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The Art and Agony of Retreats

The body knows when it’s time to get off the crazy train of habituated life and explore a new way of being. It’s a tickle deep in the soul that cannot be scratched, medicated or pretended away and that leaves in a whoooosh! when a retreat is found for a time and place that simply clicks. If it’s a retreat of solitude, you and only you for however long, then your experience is completely your own. Choosing to be part of a group retreat unlocks a whole other dimension. When you click sign up you’re submitting your name, address and credit card information, and you’re submitting to an experience uncharted, unknown … and best served that way. There is often a stated purpose, itinerary, takeaways, etc. but it is in the moments unscheduled, the events unpredicted, and the discoveries unimagined that the real magic happens: healing, awakening, expansion, or all of the above. Whatever your intention. And there’s the tricky part. More about that in a moment.

After the initial whooosh of mind and credit card going OMG I’m Going On A Retreat!!! there is excitement counting down the days, with rings of doubt circling like mosquitos, buzzing at random: What if it’s not like the pictures? What if I don’t like it? What of they don’t like me? What do I pack? What’s the food like? And a bajillion other inventions of the mind to keep us anchored in the past as we evolve toward the future. When the chaos of transition settles, there is nothing like walking into the wide open arms of a retreat space, especially when you are the first to arrive. Breathing in the scents of flowers and incense, with a faint (and welcome) hint of laundry soap and kitchen cleaner. A fresh space, blank canvas waiting for artists to arrive and add their energy to the mosaic that will be the retreat experience. One by one, the participants arrive, parting the silence with their unique signals, voices, expressions. There is joy in hello, polite conversation, a gradual unravelling of tension as threads of commonality are revealed, engaged, rewoven into conversations that inspire, connect, pique the curiosity. There is an openness and hope about what the coming days will bring.

Then the real fun begins.

A day or two in, individual lenses are honed, sharpened, focused within.  Intentions stated are fleshed out, altered, in the growing light of awareness. We learn the concept of ‘retreat’ is not the same for everyone. Each of us called to this common space are indeed very different in journeys, beliefs, choices of self. Some want to literally retreat, escape from their lives for a few days of respite. Others want to explore new ways and ideas for living while remaining firmly entrenched in the way life is for them now. Still others are ready to dive deep, shed the cocoons of their past and leap headlong into a new way of being.  Put them all together in a house for a few days and the threads of commonality begin to fray and reweave a new tapestry. We are called to share the mundane chores of life – who is making coffee, who knows how to run the dishwasher,  is there no fresh fruit, are we doing anything today … yes, there’s yoga and talking circle, but are we going anywhere?  while navigating invitations to our evolutions that light up some, terrify others. A human cell cannot protect and grow at the same time. A cell of humans cannot expand and maintain as a unit at the same time, either. It becomes clear that while some want ‘retreat’ for the inner space, others want ‘resort’ for the escape. To sit with themselves, even for a few hours, is agony. For those seeking evolution, to be constantly on the go to beaches and restaurants and shopping and sightseeing is agony for them. It seems hopeless. Did we make a mistake signing up for this?

We clicked ‘submit’ for a reason: ‘submit’ not just for registration, but for the unfolding of the experience. Submit to our fears that keep us isolated and judgemental. Submit to our beliefs that may or may not serve us any more. Submit to the fact that each and every person in the group is not a random element or distraction from your deep dive, but an aspect of yourself, whether you want to own it or not. The part of you terrified to touch old stories and habits. The part of you needing to control your surroundings. The part of you needing to know what is happening every moment ahead of every moment. The part of you wanting to just lie in the sun and forget about the world. The part of you angry and not knowing why. The part of you sad and afraid to show it. The part of you convinced you have built a good life but need others to keep reminding you. Submitting to it all not as why do they … and why don’t they … but as invitations for self, mirrors of self,  is gamechanging for any experience. Seeing on the outside what festers on the inside brings light, awareness, and options for choice: keep festering or allow release and healing. That’s hard, owning that in the fire building within, amid the urges to scream, ‘For the love of God, would you just grow up!’ that the intensity is created by you for you. That screaming is at yourself. The choice of what to do next is all yours.

