A Weekend of Connection, Creativity, Learning & Laughter

{psst...you don't have to say "yes" yet, but if you think "maybe," please see the note below about reserving a room (no charge!) TODAY by Friday, Sept. 27,  before they block is released to the public. there's still time to figure out the "how" and make full arrangements later.}

Could you use a weekend of in-person connection and creativity with kind-hearted kindreds?

How about some laughter and learning?

Maybe a dance party or some hula-hooping fun?

Or maybe an acoustic concert at a winery is more your style?

What about a nice cup of tea or a relaxing soak in a warm pool?

Or how about a quiet bedroom with a bed to call your own, no little (or big) feet poking you in the ribs or four-footed friends climbing on your head?

Yes? Maybe? Just possibly?

Please join me and a group of lovely women for the Soul Sisters Conference next month, just outside of Portland, Oregon.

UPDATED: Today (9/25) Friday (9/27) is the last day to book your room at McMenamin's Edgefield before the resort releases that block of rooms to the public.

BUT -- and this is a great but! -- you can reserve your room with no money down, and you have until late next month (48 hours before the event) to cancel your room if you need to. This means you can snag a bedroom reservation today and then figure out how/if/yes you can come to the conference!

You don't have to register for the conference today or book your travel today or pay for your room today. But if you have even the slightest inkling that you'd like to join us (even if you still need to figure out the how), please book a bedroom today.

Details on booking a room are here.

More details on this amazing weekend (including the storytelling session that I'll be leading) are available here.

This will be a weekend of good things: story-telling, new-friend-meeting, old-friend-hugging, photo-taking, poem-making, true-self-finding, creativity-stoking, soulful-fun-having, spirit-rejuvenating wonderfulness.

If you're committed to creating a life of beauty, kindness, and genuine connection, I think you will love this Soul Sisters gathering.

(Book your bedroom today before the rooms are released to the public, and then figure out if you can come. I'll be back later with more posts about my storytelling session and the rest of the wonderful workshops.) 

Any questions? Let me know!

What I'd Tell Myself (A One-moment Memoir)

There I was, lying on the acupuncturist's table, needles sticking out of my feet, legs, wrists, stomach, and forehead, trying to follow the suggestion that I breathe deeply and clear my mind, but my mind kept wandering to and fro, not anywhere very interesting, mostly to the land of to-do-lists. But then, without fanfare, I saw myself -- not the me lying on the table, but the 16-year-old version of me, my permed hair down to my shoulders, my pink glasses taking up most of my face, my long-sleeved purple tie-dyed shirt too big for my small frame. This wasn't a floaty, out-of-body experience. I didn't feel like I was time traveling or astral projecting or even having a particularly epiphanic moment. My mind had simply wandered there based the conversation I'd had with the acupuncturist before she stuck me and left the room. She'd asked me about grief, explained how it can show up in the physical body. I'd told her that I've lost some things -- not people, but beliefs, certain ways of understanding and being in the world. When I was 16, I developed a very particular worldview, and then around the age of 30, I lost it. I've been grieving that loss ever since, trying to come to terms with a never-ending loop of "what now?" So all of this was on my mind as I focused on my breathing and tried to clear my thoughts. And just like that, I saw the me I was before I'd lost the me I'd been. I imagined sitting down with younger-me, and saying...what? I have no idea. If this kind of time travel were really possible, what would that conversation be? Would I go back and tell myself that it all comes crashing down? Or maybe I could ask my younger self to give me something to believe in, something to take back to the future with me, something to hold on to until I caught up with myself. In my mind, I sat with my younger self for a few moments, each of us looking at the other with some amusement and confusion, and a surprising amount of love. There are things we want to tell each other, I'm sure of it. But we're just not sure the other is ready to hear them.

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"One-moment Memoirs" (formerly known as "Everyday Essays") are short pieces that capture a moment in time.

I've been writing these shorts for a few years, and now I've developed a guide to walk you through the process of writing your own.

