BornWilder

Author. Certified Coach. Catalytic Speaker

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On Poetry

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Poet Ralph Angel once said to a student: “I’m not interested in the story of my life. I’m interested in the fact of my life. The fact of my reality…any poet worth her salt…deals with their shit directly.”

In an interview with poet Gregory Orr, Krista Tippett said, “To talk about poetry is to talk about life.” Orr responded, “I hope so.”

In 2012, a friend and fellow alum of Vermont College of Fine Arts started Bite My Manifesto, a website designed to inspire. Here’s the beginning of my writing manifesto: “I started writing to grasp the chaos which is human nature. I kept writing to identify myself within said chaos.”

I’m interested in the fact of my life.
I started writing to grasp the chaos which is human nature.
To talk about poetry is to talk about life.

Pull up a chair and let us talk about life. Let’s deal with our own shit. As poet Lucille Clifton wrote, let’s celebrate:

that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.

Poetry as Order

Why does talking about poetry mean talking about life?

The poet’s work is to put words to that which can’t be seen; to express that which leaves us, otherwise, speechless. To some, it might seem counter-intuitive that writing poems is an act of order–don’t poets spend a bunch of time frolicking? Yes. (At least I do.) But there’s also an unromantic side to poetry.

When I write, I take what is going on inside my body–questions, ideas, memories, emotions–and place it onto something tangible.

Once all the “stuff” is out of my head, I look at the written words and begin to shape them. I decide how I want readers to enter the poem; how much tension or rhythm or surprise; how long I want them to linger on a line or how quickly I want them to run down the page; where to pause and pause just a breath longer; lead them all the way to the exit–not an end, but a threshold they walk through, that may just lead them back to the beginning.

What started as a jumble of words, becomes a cohesive piece of communication. It’s as if I can see my interior landscape before me.

But that is the talk of poem-making.

Order is also for the reading of poems. We reach for poems in times of need–to express our love or to give company to our loneliness. Poems help us order our interior landscape, not by providing direction but by reminding us we are not alone, and we have the strength to persevere.

To talk about a poem is to talk about the stirring and aching of the heart, the joy in a drop of rain, and the struggles of identity. Poems ask us to see ourselves in the words and also to accept that those words will outlive us.

In other words: You are poetry.

National Poetry Month

April is National Poetry Month. Maybe one day we will sit around the table together and talk about the stuff of life via poetry. Until then, here’s a few resources to get you started.

Poetry Unbound at The On Being Project – “Immerse yourself in a single poem, guided by Pádraig Ó Tuama. Short and unhurried; contemplative and energizing. Anchor your week by listening to the everyday poetry of your life, with new episodes on Monday and Friday during the season.” (Approximately 7 minutes.) For more poems and writing, visit their Poetry & Writing section.

Academy of American Poets: Sign up to receive a poem a day in your email. Learn more about Poem in Your Pocket Day. There’s teaching materials, a database of poems, and poems for kids.

On Home

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In his book, Home: A Short History of an Idea, Witold Rybczynski says, “Before the idea of the home as the seat of family life could enter the human consciousness, it required the experience of both privacy and intimacy, neither of which had been possible in the medieval hall.”

The first time I encountered the concept of privacy was after my parents’ divorce. Mom moved, with my sister and me, from our three-bedroom house into a two-bedroom duplex. My sister and I shared a small bedroom that neither of us spent much time in except to sleep. As a seven-year-old, I was excited to have sleepovers with my big sister. At the age of eleven, she did not feel the same way.

We moved again, into a two-bedroom townhouse, and Mom gave my sister and me the master bedroom. With more space to move around, my sister hung sheets to divide the room in two, demanding her privacy. I couldn’t understand why she was so insistent on separating herself from me.

Then one day, she moved her stuff into our garage, leaving me in the large master bedroom with mirrored closet doors. Now nine years old, I would listen to Madonna’s first album and dance in front of the mirrors singing at the top of my lungs, “You just keep on pushing my love, over the borderline.” When I danced, I made sure to touch every piece of open floor space. I reveled in my privacy.