On the final day, threads are again rewoven, this time in shared chaos of transition again, into the wider world. For some, back to the relief of routine and familiar surroundings. For others, a return to the familiar with new insights and outlook. For me, this time, there is no going back, no desire to return to what was. There is a call to be home and I will honour that. Retreats for me have become a place to cocoon, gestate, and emerge from. Home will always be home.

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The Art of Being Invisible

Want new and different ways to disappear? Just ask a writer.

For those who admire writers and what they do, the thought of writers being invisible is bizarre, laughable even. “You’re living my dream,’ a dear friend once gushed to me. I stood in front of her feeling like she didn’t see me at all. We move through the world, we writers, committing heart-felt words to paper, giving voice to other peoples stories, speaking to the world in varied tones depending on what the world wants to hear – our words bringing comfort, amusement, fire … expanding knowledge or providing escape.

All this and invisible? Seriously?

Let me count the ways.

There is the invisibility of abundance. Writers are everywhere. Bookstores are bulging. Bookshelves are overflowing. Even those writers considered highly visible with awards and accolades and top spots on the bestseller lists are buried in the piles of books straining for audiences, grasping for buyers, languishing in the piles of ‘waiting to read’ in booklovers’ homes the world over. Words vetted and curated and published and purchased are buried, forgotten even, in plain sight. And those are the lucky ones.

There is the invisibility of familiarity. When is the last time you savoured a sunrise? The most spectacular light show in the universe, playing daily free of charge, and most of us don’t take time to enjoy it. We assume the sun has risen by the light cast on our ringing alarm and frantic pre-work/pre-school breakfast. Writers every day are weaving magic with words, fuelling the world with social media posts and SEO, news and directions, entertainment and insights. Like the sun, writers show up every day. As feeds are scrolled  or pages are flipped, it is assumed words will be where and what is needed.

There is the invisibility of dismissal. Everyone’s a writer. Everyone’s writing. You have a book? So do I. So do they. So do thousands more. Not a best seller? No agent? No book deal? No shelf space. Pitching a publisher? Join the pile and roll the dice.  Oh, here, can you whip up 10 pages of dialogue/ two chapters/ a newsletter/insert assignment here by the end of the day? How hard can it be?

There is the invisibility of concession. Do what the client wants. Follow the specs, the guidelines, the rules. Be a tool for others’ needs rather than an instrument of your own creation. Use money as a justification to give others’ work priority over your own. All combine to give a life gleaming with purpose and profit. Your words become martyrs to the cause.

Why, oh why do folks aspire to be writers or continue to be writers in such a dismissive, indifferent world? One simple answer: it’s the perfect place to hide. The realms of invisibility exist because writers are adept at creation, and they create these places of hiding in plain sight to be safe from the world, from themselves. However, as master storytellers, writers blur the line between fact and fiction in these realms of their creation. There is no safety in invisibility. There is only smallness and silence, and writers were born to live large and be heard. Why are so many writers such tortured souls? Squeeze your immenseness into a tiny box for years and see how it feels. Bind yourself with self-doubt, guilt at being successful when so many others struggle, the need to please publishers and editors and readers and the master manipulators of the best seller metrics and then try to soar as your spirit was intended. No need for a freezing writer’s garret to make writers suffer. We do it to ourselves with every breath.

So, what is a writer to do?

Life is breath, life is choice, second by second, Breathe deep into the base of your spine, where your spirit meets tissue. Who are you? Who can you become? How does the godforce that you are choose to live today? How does writing serve your choices? Then choose you. And let the ideas, the words, the work, flow from the Signal that you are. If you see you, invisibility becomes not inevitable, but yet another tool you can choose, or not, to live your life.

What will I do? Today, I watched the sun rise. I wrote this blog. Choice by choice, it’s a day waiting for my creation.

Thanks for reading.

 

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View from the Depths: a Mermaid’s ode to a book club

We are warmly welcomed into a room lined with books – on shelves, tucked under the coffee table, footing the window seat, surrounded by a view of water glinting defiantly under clouds leaden with the last of a rare summer rain. High on an island hilltop, it was a space by and for book lovers but at first glance no place for a mermaid.