Some experiences beg us to write about them, but we often feel overwhelmed when trying to capture the whole story at once. One-moment Memoirs (OMM) is a step-by-step process to guide you through discovering and telling your life's stories (big and small) in bite-sized pieces (perfect for blog posts and short essays). By using writing prompts and exercises designed to help you connect with the heart of your story, we'll dig into the details of a single moment. You'll then use what you find in that moment to write your very own one-moment memoir.

If you'd like to be among the first to know when One-moment Memoirs launches, please join The Word Cellar mailing list.

I See You: Full frontal nudity & the derby girl inside

Last week after roller derby practice, I took a shower while my husband made dinner. I was in a good mood. It had been a good practice -- challenging, but fun. My blood sugar (which is prone to dipping too low) stayed steady, and I kept up fairly well with the drills. I worked on some jumps and transitions, skills that have scared me to death in the past, and I seemed to make some good progress on them. As a bonus, dinner was now being made downstairs while I stood in the hot water. I was feeling good.

The shower faces a large bathroom mirror, which means I confront my full-frontal, naked self whenever I reach for my towel. Usually, all I can see are my too-heavy thighs, my too-pale skin, my too-full face. I try to look at myself with kindness, but honestly, it's usually easier to not look at all, or at least to not pay much attention and wrap that towel around me as quickly as possible.

Something different happened this night. Maybe it was the post-practice endorphins, or post-shower bliss, or the jolliness of knowing that someone else was making me a yummy dinner. Regardless, what happened next hit me like an epiphany.

I finished my shower and turned off the water. I opened the curtain, saw my reflection in the mirror, and I saw something different.

I saw the strong, fit, athletic girl inside of me. The one that I used to envision as a yoga girl, or a surfer, or a volleyball player -- or some version of the models in the Athleta catalogue. The one I now envision as a badass derby girl.

As soon as my eyes met themselves in the mirror, I thought:

I see you.

I see your bright eyes and vibrant presence. I see your determination, your courage, your skill. I see the fledgling derby girl you are -- and the one you are becoming.

I see your strong legs, your luminous skin, your fierce and joyful face. I see you.

I see you -- you, whom I've long looked for. You, who I never really believed in, even as I half-fantasized about you for years.

I see you, as you are, as you can be, as you will be -- because those are all the same thing.

I see your power and your grace, your vim and your vigor, your skate and your swagger.

I see you. I see you. I see you.

** ** **

You can read more tales of my roller derby escapades and epiphanies in Roller Derby Makes Me Brave.

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 Related...

Playing roller derby has been one of the most unexpected (and delightful) choices of my life. This October, I'll be leading a storytelling session about the power of unexpected choices. Learn more and consider joining me for an amazing weekend at the Soul Sisters Conference in Portland, Oregon.

The In-between Time

Oh, this September sky, like a blue canvas decorated with dollops of white. The sun is a warm companion to the suddenly cool breeze. This is an in-between time, not-quite-summer, not-quite-fall. Autumn is my favorite season, but every year I paw and clutch at the last days of summer, not ready to give up fresh tomatoes, bare feet, and long evenings of lingering light. But already the evenings are noticeably shorter, the sunset coming an hour sooner than I expect it. These in-between days are so sweet, a honeyed ripening and mellowing into something darker and richer in the months to come.

We say things like, "I can't believe the summer's over!", or "I can't believe it's back to school already!" But what's not to believe? The months and seasons turn again and again, the same pattern, the same speed, year after year. Of course, it doesn't feel that way. Remember when the wait for Christmas or your birthday was unbearably slow and sweet, like hot toffee strung between two spoons? Now, as adults, we blink -- and time snaps like peanut brittle. Before we know it we're always back at the end of the year or the beginning again.

A few years ago, my great aunt, who was in her eighties then, told me that she sometimes looks in the mirror and thinks, Who's that old lady?

"I know I'm old," she told me. "But I don't feel old on the inside. I just feel like me."

