Skip to main content

Write Your Life

Two weeks ago I attended an all-day Write Your Life workshop facilitated by a friend. The invitation read something like this:
What would your life look like if you felt empowered to manifest your dreams?
How are you using your gifts and talents to reach your highest potential?
Are you ready to explore your choices?
This interactive workshop will take you on a transformative exploration to help you to articulate, visualize and identify ways to practice the art of creative living.


That workshop challenged me to acknowledge my Bankruptcy and Subsequent Divorce to a group of relative strangers. Somehow that was much more difficult for me than acknowledging the BASD to people who already know me. Why is that? My friends already love me and understand who I am. These new people... well, they're amongst the first to know me in my new persona: poverty-stricken divorcee. What does that look like to them? How do I define myself when I've renounced a role I've held for 17 years? I'm no longer defined by my relationship to DH. That's interesting to me.

One of the exercises at the workshop invited each of us to describe our perfect place, our idea of heaven. This is what I wrote:

There's a big wooden house with spacious interior and a massive wrap-around porch. On the porch are comfortable places to sit and lie down---suspended chairs and hammocks and rockers. It's usually sunny and warm, almost too warm, but that's OK. It's flat and dusty but only a mile distant (to the north) rise incredible mountains, snow capped and vicious, protecting that house with the wrap-around porch. A mile south is a CA beach with tide pools. Every afternoon the wind picks up and a storm rolls in off the coast. There's an amazing lightning and thunder show that lasts about half an hour. Then it smells like rain, like creosote and wet concrete. Otherwise it smells like jasmine from the vines curling up the porch stanchions and railings. There's a garden that provides all the fresh vegetables I need, and an orchard providing the fruits I like. I have no refrigerator because each meal is harvested as I need it. The whole place is solar powered and there's lightning-fast internet with streaming Netflix. I putter around daily, maintaining my self-sufficient, self-sustained property. I am always happy for a visitor but don't often issue an invitation. I teach myself to fish and dig clams and trap crabs and lobsters. There's a horse but I don't often ride, he just follows me around like a dog would. There's a room inside for crafts; there's a room inside that's completely empty. There's a room inside holding only a grand piano. I play and when Jack comes to visit me he fills the house and yard with music.

Most notable: I am almost always alone.

Why is that?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

doesn't take much

This afternoon I went to Starbucks. I don't go often because they're spendy and they've monopolized the coffee business and most of the time I just want black coffee. Part of our Thanksgiving tradition, though, is going to Mom's Target and Starbucks on Black Friday. This year we made it to Target but not to Starbucks, nor did we make it to Starbucks on Saturday, as we said we would on the way to the Deer Valley Goodwill. I have a gift card smoldering in my pocket so today, after buying spray paint and water marbles at JoAnn, I pulled up to the drive-thru at Starbucks. Usually I get some kind of blended iced vanilla chai thing. At the orderboard I was distracted by all the holiday drinks and opted for a white chocolate peppermint mocha, grande. One thing I will say for Starbucks: the employees are always uber-friendly. After ordering from the chirpy counterperson I pulled forward slightly, plugged in my ipod, and started a game of solitaire while listening to the White S...

memory

thrifting: getting good again

The Sunday before Halloween I scored this vintage Fisher Price Barn at Saver's for $2.99. When I was a kid I had this barn, and played with it all the time. At that age I was convinced my dad could fix anything, and I can't remember if it was the Fisher Price Barn or the Weebles Cottage that he fixed up for me, numerous times, beyond any reasonable expectation. Jack's interpretation of how the barn should look on the inside. Retro sticker, clue to the life of the previous owner. I should also mention that I recently found another similar Fisher Price vintage barn at Goodwill, but they had it priced at $19.99! At Goodwill! Crazy. That same thrifting day at Saver's I bought this repro Kewpie for $7.99, which is, for me, quite a lot to dish out for one item. Again, I had a similar one when I was younger, but mine wore yellow/peach flowered coveralls. I remember once learning that Kewpie is a boy, and trying to reconcile that with my own conception of Kewpie as a girl. Clea...