only people who didn’t pay bills, I reasoned, lived in communes. I ruled out moving to a commune and decided paying bills on time simplified adulthood.

In my early twenties, I looked for a more holistic approach to life as a poet, and “how to live” led me to Bronnie Ware’s top 5 regrets of the dying:

  1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
  2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
  3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
  4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
  5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

If this isn’t a blueprint for a poetic life, I don’t know what is.

I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

Artists must live a life true to themselves and definitely not what others expect of them. The Art demands it. As historian Sigfried Giedion put it:

The artist, in fact, functions a great deal like an inventor or a scientific discoverer: all three seek new relations between man and his world. In the artist’s case these relations are emotional instead of practical or cognitive. The creative artist does not want to copy his surroundings, on the one hand, or to make us see through his eyes, on the other. He is a specialist who shows us in his work as if in the mirror something we have not realized for ourselves: the state of our own souls. He finds the outer symbols for the feelings which really possess us but for us are only chaotic and—therefore—disquieting, obsessive stirrings. This is why we still need artists, however difficult it may be for them to hold their place in the modern world

I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.

Okay, poets work hard. But, if we’re to take the advice of Rainer Marie Rilke, (and we do take his advice), we get another perspective on work: “We have to mix our work with ourselves at such a deep level that workdays turn into holidays all by themselves, into our actual holidays.”

I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.

Done.

I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

The last two regrets speak to the importance of community and being kind to oneself. I wouldn’t say they are natural to a poet’s life; more like a poet’s two biggest obstacles. Poets like to be alone. We’re tough on ourselves. And we’re prone to melancholy.

What if you’re not a poet?

You don’t have to be a poet to live a poetic life. You might be looking to slow down and find the extraordinary in the ordinary. Maybe you’re having a “crisis of vocation” like Thoreau or questioning how to live (especially as we face a cultural shift in the wake of a pandemic).

As a poet, I’m driven by the need to understand how to live. It doesn’t pay all the bills, but my life is enriched in ways that money cannot buy. Thoreau knew this to be true. Yet, it wasn’t a new idea. “Just enough is plenty” is another way of saying what philosopher Lao Tzu taught in 6th century BC, “Those who know they have enough are rich.”


Quote and photo by author. All rights reserved.

On Optimism

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balloons held to a door with crepe paper

A recent Washington Post headline, “Time to ditch ‘toxic positivity,’ experts say: ‘It’s okay not to be okay,'” made me question whether I have answered too many pandemic texts with an “always look on the bright side of life” attitude.

The answer: probably.

I have a history of optimism. For example, when I was twenty, a co-worker said she couldn’t hang out with me because I was too optimistic for her. I have no idea what we were talking about, or what I said that prompted her statement. The point is, our conversation happened while I was at my lowest, only months after the car crash I was responsible for. Where was this optimism coming from?

One study says 25% of people are born optimistic. Maybe I’m one of the 25%. Perhaps, innate optimism put my feet on the floor when I didn’t want to face the day. My genes kept me searching for a solution to shame and self-hatred while I believed my feelings were deserved.

I’m okay that I’m not okay

As an optimist, there is one thing I know: it’s okay not to be okay.

Not being okay in my twenties helped me define what I wanted out of this life; it provided opportunities to tap into strengths I never knew possible. Wait. I just turned “not okay” into a positive. Is that optimistic?

Let me try again.

I believe in sitting underneath a blanket on the couch, and looking “not okay” in the eyes. I believe in learning every nook and cranny of painful emotions. In asking, Where does my pain originate from? How did I get here, to this place that is so heavy and hurtful?

Why do I believe in addressing pain this way? Because going through emotional hardship is what helped me move through it. If it wasn’t for facing what made me not okay, I wouldn’t be sitting here on this rainy Thursday morning searching for ways to connect with you. I wouldn’t feel worthy.

If I hadn’t brought “not okay” into my fold, and made it part of who I am instead of something I didn’t want in my life, I wouldn’t have found the path to contentment. And I really like feeling at peace with myself. Embracing my pain gave me the power to let it go.

Hardship from the pandemic is not over. Far from it. When I receive a distressed text or call from a loved one, I’ll be more mindful to not be “toxic positive.” But the optimism stays. I will continue to remind others to breathe, take a nap, cry all afternoon if necessary. After all, accepting “not okay” is the optimistic thing to do.

Quote and photo by author. All rights reserved.

On and On and On

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top half of footprint in sand as if child was running

As the days of 2020 melt into one another, Erykah Badu’s song “On & On” replays in my head. The song was released in 1997, the year my eldest son was born, and I hadn’t listened to it (or the album Baduizm) in a long time. Listening now, in what seems like a warped version of the movie Groundhog Day, I’m transported back into the rented brick house where I walked in circles with an infant in my arms.

