I started my week with a two-day retreat
and no, it wasn’t a poetry workshop 🙂

It was, however, poetry in motion as six women committed to reclaiming themselves spent two days in conversation and community, overlooking the frozen Northumberland Strait  with brief treks outdoors only to shiver in the promise of nearly-spring sunshine.  Hardly a tropical vacation, but more beautiful than any place on Earth.  Here’s why:

I have driven this road before.

I have driven this road before, dozens of times, early morning sun blinding in spurts through the trees. In late autumn the roadside is streaked with crimson and gold but today, on the fading edge of winter, the trees stand bare. I squint against the sunrise for a sign to a place I’ve never been while searching for the familiar hug of the Strait beside me, and am surprised. The water has vanished, replaced by a frozen tundra of chunky white. The ice came in last night, filling the shoreline and the water close to shore. Then along the horizon, a ribbon of sapphire, an openness further but visible, pushed away yet insistent, present, vibrating, beautiful in its stark surroundings, waiting for its time when heat transforms, blockages melt, energy flows. 

I have driven this road before, with joy in the familiar, aware as I stare at the frozen wonderland that the energy is in the surprise, is always present,  a ribbon on the horizon of my awareness and only I have the power to release, transform, flow.

I have driven this road before, but never the same way twice. The road and the driver evolve with every turn, every conversation, united on the journey, delighting in the change of seasons, awareness, ownership of every choice, movement, action. 

I have driven this road before to remember, to learn, to arrive in a new way to the same place.

Home.

Lifechanging, sharing words that matter in the company of women brave enough to dive into stories and memories darker and icier than the view outside. How lifechanging is it? I don’t know yet. I’m basking in the glow of not knowing. It is in the unknown where true magic lies.

Tomorrow is a new mystery unseen. Right now is magic unfolding in how I choose to see it.

A new story is just beginning.