My love of spaces and what is in them has been a lifelong interest.  As a child, inspired by a book I read or a show on television, I rearranged my bedroom to create the same environment.  I came by this naturally. My parents frequently moved furniture and changed up rooms. By reordering a space, I discovered new parts of me woke up.  Attempting to figure out how spaces impacted us, I pursued degrees in sociology and interior design.  Eventually this led to a master’s degree in environmental behavior and a consulting business that interpreted the language of a space. How a space affected my behavior was always the deeper and consistent question.

When I read May Sarton’s, Plant Dreaming Deep, I found a woman who spoke of a space, her farmhouse, as I spoke of our home, Simplicity.  Each chapter of her book offered gems into my understanding of the unique relationship of house and resident, something I also felt.  I wondered if I could write about our home in this way. For years I sat with this question.  For years I did nothing. The question persisted.  

In Elizabeth Gilbert’s, Big Magic, she says, “I believe that inspiration will always try its best to work with you – but if you are not ready or available, it may indeed choose to leave you and to search for a different human collaborator.” She tells of her great book idea that she kept postponing to write until one day, a writing colleague wrote a similar book. Her take away was to follow the inspiration given you or it will find another person to fulfill it.  This awareness was the energetic push to write the book I held in my heart and soul. Fed up with saying ‘someday I will write this book,’ and knowing I would live with regret if I did not, I moved into action.

I promised myself three years to write Simplicity’s story, concluding with my seventieth birthday. What a grand birthday gift this would be to myself! Knowing I needed accountability and increased writing skills to make this book happen, I joined writing groups, took classes, and was coached and mentored by writer, Julie Tallard Johnson. During one of our writing circles, we explored the idea of blogs.  Blogging provided the perfect writing habit and invited a manageable and enjoyable way for the stories to be written. At this stage there was no intention to order the stories or weave them together. Each story stood as a single work.

To get away from the distractions and procrastinations that occurred at home, I frequently stayed at my daughter’s apartment about an hour away, found coffee shops and libraries where I could write, and booked an overnight or two at a Bed and Breakfast. One year into this blog project, we sold Simplicity. The book felt finished as well, except it wasn’t.  I had managed to write a very third person account about a house.  Julie and my writing partners wanted more.  They wanted me to share my personal struggle, my intimate relationship with this house, which I had deliberately kept from revealing. 

It took another year to write the personal vulnerabilities, the parts of me that were crucial to understanding the impact this house had on my life.  As a faithful writer of Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages, I looked back through my writings and began to integrate those feelings into the stories.

From day one I had a vision of how I wanted this book to be experienced by the reader. An admirer of the few succinct words that capture it all, I have collected quotations for years. They have been a source of comfort, wisdom, and insight throughout my life. An appropriate quotation was to introduce each chapter.

As a reader, I would want to ‘see’ the stories. A glimpse into Simplicity through a black and white sketch offered a way to both see and imagine her spaces.  The sketches were created from photographs taken by husband, Don, and me, as well as paintings I painted of Simplicity while we lived in her.   

An intimate story required an intimate size. This resulted in a 5 x 8 book that was comfortable to hold in the hands. Aware of my own reading habits, preferring to start a chapter on the right side of a book, the sketch and quotation were placed on the left side with the chapter beginning on the right. 

Shanti Arts Publishing and publisher, Christine Cote, made the magic happen.  She listened carefully and honored my vision of this book, asked great questions, and made insightful suggestions like ‘Do you think it might assist your readers to have blueprints of Simplicity?’ When the proof was sent my way, I looked with awe.  Before me was my vision and more, beautifully cared for and conceived. 
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This book will not likely land on the New York Times Best Seller list, but it is the fulfillment of a promise I made to myself and honored.  Through its stories, the book invites readers to see their own homes and spaces with new eyes, to wake up to see the ordinary and everyday place they call home in extraordinary ways. 
More about A House Named Simplicity: Stories of Finding Home and ordering links can be found at www.susaneatonmendenhall.com

TWO AUTHORS ONE ROOF
Don Mendenhall and Susan Eaton Mendenhall
Don, author of  Civility joins Susan for a talk through the DeForest Area Public Library 
THURSDAY, APRIL 29th, 6:00 PM via ZOOM
Join us for a glimpse.  into the writing lives of two local artists.

Susan, a watercolor artist, recently published A House Named Simplicity: Stories of Finding Home. Her husband, Don, is a fine art photographer and author of Civility: Belonging with Dignity.
In her book, Susan has written a collection of stories about a house that supported their quest to find home, both in a place and within themselves.