I had no idea what I was doing. The matriarchs in my family lived far away, and I had no close friends who were also mothers. For perspective, I thought about all the pregnant women and new mothers throughout history. Women who trusted their bodies and instincts instead of books and Lamaze classes. They had elders too, and eventually midwives. But when I saw myself as one bead on the string of mothers throughout history, I gained a new inner strength. I believed I could be a good mother.

Around the same time, I decided to–one day–tell my story of the car crash. My goal was to influence others not to drive under the influence, or help them through the aftermath of making the same (or similar) mistake. There was a long road ahead–I had barely started the work toward healing–but I held the seed of an idea.

Seeds and Trees

I’m pretty good at not giving myself credit where credit is due. There’s many reasons for this, but one has to do with the shame I felt after the crash. While I wanted to turn my trauma into something that helped others, I equally felt I didn’t deserve any good in my life. My emotions and my intellect were at odds with one another (and would remain that way for years). So, I compromised, and threw my seed into the wind.

Twenty-three years later, in the midst of a pandemic, I watch that seed branch out in ways I never anticipated. As I sit here, my instinct is to say, “I’m glad I sent those emails last January.” The truth is: “I’m glad I decided in 1997 to one day tell my story and help others.” If I could go back in time, I would reassure my younger self to believe in the tree before she ever saw the first sprout.

My eldest son is now on his own artistic path. His younger brothers are experiencing the first remote-learning school year in history. I’m doing what I’ve been doing since 1997: juggling kids, writing, and a career. But my long ago planted seed is now a tree. And as 2020 turns toward fall, I continue my juggling act with Badu singing in the background, “The world keeps turnin’ / Oh, what a day / What a day, what a day.”

Quote and photo by author. All rights reserved.

On Focus

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We’re in the 9th week of pandemic homeschool. When it comes to my six-year-old boys, focus is a daily struggle. And I get it. They don’t understand that Monday thru Friday the living room transforms into a classroom. When they see the couch, they do what they normally do: jump, climb, and wrestle. That I sit before a white board means nothing to them.

From the start, I incorporated a ‘word of the day’ into our curriculum. I let the kids pick words (hedgehog, astronomy, water), but mostly I choose words that are relevant to our immediate social emotional learning. On our first day, the word was ‘hygiene’. We’ve done ‘taunt’ and ‘annoy’. Last Friday, after a particularly hard week for me, our word was ‘resilient’. Sometime during week #5, I chose ‘focus’.

Focus*

(noun) – the center of interest or activity; an act of concentrating interest or activity on something.

(verb) – become able to see clearly; pay particular attention.

Spanish – foco, centro

Word origin – Latin (mid 17th century) as a term in geometry and physics: literally ‘domestic hearth’.

Domestic hearth?

Where the Heart Is

The hearth is ripe with symbolism, for good reason. For centuries, the hearth provided warmth in winter, light in the darkness, and cooked food. These attributes were a form of protection–from cold, illness, starvation, and predatory animals.

Hearth is the ‘heart of the house’ where we keep the ‘home fires burning’.

After the recent stay-at-home orders, I imagine people see their homes differently than they did in February. Some took the opportunity to complete honey-do lists, while others worried about making mortgage or rent payments. Some people spent two months by themselves, while those in full households would pay good money for a moment alone.

That’s a broad sweep across what people are experiencing. (It’s all the bandwidth I have at the moment.) And it doesn’t touch on the fact that for some people, home is the most unsafe place to be.

Our relationship with house and home is as varied as we are as individuals. But what most people have in common right now, is finding ways to keep Covid-19 from getting inside.

We might think our needs are different from those in the 17th century, but are they?

The domestic hearth was so important to survival, that the word for it–focus–developed into ‘pay particular attention’.

I use ‘focus’ when I teach my children. And it’s not just about the bouncing (I allow a fair amount of bouncing). I’m cultivating their capacity to concentrate, to hone in on one thing, to take a deep breath and pause (and in turn, allow space for others to focus). In my experience, the ability to center oneself aids in mental and emotional survival. I want my kids to grow into resilient adults. I want them to know how to tend the domestic hearth within themselves.

More people will be affected mentally and emotionally by Covid-19 than become physically ill. How do we not just survive the pandemic, but how do we set ourselves up to thrive?

If there is one thing that focus can teach us, it’s that paying particular attention to what provides us warmth, safety, and nourishment will help get us through. The domestic hearth is a symbol of what sustains us through hardship. And while we’re feeling anxious about the unknowns surrounding Covid-19, the hearth reminds us to sit, and be still.

*Google Dictionary which pulls from Oxford.

Feeling a need to express some emotions during this time? Check out my post on writing lyric poetry.