The Stuff of Home

What keeps me glued to the subject of home is it’s relation to the awakening of our interior selves. Rybzynski says this:

“Words such as ‘self-confidence,’ ‘self-esteem,’ ‘melancholy,’ and ‘sentimental’ appeared in English or French in their modern senses only two or three hundred years ago. Their use marked the emergence of something new in the human consciousness: the appearance of the internal world of the individual, of the self, and of the family. The significance of the evolution of domestic comfort can only be appreciated in this context. It is more than a simple search for physical well-being; it begins in the appreciation of the house as a setting for an emerging interior life.”

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 building self-esteem or self-confidence, the words used to 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.
  • In high school, I asked Mom for a scale. Her answer: “It’s not how much you weigh but how you feel about yourself.” She taught me to trust my overall feeling of the place. The place was me.

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.

Privacy

My sister and I never had to share a room after the townhouse. I soon lost the large bedroom when we moved again, and never regained one of that size. But it taught me the power of space, solitude, and how to make my surroundings reflect my interior self. Not that I understood that intellectually at the time. But I carried the ideas with me thereafter; that room shaped a piece of my identity.

Intimacy

Intimacy, well that’s something that took longer to understand. Privacy is a physical construct. Walls of a house create a boundary between public and private. We go home and shut the door. If you share a room with your sibling, you hang a sheet.

But intimacy? The close familiarity of another person. As I reflect on childhood, that’s not so easy to pin down. Togetherness, affinity, confidentiality; how fickle those words feel in my adolescent memories. I had closeness with friends and, yes, felt attachment to my family. But when I look for a moment that awakened my awareness of intimacy, I think of my first comfortable silence.

I was a sophomore in high school. My neighbor’s bedroom was in the attic of his house and it had a skylight. He was two years older and whenever I went to hang out, his room was full of other friends. But one weeknight I went over and it was just the two of us. We talked, and then lay on the floor looking at the stars through the skylight, in silence. We weren’t touching; I only knew he was there by his presence. I felt my mind stop, like it does in meditation.

It’s easy for a teenager to feel pressure in high school; stress stems from so many different places. In the privacy of my neighbor’s room, all exterior influences were shut out. Inside the intimate moment that we created, I felt no coercion from him and no pressure from myself. I was at ease; present.

Moving my body across every inch of carpet in a childhood bedroom taught me the importance of having my own space and solitude; the comfortable silence taught me power in the space between two people.

I mentioned last month that it was ten years ago when I came to the idea that home is the space between two people. And it makes more sense today. A comfortable silence might be one of the more intimate exchanges between people; it’s an experience of refuge in both self and other.

Is there any better place to dwell?

Excerpt from “Flood” in What Binds Us. Image was taken by the author. All rights reserved.

On Between

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male doll sits in rocking chair with a female doll in doll house
It was forever, without reason or / explanation–because it was love.

It’s January 2020 and there’s no shortage of “decade in review” lists. I scanned USA Today‘s 10 Lists over 10 years to get my first taste of the past decade. I’m not quite there yet–the full decade-long look back.

When I turned thirty, it took me until thirty-one to grasp that I was no longer in my twenties. At forty-five, I’m still unsure what it means to be in my forties, though I can say it’s a lot like being a walking, talking hormone carnival (it’s more empowering than it sounds). All to say, I needed the decade to end before I could take a step back and assess.

Reflection began the first week in January when I bought a dining room table. My husband acknowledged that it had been ten years since he and I calculated it would take ten years to pay off our recession debt. All the sudden, the white oval table that seats ten, bought for $180.00 at a consignment store, became the symbol for our accomplishments over the past decade.

In 2011, I published an essay that captured 2010 in the “What It’s Like Living Here” essay series at Numero Cinq. So, I’m starting my reflection with a sentiment I discovered a decade ago: home is the space between two people. I’ve had ten years to live this idea. Ten years for the subject of home–a topic that dominated my writing between 2008 and 2010–to maturate. Ten years to hone my focus as an artist. Last year, I unearthed and organized my old research. I’m equipped and ready for exploration. To begin 2020, I trust the work to lead me.