Don’s book explores the practical expression of civility through a series of personal stories that serve as outstanding real-life models for civil behavior in the face of conflict. He encourages us to take a closer look at our lives and offers useful ideas about how to live more respectful and trusting lives.
If you have a disability and require accommodation in order to fully participate, please contact library staff.
203 Library Street DeForest, WI ● (608) 846–5482 ● www.deforestlibrary.org 

Not until late in life did I come to understand how my life is framed by white privilege. In fact, this reality influences everything in my life. And if you are white—poor or not—this is also true for you. To reveal and benefit from the paradoxical nature of white privilege, we must explore what white privilege means within the context of our daily lives and how it affects our experience as a human being—a white woman in America, in my case. At some point, those of us who are privileged need to acknowledge this dynamic if we are to live an authentic life. White privilege isn’t in and of itself a paradox; as with any dynamic, it holds within it a paradoxical narrative. And white privilege holds many paradoxical narratives. My privileged life doesn’t mean I have always felt privileged. Therein lies a core paradox: we may have shame or fear, dynamics that drive our experience, but we may not be aware we have them. Once we realize that shame, for example, influences everything in our lives, we can begin to transform our lives. We can turn shame into self-compassion. This is true with white privilege too. Once we become aware of white privilege as a dynamic, we can live more honestly. We can be more fearless and compassionate. We can challenge this dynamic and own up to it through our beliefs, assumptions, and actions. Then, the second layer of paradox arrives: we still are privileged. With shame or fear, we may actually become wholly free of its influence on our lives. This is possible. At least such dynamics no longer drive our experience. White privilege has a culturally set context and cannot simply be shaken off with awareness or practice. The color of our skin—white privilege—follows us to our grave. Still, its paradoxical nature can help us live more honestly and compassionately. As long as we first maintain an awareness of how this dynamic is part of every experience, it may no longer secretly drive our experiences. As we challenge this dynamic internally, we can help change the outer landscape of racial injustices. 

Herein arrives the third layer of paradox with white privilege: We can use our white privilege. We can choose to challenge racial injustices we encounter. We can speak up when we see someone being mistreated, bullied, or denied something because of their skin color.

This particular privileged state is just one.
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In the words of the poet, Rebecca Cecchini: "There are, of course, many privileged states in our world that could be paradoxically included in this thread, including male privilege, young privilege, hetero privilege, economic privilege (often stemming from the others). These and other privileges so often ride unimpeded under our awareness but affect others deeply. They are part of our social constructs and move through all of us, surfacing wounds as the many “isms” we don’t personally wish to claim. Opportunity abounds here to make broader applications of the paradoxical lessons."  

A worthwhile exploration for each of us may be to identify a particular privilege that is current in our life. There are simple approaches we can use to challenge and shift our privileged states and all of our contradictions to help us find contradictions’ inherent paradoxes.   Write about that.

What are the paradoxes inherent in some of your stories and experiences?  Write about that. 


SAVE THE DATE:  Laurie Scheer and I are finishing up the final plans for what this year will be Write-by-the-LIGHT. Since the UW Continuing Studies, Writing Program is closing, last year was the last WBTLake.  However Laurie Scheer, myself, Angela Rydell and Tim Storm will be offering a superb and dynamic WBTLIGHT!. 
 
Laurie and I will be offering a full retreat/workshop experience to choose from. There will be optional sessions with Tim Storm and Angela Rydell. And an open mike night, one yoga class for writers from Molly Chanson, as well as ways to meet up with other writers.  For those who live near Madison, I will hold one in person meet up “on the lake, in the light.”   Investment: $225. .  And! Laurie and I will be offering a consultation on 10 pages for free afterward for all who sign up.
 
This will be great.  It will be live and ZOOMED.  The dates are June 16th through Saturday (till 4:00) the 19th. 



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When I first heard this quote read out loud in a 1993 psychic development class, an inward shift began. So much was within me that wanted release and expression. My gifts, my knowledge, and intuition, all qualities that I was born with that up till then remained hidden, even to me.  My first book came forth. My pain stories and trauma also came to my awareness for understanding and transformation. I understood then and now that our life's journey is about bringing forth what is within us. 

​These stories, personal experiences and gifts need releasing from the body and mind. 

Writing flames us alive and brings forth what seeks expression, understanding and transformation. All we have to do is listen. Writing is listening. Writing is an expression. Writing brings transformation because it can bring up the pain stories for further healing and acknowledgment. 

Eleven books have been brought forth from me.  Each book contains  what has been "within me." 

What does writing bringing forth from you? Write about that?
What themes are weaved through your life? Write about that.
What does the quote mean to you?  What might destroy or save you? Write about that. 

