Welcoming winter’s quiet

Walking on this path I welcome the quiet of the season. There is holiday rush to gather, gift and celebrate amongst others and that is welcomed too. This winter I need to begin my writing project and I have come to see it requires saying no to many other activities. I will continue to choose those times when I feel my music will enhance and inspire, mostly I need to take a break from putting myself out there via social media and performing and workshopping. I long to get my book going, the memoir I’ve dreamed of writing for decades, waiting for the right time in my life. I have been actively studying the memoir medium to come to understand more fully what makes it so appealing and to assess its worth. Joan Borysenko’s Writing Down the Light and Marge Piercy’s workshop on memoir were both huge inspirations and helped me see the pervasive value of writing the truth from the perspective of enlightening and healing. I’m tuning into humor too, relishing the art of finding light in laughter, taking in the media masters from Tina Fey to some of the brilliance shining on late night television. So I set out to alchemize all I see and continue to learn and care about. Ultimately writing is the way some of us need to roll, by crafting the essence of the life force within us in such a way that it reaches and comforts and inspires and changes the way we look at the world. I hope to continue to blog and submit articles to others’ blogs. I’m open to radio interviews and continued opportunities as I work to balance all I care about saying and doing and writing about. And then there is the giving back in other ways. Volunteering and philanthropy. The political climate has been so divisive that it’s forced many of us to scale back what we say and feel. As tempting and comfortable as it may seem to stay in the woods and be quiet most of the time, we must continue to do our part to have our voices heard, speak out against injustice, no matter how pervasively it invades our fragile system of democracy. Be aware of what is happening enough to not let things get by without a fighting spirit of opposition. I think of the song I love to sing New Years Eve, and the lyric, “it’s still the same old story, a fight for love and glory… ” We must love each other harder and truer, and ourselves in the best way we know to comfort and nourish so that we can evolve to be the change we want in our world. We have to hold onto our visions and be true to ourselves. To thine own self be true is survival for me. In this spirit, I will take my winter break to reassess where I am going next. I am humble in gratitude for all I have been given and all the love shown to me.