My mother told me something similar when she was in her fifties. At the time I was in my late twenties, and I'd started to have a hunch that I may never feel like a real grown-up, that there was no magic age at which people feel like they have life all figured out and know what they're doing. I'm in my late thirties now, and despite being wiser and more well-equipped to deal with certain life situations than I was a decade or two ago, I often feel like I'm not qualified to be an adult.

I can't believe I've been out of high school for 19 years, out of college for 15, married for 12. I can't believe I still haven't published a book or made up my mind about having a baby. I can't believe that I'm closer to middle age than to adolescence. But what's not to believe?

I've started to paw and clutch at the months and years, that same bittersweet end-of-summer feeling driving me to hold on to the waning days of youth. I still wear my hair in pigtails sometimes, and I occasionally get carded when ordering a drink, but 40 is just three doors down, and it seems like I'm traveling this road faster and faster each year.

I feel like I'm running out of time -- and I am. We all are. There's nothing novel about a midlife crisis or sensing the yawning cavern of your own mortality. I'm not trying to be morbid. I'm just trying to make sense of this living and getting older. It's what we're all doing, I suppose. Before we know it, it will be October and then January and then December, whether we can believe it or not.

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If you enjoyed this post and are interested in writing about the big questions and the small moments that shape your life, you may be interested in One-Moment Memoirs, a step-by-step process to guide you through discovering and telling your life's stories (big and small) in bite-sized pieces (perfect for blog posts and short essays). Click here for more information and registration. 

The Giving & Receiving of Stories

I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed.

~John Cusack as Lloyd Dobler in Say Anything

I don't want to help you, heal you, inspire you, or teach you anything; that's not why I write.

I write to make sense of the world.

I write because I find comfort in the rhythm of words placed side-by-side; I find joy in the way words sound together and the way they shape -- and give shape to -- my thoughts.

I write to capture and create beauty, meaning, and connection.

A lot of people say they write to inspire others. Not me. Unless by inspiration you mean one of those flashing moments of resonance and insight, a quick intake of breath and a soft exhale of recognition. If my writing gives you that, I consider myself blessed.

And goodness knows, I certainly don't want to teach you anything. This may sound strange coming from someone who holds creative writing classes, who leads workshops, and who writes about how to improve your writing. My friends say this makes me a teacher, but I much rather think of myself as a sharer (despite what an unwieldy word that is!). 

I'd rather connect with you than help you.

I'd rather bring meaning to you than heal you.

I'd rather add beauty to your life than inspire you.

I'd rather share with you than teach you.

These are not arbitrary differences. This is not about nuanced shades of meaning in the definitions of words.

This is not just semantics.

Definition of Semantics: "The study of meanings."

Okay, so maybe this is semantics. Maybe that's exactly what this is.

I get hung up on shades of meaning a lot. I can't help it: I'm a word person.

But as I look at that list above, I can see that the words I'm pitting against one another are more like the two sides of a coin, or two ends of the same spectrum. The ones I prefer (connect, meaning, beauty, and share) are what I try to do in my writing. The others (help, heal, inspire, and teach or learn) are the things that may (if I'm fortunate) come from my stories when someone reads it.

I'm beginning to see it more clearly now: These two sets of words are the giving and receiving of the work.

It's true: I don't write to help, heal, inspire, or teach. But if someone feels less alone, or less crazy, or more loved, or less confused, or more at ease with living in the questions, or more awake to beauty, or more connected to the world, or more rooted in their landscape, or more sure of their own heart, well then, I count myself (and my stories) as fortunate, indeed. 

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I'd love to connect with you at this in-person event that is sure to be chock-full of beauty and meaning.

Join me and some fabulous teachers (and sharers!) at the Soul Sisters Conference in Portland, OR, this October.

I'll be leading a Storytelling Carnival in which I'll help (oops, there's that word!) you identify and begin to tell the important stories from your life. We'll hear some stories of "unexpected choices" and then dig into our own lives to find the moments when we've made brave or different or surprising choices. We'll share our stories with one another, and maybe even see ourselves reflected in someone else's story.

More details are available here.

Or head on over to the Soul Sisters website to register. (Tell 'em I sent you!)