For the past few weeks, the world out there, my writing life and family-doings, had a say about where I put my time and focus.
I spent a week at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference, my hearts home, reconnecting with long-time friends. I've begun to make a little bit of progress on the new book I'm writing. Growing roots in my new writing space Words Facing West on Substack. I embarked on a 7-day shadow work journey for Black and Brown writers. And I published a 20th Anniversary Kindle Edition of my memoir Pushing up the Sky. It's almost identical to the first edition published in 2006 in hardback. After a strong fifteen year run the book sold out in 2020 and went out of print. Kindle will put it back in circulation.
Now it is high summer.
“Very often, when people think about writing, they picture the writer’s life being best when it contains vast savannahs of freedom, huge bolts of structureless, unused time.” Julia Cameron wrote in The Right to Write.
Summer always sounds freeing to me, and I think I will get a lot of new writing done. Then the June and July days rush into the void, richer, more vivid, and fuller than any other season.
Although my writing responds well to some gentle scheduling, my passion for holy living, fueled by long walks in the natural world, near the ocean or in the redwoods, shapes my rhythm, and helps my writing run through my life like a river. On the days when I am not able to go for a long walk, just standing outside, listening to the sound of the wind or the surf, so constant and repetitive, prepares my mind for writing.
In our 7-day writing workshop for Black and brown writers we learned that in order to bloom on the page (and in our lives) we must first feed our root system and begin with a ritual. We were encouraged to develop a ritual to be observed before we sit down to write, keeping it personal, in whatever way best grounds us.
For Black and brown folks, in order to be safe our ancestors (ancestors include our great grandparents) were forced to retreat into silence. It wasn’t safe for them to learn to read, to write or speak out. Racialized trauma inhabited their bodies. In order to keep their children safe, it was necessary to stay out of the way, not be noticed and stay quiet.
Generations later Black and brown writers continue to carry this legacy. Writing activates everything our ancestors had to suppress—the stories our families said to keep quiet, the truths that made some white people uncomfortable, resulting in a mainstream society teaching us to swallow what we felt deep inside, to soften our voice by code switching.
In our writing workshop we were guided to understand that often our resistance isn’t even our own. What stops us from writing what we need to say is our grandmother’s. Our great-grandfather’s. Our ancestors’ from generations long ago, collective silence. I’ve always felt this weight of carrying, even as a young child. My white-alike body carried this brown weight, my Native lineage, in my soul.
For the longest time I could not find my ritual to prepare me for writing. A ritual to honor by body’s rhythms so that I'm able to feel safe enough to write and publish.
Then the natural world, called out to me.
Her voice sounded like wind shaking the leaves on the maple tree, lush green in her summer prime. More than anything else, mother earth grounds me.
Every time I step outside (even when I’m in the city) with the sky above, the natural world shapes, and alters the energy that flows through me. When I put my hand to the page, my connection with the landscape, and the natural world, is my ritual that prepares me to write and to be alive in this world.
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No purchase necessary.
In Spirit,
Terra