Excerpt from, “In Its Distance.” Image taken by author. All rights reserved.

On Threshold

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close up of iron gate covered in moss connected to worn wood post as threshold
Those who stay / might not want to be found.

If memory serves, I have never written a holiday poem. I associate lightheartedness with holiday poems; if you know my work, you know I am not a lighthearted poet. And for reasons I won’t get into, holidays haven’t inspired me.

But this year, prompted by an upcoming Christmas party with my writing group, I challenged myself to write a holiday-inspired poem. After a few failed attempts, I reached out to the experts for help.

Inspiration came, as I assume it has for many writers, by way of Charles Dickens. Not from his well-known story A Christmas Carol, but from the essay “What Christmas Is as We Grow Older.”

At the essay’s opening words, “Time was,” I imagined my former selves as a chain of paper dolls unfolding back to when I was too young to have memory. I lingered with this image before folding my selves—one self at a time—back together. Then I took Dickens’s advice that comes later in the essay: “Welcome, alike what has been, and what never was, and what we hope may be.”

He reminded me that, to enjoy the present, I must welcome the past, and be thankful for the future. Not fresh advice, per se. But something about his language cracked open a sentiment I wanted to explore. Maybe it’s the time of year, but it felt like I was standing on a threshold, as if I were being ushered somewhere new by Dickens himself.

What Has Been

A threshold, by its nature, is a transitional place: the piece of flooring that forms the bottom of a doorway. Threshold is also defined as “a point of entry or beginnings.” 

When I stand on the threshold of, I have one foot in the past (what has been, and what never was) and the other in the future (what we hope may be). I know that I’m entering something new and leaving behind an old way of living.

There are cultural rituals to help cope with large thresholds like birthdays, having a baby, or getting married. We help one another pass from what has been into the what will be.

Then there are the thresholds unmarked by ritual or celebration but monumental shifts nonetheless, like the decision to change careers mid-life or to move across the country, the death of a parent, or divorce. And then there are the smaller thresholds of our daily lives; we cross dozens of them every day.

No matter how small the threshold, looking back helps us move on from what has been—we literally can’t move forward without the act of leaving.

What Never Was

“What never was” is the phrase that resonated most when I read Dickens’s essay. It’s a perspective not usually included when people reflect on their pasts.

I think we’re often afraid to look back, not because of what has been, but precisely because of what never was. We cannot go back and fill in our past. There is no revision. That can be a sad and lonely reality to face and a hard one to accept. Yet who we are is the sum of what we have and have not experienced.

I think when we embrace what has been and what never was, it creates more room and energy for what we hope may be. It takes a lot of effort to hold on to the past. How many mini-meltdowns have finished with, “I didn’t realize I was holding on to that,” followed by feeling a little lighter?

What We Hope May Be

When my father’s mother turned 80 years old, she chose not to take the required driving test, knowing she couldn’t pass. No one else was going to tell her she couldn’t drive. She told me her decision helped her reclaim some control as her aging body forced her to lose independence.

I was reminded of my grandmother when Arianna Huffington did a life audit when she turned 40. Huffington examined the wish list of her many long-term goals and marked them off as if she had completed them. By accepting what she would never accomplish (e.g., learn German), she could mark them as complete. She took control over what she would never do, instead of always having in the back of her mind, Maybe one day.

We hold on to so much all the time; letting go can make us feel like we’re losing something. But when we intentionally let go, we aren’t losing anything: we are choosing to set it down. My grandmother didn’t lose her ability to drive; she chose not to drive again.

Welcome, Everything

As you move into your next phase—whatever that may be—you’re stronger from knowing what you are leaving behind, and as difficult as it may be, from welcoming what never was.

None of us know what is yet to come, but we can be as intentional and inviting as Dickens when he says, “Welcome, everything!” So that, when we find ourselves on a threshold, we’re ready (and even a little excited) for possibility.

On Little Wins

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looking up at the sky between two large rock faces
To have my mother’s eyes look not just at me, but into me.

[When I started this blog back in 2014, I wrote about little wins. After a few years of practice and perspective, it makes sense to revisit the subject .]

