December 2016 – Modern Creative Life

December 30, 2016

Through the Lens: Tarot and Writing with Courtney Weber

It’s been nearly one year since I started my novel. Over dinner, I shared with my sister and brother-in-law a half-formed idea of “some novel I’ll probably write one day.” My sister’s face lit up and said, “I want to read that!”

When we were growing up, I would sit at the computer for hours in the summertime, writing away with the effortless ease of a twelve-year old who had yet to know an editor’s rejection. My sister would periodically come in and ask me to read to her what I’d written. She’d sit behind me on the piano bench and listen. My sister’s encouragement was key. I wanted to write more because she wanted to hear more.

Now, deep into my thirties, that dynamic has returned. She doesn’t sit on the piano bench to listen anymore—mostly because we living on opposite coasts and I don’t have a piano—but also because I’m now much too precious about my work to share it with anyone before I’m absolutely ready to do so.

Yet, it feels good to be back in my old seat.

Years ago, I abandoned fiction writing because I abandoned every project I started. I figured I just wasn’t cut out for fiction. I wrote two non-fiction books and was planning on a third, when I decided to work on this one for a while.

At first, it was exhilarating. It was not me simply creating a world on the page. It were as though I was chipping away blankness from a story already in there. But after all the chipping of the first draft was done, I had a mangled, wild beast of a manuscript that made very little sense to anyone except the voices in my own head.

This second trip through the draft is a bit like tracing the steps of a sadly deranged missing person, piecing together the clues they tried to leave as to their whereabouts with moderate success.

Sigh.

I know it’s a weird book. And it’s getting weirder.

My morning ritual involves getting up at 5 am and fighting the perfectly reasonable reasons as to why I should go back to bed. I don’t have anything to say. This novel is too messy. If I’m going to write, I should write something I know will sell and will bring in some income as opposed to simply draining my sleep and my time with Mr. Husband. I push through the fatigue and the “not gonna work” voices and settle in at my computer.

Recently, I’ve only been able to chip away at three or four paragraphs per day.

It’s not perfectionism holding me back. I’ve slayed that dragon many years ago. It’s listening. I sit with a sentence and I go into the story and I ask the characters if that’s what they really meant. What really happened? I ask them, as though I’m a technician in Westworld asking the hosts—my characters—to “switch to analysis” so they can tell me what’s going on with them. Sometimes they do. Sometimes, I just stare at the page, waiting for the words to materialize on their own. I’ll routinely resent Stephen King for his indefatigable production engine, JK Rowling for having all the brilliant ideas, and Neil Gaiman for having a finger on the pulse of that mysterious and beautiful wellspring that spills out his stories.

I am thankful for George RR Martin because he understands me (no, we’ve never met…no, he doesn’t follow me on Twitter, but he understands me even if he doesn’t know I exist). He writes maybe a page or so a day. That’s his pace. I can’t imagine the pressure: millions of people tapping their feet, waiting anxiously for his next book. The only person tapping a foot for mine is my sister and I can handle that. She’s not millions of tweeters or bloggers pushing for my manuscript to be done, as Martin must contend with.

I’m also lucky to have my relationship with Tarot, which can be a true friend in a challenging writing period.

Dear Tarot, why is this second draft taking so long?

6 of Swords. Not a great card, but certainly an understandable one.

The tired, cold little family crossing a thick river in a tiny skiff—it’s simply a long and arduous journey and I’m doing the best I can.

But the good news in the card, which I hope is good news for my novel, is that the shore is in sight. Maybe the shore is in sight for me, too.

Tarot, is there something I should be doing differently to improve (but not necessarily rush) the process?

The Hierophant rests more on logic and structure than emotion.

It’s possible I could be more organized in my approach to the novel, focusing more on the technical pieces of it rather than the emotion.

Emotion ruled the first draft! Logic might need to rule the second.

I ask the Tarot what works about my book:

The 7 of Swords: I associate this card with organized chaos.

To the outside world, the little character in the card might seem overwhelmed, but they are smiling.

In fact, they’re looking over their shoulder at the two swords left behind as though they think they could pick them up and carry them along if needed.

Now, I ask the Tarot what’s not working about my book:

The 3 of Swords: Maybe it’s a little heavy-handed?

I did put a lot of some of the grief I suffered through losses in my younger life. Maybe I can take that down a peg?

Then again, I’ve also seen the 3 of Swords to mean “suffering over suffering.” I have driven myself a little crazy with this novel. Maybe I am what is not working in it.

But also, it being the 3 of Swords gives me a little comfort that perhaps I can take care of the final few things that don’t work in the third draft. I’ve got plenty on my editing plate at the moment!

One final card! Is there anything else I need to know about the writing of this novel?

This 10 of Cups is a triumphant conclusion card.

