BornWilder

Author. Certified Coach. Catalytic Speaker

Writing Life

On Movement

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bright blue rippling pool water
“No postage necessary”

I started 2022 chanting joy joy joy. There’s no quantifiable evidence “joy” has helped my mood. But I can say it was a hectic two months, and I kept grounded and purposeful.

It’s not only the mantra that has me moving forward with intention. On December 29, 2012, I finalized my first Writing Life mission statement: “To actualize my vision for a life’s work that integrates my writing-life with my work-life and my community-life.” (I’ve written about it here and here.) What’s kept my winter busy is the restructuring of my web design business which includes combining it with my writing life–one big writing-working-community business.

I’m thrilled how things are coming together. More importantly is the awareness that writing, revising, publishing, and talking about Anything That Happens got me here. Writing is how I process the complexity of my emotions and the perplexing existential questions. Expressing myself through writing has helped me in my personal life since I was seventeen years old. I knew it helped in my professional life; I didn’t know how much until seven months after the book was published. (And it’s not the big poetry money rolling in.) This next phase of my career is taking a fair amount of self-confidence in an area of my life where confidence previously lay dormant.

Spring is showing itself here. My irises inch their way through the mulch. It’s been a long two years–I’m reemerging into a familiar world but don’t know how to navigate it. So I pull from my experience–those first weeks and months after the accident–when I reemerged into a familiar world I didn’t know how to navigate. I was twenty years old. Almost twenty-eight years later, I have some things to share with the girl who stood beside the wrecked car, stunned and stunted. Unknowing is an opportunity to renew; to walk steadfast and supple; to reach deeper and build broader. I know how to rebuild myself now. What’s better? I’m getting better at helping others rebuild too.

Quote and photo by author. All rights reserved.

On Refuge: Keeping the House in Order

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looking up the base of a large maple tree at night with large white christmas lights wrapped around it

My focus this fall has been big picture thinking about my career trajectory. It includes a lot of organizing, outlining, and strategy. In other words, it’s a lot of feeling like I’m accomplishing nothing. (Ugh, I feel like I’m eating my tail.) But. I know I am making progress. And I listen to the knowing more than the feeling (sigh), especially when it comes to this kind of work.

All the long-term planning made it difficult for me to get into the nitty-gritty of writing this post. For inspiration, I looked at old blog posts and felt a spark from February 2020—the before times—and read something I forgot I wrote (such is my way). I started writing from the spark, and then the idea got too long (again, my way).

I’m looking for a Goldilocks moment here.

Someday, I will pursue the topic in more breadth and depth. For now, I think about “keeping the house in order” in three ways: 1) the shelter where we live; 2) the body we live in; 3) a hobby or art or work that gives us meaning and contentment (poems are a house I live in). Tending to these places–these refuges–keeps me grounded. I mentioned in July that I was feeling upheaval which I haven’t settled from, and I know it has to do with publishing the book. I like working on large projects and haven’t filled that hole yet. It will happen, that’s one of the factors in all the planning, but until then I need to paint (more) walls, build shelves, or work out. (I painted a rainbow wall in September.)

Alas, here’s a section from the blog post that inspired me:

The word “home” in western culture comes from the Old Norse word heima, meaning “at home”. In its inception, the word encompassed the house and the household: dwelling, refuge, ownership, affection, the overall feeling of the place.

When I think of how to build self-esteem or self-confidence, the words that define the meaning of heima make sense to me.

  • I am my own shelter; when I turn inward, there is a refuge.
  • As a source of affection, I am kind to myself, and therefore, self-reliant in times when I feel lonely.
  • I am confident when I feel ownership over my body, emotions, and thoughts.
  • It’s not how I see myself on the outside but how I feel about myself. Trust the overall feeling of the place. 

When I work to feel at home within myself, I simultaneously work on how I feel in a room, in a house, with other people, and in society. To build a home within me is to build a home within the world. I take refuge, affection, dwelling, and an overall feeling wherever I go. As my body changes with age, illness, or injury, it’s like moving into a new house; I learn the quirks of the structure; I make changes to represent the old me in a new space.

Lazy Summer Days

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To have a writing process, one needs to be writing.

I kept up as well as I could during the pandemic lockdown amidst all the stress and added work of remote learning for my school-aged children. After the release of Anything That Happens, I shifted my writing energy to marketing. Now that I’m in the midst of summer days, full of disparate activities and routine upheaval, I need to get back to the writer’s chair. Yes, I am writing right now. But blog posts are all that I’m writing at the moment. And it’s not enough.