The 2008 recession hit my family hard. We were living in Wilmington, North Carolina, a coastal tourist city. My husband-to-be and I were planning a wedding. I was in graduate school.

Then he lost two jobs and stopped receiving pay for a third. My hours were reduced from forty a week to ten. In 2010, I graduated from school and three weeks after we said “I do,” my husband, my son from a previous marriage, and I relocated halfway across the state to Raleigh, where jobs were more plentiful. We began rebuilding.

Once steady money trickled back in, we accumulated more debt as we replaced our washer and dryer, holey work shoes, and a car–necessities we hadn’t been able to afford. The two years of work roulette had won us ten years of digging out.

During all this, we’d maintained a positive outlook with exercise, Tai Chi, and our porch swing (great for unwinding from a long day). But we couldn’t go out to eat or go to the movies, let alone splurge on concert tickets. We were grateful for what we had, but we wanted a new reprieve from the daily grind. We needed to play.

Wii Learned to Play Again

After long deliberation and financial finagling, we spent $150 on a Wii that came with Mario Kart and Super Mario Bros., a choice inspired by the games of my youth.

On date nights, we raced. On family nights, we raced or worked together to save Mario’s princess (so cool we could play at the same time). We belly-laughed watching a car fly off the side of Rainbow Road; we took pride in learning to jump on one another’s head to claim a big gold coin in the clouds.

That Wii was perhaps the best $150 we ever spent. It provided our family an indulgence during a time when we couldn’t afford pleasantries. But we reaped more than just fun and family time from those games. We experienced something game designer Jane McGonigal is trying to bring from the gaming world into the real world: the feeling of an epic win.

Little Wins, Epic Wins

In our house we have “little wins.” We turn ordinary moments into victorious ones. Car repair cost $200 less than expected: little win. Traffic wasn’t bad on the commute home: little win. Buy-two get-three-free on just about anything at the grocery store: little win.

Little wins are our way of recognizing life’s positives while carrying life’s burdens. The Wii was a little win that provided epic wins to our family.

In her book, Reality is Broken, McGonigal explains, “‘Epic win’ is a gamer term. It’s used to describe a big, and usually surprising, success: a come-from-behind victory, an unorthodox strategy that works out spectacularly well, a team effort that goes much better than planned, a heroic effort from the most unlikely player.” Find all three big coins in a Mario world, especially the one buried under quicksand: epic win. Hit by a blue shell and still cross the finish line: epic win.

We always left game night with less tension around our eyes, our shoulders loosened. And after the wheel controllers were put away and everyone went back to their responsibilities, I found that epic wins did spill from the gaming world into my real environment.

Little wins reminded me that life was good. Epic wins made me feel bigger and stronger than our obstacles. Epic wins gave me a feeling of power in a time when I felt powerless. In addition to this boost in confidence and capability, riding the river in Koopa Cape made me not only happy but giddy. To my surprise, the confidence and giddiness stayed with me as I worked on my strategy to pay bills or sent out a dozen résumés. Epic wins re-energized my self-reliance in a completely different way than exercise or reading inspirational stories. I experienced accomplishment, and though it was in a virtual game, the satisfaction was real.

Finding Fiero

I experienced my first epic win some twenty-five years ago. Picture a group of thirteen-year-old girls watching scary B movies, eating tons of candy, and working together to save Mario’s princess. We spent days at one friend’s house, taking turns to play, determined to accomplish our goal. When I was the lucky one who beat the final castle, I was alone. My friends were off on one of a dozen trips to buy snacks. As the last Bowser descended into a pit of lava I jumped for joy, arms raised in a V and yelled, then quickly hit pause and waited with bated breath to share our victory–our epic win–with the team.

Throwing my arms up and yelling is the physical expression of an emotion known as fiero. McGonigal again: “Fiero is the Italian word for ‘pride,’ and it’s been adopted by game designers to describe an emotional high we don’t have a good word for in English. Fiero is what we feel after we triumph over adversity.”

Now that my family’s experienced at digging out of a recession-hole, our resilience has strengthened. We don’t race or work to save the princess as often as we once did. But when we do return to gaming, it’s like visiting old friends who stuck around during the hard times.