“I must be a mermaid … I have no fear of depths and a great fear of shallow living,” Anais Nin once wrote and by no coincidence I am drawn to the image of mermaids and the murky depths they call home. On this day, however, I surface in response to the generous invitation of Tuesdays at Two. This book club of gracious and well-read women has been meeting for a decade, longer than I’ve been writing books, and devote an annual afternoon to hosting a writer in the flesh. They list of a who’s who of local and CanLit guests of the past and I hear the tune ‘One of These Things is Not Like the Other,” from my childhood formed by Sesame Street.

Yet they have invited me here as part of this distinguished list to talk about Orchids for Billie and the little boy I created. In spontaneous acknowledgement of the unique story behind the story, they have widened their invitation to include the man whose life inspired the Finding Maria series, the real ‘little Jack,’ to speak to the experience of having one’s memories and experience crafted into a story and shared with the world. Even more rare than this day of rain during our dry summer is the opportunity for the two of us to speak together on this story we created. For more than a decade we have worked, explored and collaborated as a team, yet usually in the privacy of a one-on-one meeting or solitary reflection and response. This was a test: could I let go of my creation enough to let the person speak for himself? Would I hold my own in conversation or revert to detached observer and slip off into the depths? Would this public airing of our unseen connection be appreciated or painful?

In a word, it was brilliant.

In the years since I began writing the Finding Maria series I’ve come to own my desire for intense conversations, with no question too deep or topic too touchy to explore. Yet the art and beauty of conversation is too often lost in the world of tweets, sound bytes and fear: of offending, of intruding, of being nosy. The group gathered on the hilltop this silvery summer day was none of those things, nor could they ever be. They are informed, sincere, and genuinely interested in the story and the people who inspired it, and in that environment, there is no greater safety to explore, dive, and peer into darkened corners and blink at the revelations. It is the environment I first discovered in conversation with the man who quietly became my partner in business and creation and today sits next to me, sharing his story in a clarity of voice that our creation helped reveal. As one book became two, then three and four and the demands of our commercial venture took over, I had forgotten the beauty of revelation in the written word. I had forgotten how insightful and engaging that little boy could be.

Why?

While writing as a vocation is intensely rewarding and deeply revealing, it to me is wholly unattractive. Painters, potters and weavers, for example, are a joy to watch, their deft movements giving rise to a creation that takes shape before your eyes. Most days I feel like a human seive, absorbing all of life’s gobs and bits and chunks, then tasked with the process of straining our a clear, refined stream of consciousness ready to be sipped and savoured. Who on Earth wants to watch that?

For the longest time, not me and for years, I could do it without watching, thinking, or above all feeling as I quickly sifted through facts for the assignment at hand. Writing the Finding Maria series for the first time kept me in place, immersed in the chunks and bits, and I’ve too often responded in panic or rebellion. Now called to write my own story in the series, I am up to my eyeballs in the mess, the pulp, the unwanted and long-forgotten scraps, and it is easy to look away and pretend to be elsewhere, in a world too busy for such straining and sorting, in a life too full for new possibilities, in a space where feelings are to be toned down or ignored.

Tuesday’s conversation didn’t cut through the mess, but embraced it. Orchids for Billie emerged from chaos to offer a story of hope. It invited readers from many places, spaces and perspectives to a single room, on a single day, to add their own layers and colours to the words on the page. I sat in the presence of many wonderful stories by sharing the one I wrote, steeped in courage from the only man in the room, seated next to me, who outwardly chose none of this bizarre journey that is writing and publishing but is both allowing the unseen to take us where it will and permitting his story to be the interface.

A business coach and dear friend once told me I overthink my blogs. They don’t need to be so deep. They can be superficial, lighter, how-to hints or top 10 lists, and search rankings would prove her right. But I have floated in the shallow end for too long. This is deep and I like it there. Granted, it’s a great place to hide. But there is also great safety in knowing someone will invite you to surface every now and then and connect with those who would support and be supported by discoveries from the depths.

On a hilltop, on an island, there is no place to hide and in such a place, who would want to? To the ladies of Tuesdays at Two, may you go on to discuss hundreds of books and treat more lucky authors to an afternoon of your caring conversation. To those of you book lovers not in a club, start one. And to my partner in creation, thank you for your quiet yet unshakeable presence that invites me to shine a little bit more, added light by which to sort the flotsam from the jetsam as the quest for Book Five continues.

Thanks for reading.

– Jennifer

Jennifer Hatt is author of the Finding Maria series and partner in publishing company Marechal Media Inc.