It’s likely I have said this before, but from what I know, important things need repeating. A sentiment reaffirmed by meditation teacher and psychologist Tara Brach. She talks about meditation as an act of remembering. Remember to breathe. Remember to clear the mind, focus on the sensations in the body and the sounds in the room. Be present. She describes the act of remembering as “waking up.”

Writing is the foundation to what keeps my happy, happy. I’ve always written first and foremost for me. I need the mental and emotional dump. Sitting at my desk, listening to The Hours soundtrack by Philip Glass, and writing poetry eases stress. It’s a place I am my honest expression, my “waking up.” And I’m usually good at feeding my writing process. This summer is different for many reasons. But I’m certain the pandemic, and the year that it consumed, continues to underlie all other stressors. I don’t have to read the news to know I’m not alone. Every therapist I know, from massage to clinical psychologist, is busier than ever.

Last month, I mentioned relaxing into the disorder of the summer. I adapted pretty well but recently started feeling like I was being ricocheted through the days. Just this week, I realized a crucial piece that keeps me grounded was missing: Writing. Today, I remember there is always time to write. There has to be. Everyone around me, especially my raucous children, is better off when I slow down and clear my mind–sometimes by meditation, most often by writing.

I feel better already.

Another virtual book launch question answered.

Where does shame now live (or hide, or fade, or die) for you?

When I answered this question at the launch, my first thought was the book. It was the logical answer. I had spent years dissecting my shame and studying guilt. The book became my container to place it all, polished and readied for show. But…

The more I thought about the question, the more I saw shame’s tendrils in my life. Why do I struggle with being an authority? What areas in my life do I still feel like I don’t deserve something? What more is there to uncover?

So …

I know I don’t wear a veil of shame every day.

I also know that I held onto shame for so long it changed how I see myself at a deep level. So deep that I don’t notice it–I believe it’s who I am.

Shame doesn’t beat me down like it once did. But, I believe shame still tells me I’m not good enough sometimes. Writing a book doesn’t cure those feelings. Sharing the book and talking about shame helps tremendously (like this question from the launch). And luckily, I have memory. Similar to remembering to breathe and remembering to write, I remember that the more I remain true to my honest self, the tentacles of shame will let go.

Photo by author. All rights reserved.

On Writing Practice

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On Tuesday, March 23rd, I celebrated Anything That Happens with a virtual book launch. (Watch it here.) There were thoughtful, engaging questions from the audience. Due to time constraints, some questions weren’t addressed or didn’t receive thorough answers. For the next handful of blog posts, I’m going to answer these questions in more detail.

What does your writing practice look like now, when you put pen to paper?

My writing practice changed at the beginning of the pandemic. Before then, I primarily wrote on the computer. The pandemic prompted me to spend more time online, and I felt a pull to separate my creativity from the news.

I use a sketch pad with an Optiflow pen. When I don’t have an idea, I draw. Moving the pen around the page often opens me up. After I get a first draft, I transfer the poem to the computer. At some point during revision, I print and revise on paper. I read the poem aloud while walking around my office (or the upstairs bathroom when everyone is home). From there, it’s back and forth between the computer and a printout.

It took a while to learn that I need to move my body to create. I thought being away from the desk meant I was ignoring the work. But I need movement; gardening, hiking, yoga, dancing, and even cleaning. During the pandemic, I couldn’t do a lot of deep thinking. I relied on movement to keep my creativity flowing. Writing prompts are great, but I don’t often use them. I use movement to prompt me.

Do you write at certain times of day or in certain places? Or does it happen organically in bits and pieces?

My schedule has fluctuated over the years. During graduate school, I wrote mostly at night and on the weekends. When there were babies in the house, I wrote very little, if at all. Flexibility has been a consistent part of my writing practice.

A more consistent writing schedule came when my youngest boys went to kindergarten in 2018. I work part-time from home, which allows me time to write. I do my best generative writing in the morning, whether I start at 5:00 a.m. or 9:00 a.m. Writing also happens in bits and pieces. There are notebooks and pens all over the house, inside every purse, and stashed in the car. I strive to make the writing happen and to let it happen. No matter where I start a poem, I always return to the “workshop” to get the writing done.

It took decades for me to have my own office (with one exception in 2009-2010.), and it’s where I want to write. The exception is during final revisions or when I am stuck. While working on Anything That Happens, I went to Cup22 in Saxapahaw, NC, to revise. I also took mini solo trips to spend uninterrupted time working.

I don’t pull late nights writing anymore. Instead, I like to be asleep by 10:00 p.m. so I can start over again in the morning.

Writing Practice Summary

Movement – Keep the writing brain ignited while moving your body.

Flexibility – Adapt to life’s changes instead of fight against them.

Space – Find the space where you feel “at home” as a writer.

Quote and photo by author. (From “Moon Poem” 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 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.