Little wins remain pivotal in our house, a perspective we vow to maintain once we’re paid in full. But now, every time I pay a final installment on recession debt, I raise my arms in a V and yell for triumph over adversity, for years of little wins accruing to an epic one.

Quote from the essay, “Where are we going after this?” Photo by author. All rights reserved.

On Type II Fun

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Years ago, when I trained in kung fu, I didn’t have the words to accurately explain the experience. If you saw my face during class, I didn’t look like I was having an ounce of fun. And in the moment, I often wasn’t; I was exhausted and in pain. But by the end (and especially after a belt test), I felt a surge of empowerment and a rush of pure joy. I told my stories of kung fu through that lens of exhilaration, overlooking the preceding misery.

I could have said kung fu was Type II Fun. But who knew there were three types of fun?

Not me, until it was referenced in a story about an Outward Bound expedition where college students were pushed to their physical and emotional limits. When I googled Type II Fun, the only references I found were websites dedicated to extreme outdoor sporting (e.g. REI, Backcountry, and this infographic at Wilderness Magazine). Surely a behavioral or health psychologist had done some research and identified the three types of fun?

Not that I could find. As far as the internet is concerned, Type II Fun was born from those who leave the comforts of their homes to explore the roads less (or often never) traveled. Literal trailblazers.

I am not one of those people, but I connect with this fun. It may actually be what I’m missing in my life right now.

What is Type II Fun?

According to the websites mentioned above, Type II Fun is the kind of fun where you feel miserable in the moment, but in hindsight you think, “that was fun,” and make plans to do it again.

Why would anyone feel defeated, miserable, or exhausted, and then, look back on the experience and use “fun,” “worthwhile,” or “empowering,” to describe the experience?

Here’s what I’ve come up with. There’s three components:

  • engage in an activity where I have to use grit* in order to finish;
  • stimulate my amygdala (or maybe osteocalcin?);
  • feel a sense of accomplishment.

The end result is empowerment and joy.

This fun is about taking on a challenge and overcoming it. Specifically, it’s about using self-reliance and resilience to push through physical, emotional, and mental limitations. Oftentimes it hits all three. You can decide to push yourself to these limits. Or, an activity that began with simply fun (Type I Fun) takes an unexpected downward turn. Either way, you end up telling fond stories of inverted push-ups.

Bottom line: it’s about seeing what you are capable of.

Bringing the fun home

Kurt Hahn, founder of the Outward Bound program, said, “There is more in us than we know. If we could be made to see it, perhaps for the rest of our lives we will be unwilling to settle for less.”

This quote explains why I need Type II Fun. When I was in my early twenties, I struggled emotionally and existentially–my courage and strength in spirit were tested on a daily basis. After a lot of personal exploration, I grew beyond the constraints of my challenges. With renewed energy, I looked for a sport that tested my physical limitations. I started kung fu and loved it. Then I became pregnant with twins and could no longer walk further than from the bedroom to the bathroom. Now, after gaining 70 pounds during pregnancy, natural child birth, and five years rearing the boys at home (which vacillated between Type I and Type II Fun), I’m antsy.

There’s many ways to reap the rewards of fun in the form of challenge without extreme sports. I’m done with child birth and rearing infants, so that’s out. Writing is definitely an activity that stretches my mental and emotional limitations. (Breaking those boundaries can be grueling but is always deeply satisfying.) Public speaking is on the to do list and that is sure to stimulate my fight-or-flight response. But what I need is a new physical challenge. Rock climbing? Crossfit? Marathons?

Whatever it is, I’ll figure it out, now that I know what I’m looking for. And that’s the thing, right? Over the span of our lifetime we change. Our bodies, our perspectives, and our circumstances. To thrive, we need to adapt, persevere, and not settle for less. It helps to believe that we are more than we can imagine. To see challenge as opportunity. And to let the feelings of empowerment and joy propel us into what come’s next.

*I used the definition of grit based on the Merriam-Webster online dictionary. There’s a slightly different definition in psychology, though they both fit the topic.

Quote and photo by author. All rights reserved.