No matter how many sword cards are bogging me down in the midst of the process, the end product is coming and it’s going to make me very happy.

Hopefully it will bring in lots of money, as that will make my husband happy, too!

For now, it’s one sentence at a time. Those sentences become paragraphs, which become pages. Eventually, the pages become chapters and then books. That happened with my first two. I’m sure it will happen with this one, too.

About the Author: Courtney Weber

Courtney Weber is a Priestess, author, Tarot advisor, and activist. She is the author of the newly released Tarot for One: The Art of Reading for Yourself and Brigid: History, Mystery, and Magick of the Celtic Goddess (Both through Weiser Books). She produced and designed “Tarot of the Boroughs,” a contemporary photographic Tarot deck set in New York City. She blogs at Huffington Post and on her website: www.thecocowitch.com. She lives in Manhattan with her husband and cats.

December 29, 2016

New Moon Creative: Moon in Capricorn

We arrive at the last new moon of 2016: Moon in Capricorn. Can we see this time as holy for our lives and our creativity? Is there one last element you can sweeten your creative work with as we gaze into the darkened sky and this new moon?

How might you set an intention for improving your chosen craft? An intention. A prayer. A holy whisper.

Is a New Year simply a square on a calendar? Or is it full of magic?

What if we view this last new moon as part of the mystical threshold between the last days of one year and the first days of the next?

We offer a New Moon Creative Prompt to set you pondering and ask you to share with us a seemingly ordinary moment in your own life that is edged with magic so that we can be your witness.

Write a poem, essay, or short story. Take a photograph and leave us with the image alone. Create a photo essay. Or simply leave us a comment here, answering the question:

How will you honor your creative life in this mystical space as one year becomes the next?

Between now and 01/12/17, post your creation in your blog and/or share your work on Social Media, be it Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or all of those spaces. Use the tag #NewMoonCreative so we can find you and lovingly witness what and how you are creating.

December 27, 2016

Through the Lens with John Hulme

It crept up on me, this love of the tide. You don’t see me out on the water much – I don’t go swimming or boating or boarding – but there is something about being on the shore that fits me perfectly.

There is something about this transition place, where the surf rolls its cargo of ocean heartbeat into the shingle. I have sought refuge in this place more often than I can remember, rebuilding myself in the tapestry of ripples, allowing the rhythm of crunch and splash to weave into my heart and stitch back what the day had tried to erode from my spirit.

Sometimes this soaking time is sufficient. Sometimes it is enough to reset the meaning of John to this tidal metronome. Sometimes, however, the restlessness carries me further, and I find myself lost in that strange “between” place where no destination seems to fit.

A few years ago, after my mum died, life seemed to be revolving around the car – the place I sat when there was nowhere else to go… the place I slept when nowhere else felt like home… the place I hid from the world and wrote masterpieces only the streetlight would ever truly understand.

Between them, these two halfway places have left a deep echo on my spirit, a love of the “between” place. Even as I write this, I am preparing for a journey with no fixed destination in mind – just a wandering wobble into the unknown, like some strange rivulet cut off from the tide. Perhaps it doesn’t matter if I ever actually make this journey, now that my heart sits so beautifully in the “between” place.

About the author, John Hulme

John Hulme is a British writer from the Wirral, a small peninsula near Liverpool in the North of England. Trained in journalism (in which he has a masters degree), John’s first love was storytelling, trying to make sense of the world around him using his offbeat imagination. Since the death of his mother in 2010, John’s work has grown increasingly personal, and has become heavily influenced by Christian mysticism. This has led to the publication of two poetry books, Fragments of the Awesome (2013) and The Wings of Reborn Eagles (2015). A mix of open mike performances, speaking engagements and local community radio appearances has opened up new avenues which John is now eager to pursue. He is hoping to go on a kind of busking road trip fairly soon, provisionally titled Writer seeks gig, being John. Find out more about John on Facebook.

December 25, 2016

Dear Tender Heart

Dear Tender Heart,

Seven was a hard age for me. I broke my right arm in two places that year, just as we were learning cursive. Mrs. Dean, my 2^nd grade teacher didn’t love me, a shock after two years in my long academic career of being the teacher’s pet. Ballet was next to impossible with a big, heavy cast. (We won’t mention the horrible yearbook photo, with the crooked pigtails and chapped lips.)

And my sister, seven years older, had outgrown the patience to play with me, as her attention turned to boys, being a twirler with the band, and performing at the football games. Oh, how I longed for her velvet and sequined costumes.

I arrived home from school one December Day to a big surprise: my mother had put up a tiny tree in my room and it was decorated with little felt dolls: toy soldiers, little blonde girls in Christmas dresses, and, of course, Santa and Mrs. Clause.

I had begun collecting dolls earlier that year, so the sight of all those little felt dolls made me feel so special and so loved.