What is something, perhaps your greatest fear, right now?  Write about that. 

That fear will point to what you need to bring forth, what you most want. My latest book, The Clue of the Red Thread came from my abandonment anxiety, of feeling alone, that somehow I would lose everything and everyone I love (pain story).  The flip side of this of course is my desire to belong. I let this desire to belong, to collaborate with others out through action. I reached out to Parker J Palmer and began conversations that resulted in this book. Over the past six years my intention and actions have been to collaborate with others, to reach out and develop community through all my interests and projects. To join in. (Which is what motivated me to sign up for Yoga Teacher Training at Kripalu two weeks ago). 

How can you bring forth one of your deepest fears and its desire?  Write about that.
How can you act on your desire?  Write about that.

My most recent collaborations include working with Laurie Scheer to bring you a Write-by-the-Light workshop and retreat this June! I have been collaborating with Molly Chanson to bring writing and yoga together in our free fourth Wednesday nights of yoga and writing and our Sacred Thread retreats for yogis and writers. 

​All I see now are opportunities of collaboration.
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Hidden Victims/Hidden Healers was the first book I let out from within.  So much was brought forth!; the pain story of living with a brother with mental illness, the healing process of gathering with others in circle, the transformation of sharing our stories (first stage of healing) and what it meant to be a sister. 

“The thing is, there is a need to deal with climate change, restore our democracy, heal the injustices close in and further out. We need to actually get that job, or finish that project. We need to connect. We need to change the conversation or let the conversation change us. We need to move forward somehow into the new next,”
          - Julie Tallard Johnson, The Changing Conversation, the New Next & Clue of the Red Thread, February 5, 2021

A few weeks ago, while discussing her brilliant new book The Clue of the Red Thread, Julie said it best within the above quote - we need to move forward into the new next. She also mentions dealing with climate change and I would like to introduce you to a writing genre that offers opportunity to write within the world of the new next where your words can change our planet.
 
Welcome to a writing genre that you have always lived in.
 
When you began your day today did you notice the first bird, cloud, flower, or tree you viewed or passed by? Writers generally welcome writing prompts and this writing genre offers prompts 24/7 because it always surrounds you. The genre is known as Nature Writing and it has been around for decades.
 
The genre of Nature Writing is experiencing a popularity boost mostly due to the concern we have for our planet’s climate change and, in a nearly post-pandemic world, after having worked from home for a few months, we’ve been able to view and experience our backyards and common green areas in-between working on our screens more than we did when working in offices. Writing about Nature is, well, alive again.
 
Nature Writing often involves the love of a place, a favorite land, and/or an experience held/shared in Nature. Nature Writing is timeless, and necessary. If we do not write about our places and experiences then how will future generations know about our land, our Earth?
Sometimes referred to as Adventure Writing and Outdoor writing, this genre has its roots in the 19th century globally and continues to currently find engaged writers and avid readers – more than ever in previous decades. The genre is also welcoming many diverse voices and hence the genre is fast becoming known as a group of New Nature Writers.
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More simply put, Nature Writing has found its time and place as our planet experiences unprecedented change and we as humans learn how to best maintain our home – for everyone because we are all on this planet as one. By recording your observations, researching the facts, and gathering up your enthusiasm, you generate writing pieces that can influence your readers. Nature Writing is necessary to save the planet. If we don’t share our experiences and assist our next generation in understanding the precious elements of our world, then we could find ourselves in a worse situation than we currently find ourselves in.
Your words can awaken change.
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This is an arena that is as wide open as a grassy patch of land by the side of any roadside or on top of any mountain. Our environment is changing, and our voices need to be read.
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Join us. We are a group of writers who take note of our first birds, clouds, flowers, and trees viewed daily. We are writing to save the world – literally. We are writing the new next.

Laurie Scheer

New Nature Writers Writing Ranger
laurie@newnaturewriters.com
www.newnaturewriters.com

​I am currently reading a biography called Maxwell Perkins: Editor of Genius written by A. Scott Berg. It depicts the life and career of Max Perkins of Scribner’s publishing house who brought forth the works of powerhouse authors such as Ernest Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, Tom Wolfe, and others.
Perkins was not a writer himself, but as an editor he had nearly inexhaustible sympathy, respect, and dedication to the craft. He coached, encouraged, bolstered, and supported his authors when they stumbled and despaired, which was often.
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He well understood that the writing life was plagued by solitude, toil, and self-doubt. Then, if a work of great art (or even just okay art) was successfully printed and critically esteemed, the writer was sentenced to the depression and struggle of producing another work of equal or greater value, as was the case with Fitzgerald following The Great Gatsby. Tom Wolfe scrawled reams of pages of description and character sketches while standing beside a refrigerator which he used as his preferred writing surface. He produced prolifically--and had no idea what to do next with his material. Marjorie Rawlings, author of the perennially beloved novel The Yearling toiled for a year on the project, then threw the manuscript out.

