Sometimes we must use our axe.  Every life has encounters with real villains. When we worry about being nice, not wanting to offend anyone, we often refuse the soul of our story. Too many writers put down their project because they are afraid to offend. (This silence by the way tends to perpetuate the harm). 

Be kind (to yourself and others) but stay in the fight.
Use your axe, write about evil doers or threats without holding back. 

Who are the villains in your life?  Write about that. 
What are you afraid to write?  Write about that. 
What do you think will happen if you write about "that"?   

When writing the first drafts, write it all down.  Leave nothing out. Avoid nothing. Protect no one.  Later, if you choose, you can remove these uncomfortable, unfortunate pieces. (A likely loss for the reader). 

When you feel yourself withholding because you don't want to reflect on, or write about someone's cruelty, consider the context of the villain's life. This is macro-writing. When we write about the villain and just focus on their behavior, we are micro-writing.  To bring a story to its fullness, we want both. We want the close-in and personal and the contextual, the macro level of story. So when writing about your abusive parent you may want to include some on their past. (The past is not an excuse mind you, simply a fuller story. And with a fuller story there is more empathy). 

Raise your voice on the page. 
Keep the narrative active, forward moving.
Use your axe.

As I walk through Stewart Park, poetic verses stream through my mind. The elegant nature of life reveals itself in images, ideas and words. This poetic lens enthuses me with hope and forward momentum. How life in the woods lets go while it blossoms. How nature gathers itself only to fall apart. This cyclical invitation to gather together the seed with earth, the earth with sun, the sun with bark.  On this cusp of winter into spring, while the world struggles to be habitable, I walk as a poet. And wonder, what in me wants to gather together? I wonder what in my life is asking for release?

What is gathering together in you right now?  Write about that.
What is asking to be released? Write about that

Winter into Spring
 
Everything we need is here: brown, crisp leaves
that shake for release from their wintered branch,
the creek, crowded with last season’s watercress,
the emptied, broken walnut shells, the animal prints around the broken
shell, the grey bark gathering warmth from the late afternoon sun,
the orange lit birch trees
masquerading as a sunset,
the shimmering of seed and life below ground,
the sugar maple having dropped their seeds
leaving disembodied wings along the rooted path.
 
My feet make prints on the softening ground.
the grey of me gives way to
a collective greening with the possibilities of love, blossoming and release,
 
while all the disembodied parts of me come together, or try to,
 
Everything gathers inside me:
memories of camping and hikes along mountain trails,
harvesting wild berries, arms bloody and scratched, runs with dogs,
sitting with my dying cat, the taste of wild mushroom pie,
building and tearing down sweat lodges, the heat of the stones, all
in sweet ceremonies of belonging. Long walks into a night wood
alone. The changing sky, my constant companion.
 
This world is such an extraordinary banquet of
what is truly possible,
 
to realize, now late in my life
that we can only be responsible to what’s in front of us,
(and what is that?)
right now, the departures and arrivals,
the noticing and being with the gatherings, here in front of us
today

Upcoming in June: An in person Writer's Support Circle, first Tuesdays, 5:00 to 8:00 PM.  

I understand but I don’t agree.
I agree but I don’t understand
I hate my job but I need the insurance.
I want to but I can’t.
I want to leave but I'm staying.
I want to stay but I'm leaving. 
I love this but it’s not real.
He was abusive but he loved me.
I like your refrigerator but I would never get one like that.

What might be the fuller more vulnerable story here, in any of these statements?   Write about that. (Borrow from your life or write a fiction piece).

Have you ever wanted to leave but stayed?  Write about that. Or, wanted to stay but  left? Write about that!

Challenge all the buts in your writing. Is there a fuller message or narrative to be discovered? Write about that.  Possibly some of these buts are pointing to a dialectic truth, a paradox. An inconsistency worth exploring. 

Buts used in writing can be a bit lazy. We may throw in a but when there's more to write. In verbal communication it lends to a hidden agenda or message where buts prevent a vulnerability or truthfulness. The reader or other is not invited into a deeper exploration or meaning when you hide behind a but.

Inherent in these statements are a promise of paradox. A vulnerability.  When you can change "I love you but" to  "I love you and", one becomes receptive and vulnerable to the other. When the other is a reader, you have brought the reader closer in to you and more of your story. More is always better here. 

Sentences with buts may hold a contradiction that can be narrated and explored as a paradox. Or, a but in our writing and speech can point to a microaggression.  A paradox is a beautiful thing. When we explore and live our contradictions we discover an underlying paradox. We discover the fuller story and personal truth.  When our written word or speech is a microaggression, it restricts us and the other. A microaggression in some way communicates a derogatory, hostile and negative attitude toward another. Typically and historically, microaggressions are toward a stigmatized or marginalized group. 

Buts can also be used to gaslight.  Bullies rely on the language of bullying to undermine others.  Here is an article on Bullying and Gaslighting. 

I can't help it but you can.
I told you but you weren't paying attention.
Children are to be seen but not heard.
You're a good person but there's something off about you.
I love you but I can't live with you.
I don't like my neighbor, but I am not a racist.
You're not fat but you could lose some weight.
That's a good idea but let's wait to see if there is a better one.

Within each story and person is an intersectionality of experience, traditions, beliefs, and identities. The recognition of contradictions along with the promise of paradox appreciates this intersectionality. This appreciation creates a meeting place of vulnerability and connection. 

The written word and our speech can be superpowers.  Or weapons we use to inhibit and destroy. 

Go put your cape on.   

(And write about that!)

Join us in FIRST WEDNESDAYS where we explore through embodied writing, ritual, indigenous ways of discovery, breath and meditation. Come this June I will be holding one of my writing support circles in-person, the 1st Tuesday night of the month. Email me for more information or to register. And! Starting my next Red Thread circle based on Parker J Palmer's circles of trust and my books: The Clue of the Red Thread, and The Zero Point Agreement. 1st Thursday evenings of the month.  

"There is a third way to respond, a way beyond choosing either this pole or that: let us call it “living the contradictions.” Here we refuse to flee from tension but allow that tension to occupy the center of our lives. And why would we want to do that? Because by doing so, we may receive one of the great gifts of the spiritual life, the transformation of contradiction into paradox. The poles of either-or, the choices we thought we had to make, may become signs of a larger truth than we had even dreamed—and in that truth, our lives may become larger than we ever imagined possible."  Palmer, Parker J.. The Promise of Paradox

I get a weekly email from my bread guy. During COVID lock down Cress Springs Bakery delivered to homes in Mount Horeb and Madison. Every Tuesday he would send out a link to order goods. Along with updates on breads and delivery, he would share a poem.  More often than not I didn't know the poet. Always the poem resonated with me. During this winter her started up delivery again and in came the poems to my inbox. The one he sent out this week was Small Kindnesses. 

With the crisis in Ukraine, I explored ways I could help the people of Ukraine.  Parker J Palmer posted a list of researched organizations that we could support in various ways. (Check out his Facebook page). I decided to subscribe to The Kyiv Independent newspaper.  So now I get the daily Kyiv Independent in my inbox.  

And now this blog of mine is in your inbox.  Thank you for the read. (And, I like your hat). 

Small Kindnesses      
​                    
I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead—you first,” “I like your hat.”

- Danusha Laméris