The Writer Must Write

Corinna Stevenson, Acahk Miskinahk Iswew, in her Sit Spot at Ravenwood

 If I can let you go as trees let go
Their leaves, so casually, one by one,
If I can come to know what they do know,
That fall is the release, the consummation,
Then fear of time and the uncertain fruit
Would not distemper the great lucid skies
This strangest autumn, mellow and acute.
If I can take the dark with open eyes
And call it seasonal, not harsh or strange

(For love itself may need a time of sleep)
And, treelike, stand unmoved before the change,
Lose what I lose to keep what I can keep,
The strong root still alive under the snow,
Love will endure--if I can let you go.   (Sonnet 2 from "The Autumn Sonnets" by May Sarton (reprinted in Cries of the Spirit)

Love will endure; write about that.
 
For love to endure, what needs to be let go of?  Write about that.
 
Scientists now say that “this is it,”  that COVID is here to stay.  They also predicted a pandemic like this decades ago. And science journalists wrote about it. 
 
“Scientists were detailing those early warning signs decades ago, and a handful of science journalists were writing about their work. I was one of those journalists.”  –Robin Mrantz Henig: for full article in National Geographic go HERE. 

This pandemic is both inevitable and indefinite. COVID is part of our personal and collective story now. Our written stories must take into account the before the pandemic as well as the after the pandemic. After recognizes COVID as an ongoing reality.  We are at an unusual threshold of coming out of the pandemic while still being in it. To discover our way across this deviant threshold and into our future selves and lives will take love and awareness. A love and awareness that can arrive through our writing.
 
These shifts and changes must be part of our written stories. We must stay in the present conversations, engaged in the concerns of climate crisis, voting rights, racism and community engagement. We must support our whistle blowers by keeping their concerns alive in spoken and written word. To be silenced and to deny reality is to break us completely. To write around the realities or to exclude them is to agree to having no impact and for our writing to be wasted.
 
We must write to get through these shifts, loses, heartbreaks, and!, to experience the joyful arrivals that will come. 
 
What feels strange to you? Write about that.
What are you noticing?  Write about that.
 
We bring vibrancy and possibility, that “strong root” through our awareness and through our writing.  We must too write for others. When we become aware of our experience and have realizations through our writing, the reader will too. The readers will be called to action, their awareness now expanded because of what you took the risk to publish.   Stand unmoved. Let it go on the page. 
 
And, treelike, stand unmoved before the change,
Lose what I lose to keep what I can keep,
The strong root still alive under the snow,
Love will endure--if I can let you go.  
 
COMING UP!: Join other Writers in the upcoming 6 month series and collaboration: Embodied Writing & Living with The Writer & the Healer
 
First Wednesdays of the month,  6:00 PM CST till 7:30 PM,  Starts Wednesday November 1st.  
Corinna Stevenson, Acahk Miskinahk Iswew, (Spirit Turtle Woman) and I invite you on a journey through the inner labyrinth and medicine wheel.  An embodied tour of Fall into Spring (November through April).  (Then we are imagining a summer experience to round out the wheel journey). Each evening will offer a short meditation, teachings, monthly embodied contemplations and writing prompts to explore on and off the page, embodied practices through ritual and breath. Acahk Miskinahk Iswew will take us on inner journeys with her voice and drum around the medicine wheel and give us a monthly ritual to practice on our own.  Come to one or all. (I recommend to sign up for all 6!). A donation (dana) is welcomed but not necessary.  Email to register: HERE.  Or donate and register: HERE.

 Missing YOGA from the Yogi & the Writer?  Find Molly and The Practice: HERE for a weekly live yoga and contemplative practice for the yogi in you.