In each of these cases, Max Perkins pleaded with and implored the authors to continue, to not give up. To one author he wrote, “Just get it all down on paper and then we’ll see what to do with it.” And ultimately, the authors muddled their way through mess, muck, and morass to create something that was publishable and could be put into the hands and minds of readers forever after.
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So, I take heart in the familiar struggle of some of the greatest writers of the 20th century. They were both brilliant and fragile, brimming with both insight and uncertainty. They were like us. Let us, then, find our own Max Perkins--someone, something to cheer us on and force us to continue the painful effort. The end makes the means possible, even when the means feel impossible. Or, as Perkins himself put it so well, “I feel certain that it will end very well indeed, if you can endure the struggle. The struggle is part of the process.”
 
Camilia Cenek is a writer, consultant, and editor. She delights in working with both emerging and experienced writers to bring their stories to life. In 2020, she won first place for nonfiction in the Wisconsin Writers Association Jade Ring contest. Contact Camilia at camiliacenekediting@gmail.com

an instagram post by Holly Whittaker:

"We do not speak or create or share for our shit to be understood, liked, loved by all. We do these things as an offering. Our art isn’t our own, our words aren’t our own; they are borrowed things that choose us, that knock at our door and ask to pass through the portal of our hands, lips, brains. And then they are gone, no longer ours, out there, someone else’s. We are the faucets, we are not the water. And the pain comes when we confuse ourselves with being the water.

It took me a long time to get this. I still struggle with it. Just not even close to how much I used to.
We speak not to convert the masses into our belief systems; we speak our truth so that others can find theirs. And people find their truth often by absolutely hating and disagreeing with our truth."

So, once the water flows out from the page to the world, it is no longer yours. Let it go. Let it nourish, entertain, make good trouble.  Water like sunshine knows where to go.

My intention now with my latest book is to let it go. Not so much direct it's flow but to help it reach those it may benefit.  

How is your writing, your words a borrowed thing?  Write about that.
What does it mean to you to be a faucet,  your words the water?  Write about that.
What or whom do you need to release to write?   Write about that.
Who are you hoping to entertain, reach, nourish?  Write about that.
Write a poem about water and how it moves.
Write a piece on shadow and light. 

And just like a bird can't always be in flight, a faucet can't always be on.  Take time to rest and pause. 

join the yogi and the writer tonight for a free hour and a half of writing and yoga.  email me to join.

I am offering another FREE FIRST FRIDAY retreat in March. March 5th.  Hold the date.

My work with writers focuses mostly on the psychology and transformational elements of writing. No matter what we are writing: journal entries, blogs, letters, a fiction or nonfiction book, or a collection of poems and short stories, all writing is transformational and conversational. Every time a writer lets the creation of words and stories transform them, they will impact their future readers in meaningful ways.

​Then the writer becomes an author of a book or blog, for example.  Here the conversation changes but continues. The conversation opens and takes a journey from our psyche and journals to the psyche and life of our readers. 

What I got from writing The Clue of the Red Thread, the reader too will get. In fact, in my case I still refer to my books, my own musings, for guidance. In The Clue we take the red thread teachings of Nature, of other Wisdom Traditions, verses from poet Rebecca Cecchini, teaching threads of Parker J. Palmer, with accompanying explorations, to go on an internal pilgrimage to the center of our selves.  We return to the world ready, willing and capable of having a positive impact on others.  We become the change we want to see in the world, as Gandhi so famously said. 

The writing of this book was a pilgrimage for me to a new, emerging inner landscape of hope, courage, deeper compassion, vulnerability and purpose. An invitation to a new conversation. I became more connected to my longings. I became more receptive and connected to others. I became able to cross another threshold that took me into my 2nd adulthood. I not only moved from within, but I have awoke in a new home and community, and in an emerging collaboration with a friend and yogi, Molly Chanson as we work together as the Yogi & the Writer. My pilgrimage of writing The Clue was indeed transformational, and, as I wrote this book, it broke me.  Broke me open. This book, as many books can be, was also a love letter to my future self. The self that writes this blog to you.❤️

The Clue is full of micro-disciplines and practices that are wholly designed to be used in our every day life, to invite the transformational and spiritual experiences we yearn for. As in all my practices, they are fluid as well as an invitation to explore; to discover for yourself what is inside you and to bring that out to the world. 

"If you bring forth what is within you
what is within you will save you.
If you do not bring forth what is within you
what is within you will destroy you."  Jesus, Gnostic Gospel

Dear Reader, Bring it forth. 

I will be offering a RED THREAD CIRCLE based on The Clue starting this April.  A monthly gathering for a year for those who want to explore what is within you and all that you want to bring forth.  The 2nd Thursday evening of the month, beginning on April 8th. We will do live Zoom until we can meet in person. Circles will take place in Madison at Holy Wisdom Monastery.  Hold your place, or contact me for more information: julie@julietallardjohnson.com.

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In celebration of a new day for our nation, as citizens, we are called to cross this threshold in ways that heal the heart of our democracy. I believe to bring about continued positive transformation, the success of this comes from an individual who knows that our outwardness is dependent upon our inwardness. 
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Our Myth
The Labyrinth and Clue of the Red Thread,  excerpt from my upcoming book.  (Available for purchase on January 26th, 2021.) 

Imagine young men and women in your country and neighborhood being routinely sent to war, working in hospitals to deal with a pandemic without safety masks, or confronting such daily horrors as hate crimes, gun violence, and sexual assault. Imagine further that those in power expect their citizens to sacrifice themselves on the altar of the economy, false patriotism, and revenge at a time when guns, money, and autonomy outrank dignity, community, and justice. Imagine further that you choose to act against these injustices to serve your people as best you can and defend humanity and democracy.

In Greek mythology, the king’s daughter Ariadne lived in the palace of Knossos on Crete where she was put in charge of its many mazes and labyrinths. Crete was known as a place of “extremes and contradictions.” Underneath the Knossos palace was a complex and deadly maze built by the master designer Daedalus to house the Minotaur. Daedalus himself got lost in this maze, almost to die there.
Young men and women from Athens were routinely sent into the maze to be devoured by the Minotaur in a sacrificial rite of revenge. Theseus, an Athenian prince, came to free Athens from 

its commitment of sacrifice and vowed to enter the maze and kill the Minotaur. Ariadne fell in love with Theseus, and because she loved him, she resolved to come to his aid. She gave Theseus her ball of red thread so he might fasten it to the labyrinth’s entrance, then unravel it to mark his passage into its center. When Theseus initially took hold of the ball of red thread, the deadly maze was instantly transformed into a negotiable labyrinth—though still with its challenges and deceptions—which he was then able to enter, confront the Minotaur, and safely return out.
 
Ariadne’s thread was a guiding device. As there was not an easy way to memorize the paths of the labyrinth, the thread helped overcome the difficulties and limitations of memory. Even when someone successfully met up with the Minotaur, they never found their way out and died trapped inside the maze. The ball of thread is known as a clew (or clue) to solving the labyrinth, which had countless paths, some of which were treacherous.

Theseus represents that part of us that can be forgetful and too often sacrificed on the platform of someone else’s aspirations and plans. He is also the heroic part of us that is altruistically motivated and willing to break agreements with those in authority in order to serve humanity.
Courageous people who have gone before or are beside us now hand us the red thread of their wisdom to help transform us into heroic figures. All teachings and teachers come to us as part of a lineage. The red thread in this book represents the lineage of my teachers’ teachings, including that of Parker J. Palmer, handed over to us here as an expression of their and my love.

Because our lives are full of forked paths, contradictory twists and turns, and frequent dead ends, and because we can sometimes forget who we are, we often need a guiding thread, a clue to help us successfully navigate our own particular labyrinths. Taking the thread of teachings gives us the confidence to reach our internal center as well as face our Minotaur, and then safely find our way back home to self, purpose, and community once more. This is what the everyday heroine looks like.
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Just as with Theseus in the myth, our assumptions, emotions, memories, and beliefs may be unreliable and thus lead us astray. Ultimately, they become the constructs of our mazes. Other people, too, may try to manipulate us into following their agenda for our lives. Once we firmly take hold of the red thread of teachings, however, we are wholly capable of traversing the many twists and turns in our lives for ourselves. We do not have to be sacrificed to appease anyone, nor do we have to live life lost in a maze constructed by us or someone else.

At each turn in our metaphorical labyrinth (and very real life!), we unravel more of the red thread, revealing some promise and tangible hope contained in each teaching. Each time we place the red thread on the ground to mark a clear path back out, we also “place down” inside of us an understanding and realization that we will continue to carry within us. The thread may unwind and weave as we make our way through the labyrinth of our lives, but it can never break. This red thread, unlike breadcrumbs, will not be devoured by some hungry bird, but remain within us always as lasting nourishment for our souls and communities.