I set up that little tree Christmas after Christmas until I was around twelve and began to outgrow dolls and Santa and the little table the tree sat upon.

Until this year, I had forgotten about that little tree.

I had also forgotten how, in so many ways, the mother of my childhood had been loving and generous.

Years of her depression and dissatisfaction at life had replaced the moments of light. The tantrums she threw and the hateful words she directed towards me as I grew into adolescence and womanhood overwhelmed all the kind words and gestures, pushing those memories to the recesses of my mind.

Instead, the memories that typically surface are the hard ones. I remember being a nineteen year old newlywed, so proud of my new home yet feeling confused as she screamed at me, telling me I was selfish for moving into a new house without her approval. Her demands that I “return everything she had ever given me since my marriage.” It’s far easier for me to recall removing pictures from the walls, filling boxes with decorative knickknacks, and piling sweaters on top than it is to recall blue-clad soldiers and smiling, blonde-haired, felt faces.

The memories of neither of my parents meeting my second child until after her second birthday are stronger, oh Tender Heart, than the faded memories of a hand-stitched stocking adorned with little Gingerbread Men and my name in Gold.

Those years of pain and stress and rejection, I must admit, put layers and layers of protection around you, didn’t they, oh, Tender Heart?

I have a truly wonderful life, but I have to admit, this year has been as difficult for me as the year I was seven. There is so much anger and stress and pain in the world, it’s been a challenge to see the world from a place of love. I create best from a space of peace and calm, and the environment of the outside world sure hasn’t been any of those things lately.

I dove into spiritual activities to soothe my soul during all the unrest in the world.

During the period between All Hallow’s Eve and Thanksgiving, I set up an “Ancestors Altar” to honor the Beloved Dead during the season of All Saints and All Souls Days. I gathered symbols of the season: an owl, a raven, and tiny pumpkins. I retrieved the photo from our living room of my grandmother and the one of my parents along with their parents at a wedding shower, the only photo I have of either of my grandfathers. I found a photo of my friend who died on 9/11.

I dug through our photo albums.

First I pulled out photos of John’s grandparents, great grandparents, father, and brother. Then, I found the photos from my sister’s first wedding shower and bridesmaid luncheon in 1981. There, I discovered a photo of my Aunt Betty, who died two weeks after my mother. Then, I found this one photo, a picture of my mother laughing with her sister, Nita, who died in the 80’s along with their mother – my grandmother – who died in 1992.

My mother was so young and full of joy in that photo. Still raven-haired and dressed in a bright pink dress. The mother I had before the years of depression dulled her sparkle. The mother who loved a young Debra, rather than the woman who seemed to despise the woman little Debra grew into.

Every morning through the fall, dear Tender Heart, I lit candles on that altar. I prayed for the souls of all those gathered there, seeing each face as a Beloved. I walked by their smiling faces several times a day and they kept me company as I worked.

And each day, that gaping wound of not being good enough for my mother to love began to get smaller. The walls I have constructed around you, on Tender Heart, began to crumble just a little. That is the mystical power of intention, candles, and prayer at work.

When Thanksgiving drew close, I knew it was time to break down my altar. I put away the candles, raven, and owl. I discarded the softening pumpkins and lovingly gathered the photos to save for next year.

I had no plans for another altar until St. Brigid’s Day in February and realized how bare the space would feel without the smiling faces, so I decided to put up a Christmas tree. I found a little tree at Target, on sale for $15. I bought extra lights and tiny baubles. It’s a happy little tree, illuminating the Spirit of Christmas as I work.

John arrived home from a business trip and I showed him my little office tree as we prepared to decorate the rest of our home. Then I remembered my first little tree standing in a room of my own, and I shared the story, and cried.

“You know, that’s the nicest thing I’ve ever heard your mother doing for you,” he replied.

He has been my witness. By my side, celebrating each Christmas with me since my mother died. This is my sixth Christmas without her, oh, Tender Heart, and only now am I able to reach into the depths of memories and retrieve interactions with my mother that don’t involve pain or more heartache.

I chose a couple of felt gingerbread men to adorn my new little tree; not like the toy soldiers or felt Santa, but still with the nostalgic memories of Christmas as a Child and the stocking my mother created with her own two hands. The remembrance, oh Tender Heart, of creations from love instead of the unimaginable space of anger and dislike is critical to extending these tenuous feelings.

Now, each morning, I turn on the lights on my personal Christmas tree. I sit in a recliner – displaced for the Christmas Tree of John’s Christmas Past – writing in my journal or reading, and, like the smiling faces from those old photographs, the twinkling lights illuminate the dark, shining love and hope, nostalgia and remembrance of the other little tree.

Each day, oh Tender Heart, you find a way to heal a little more as I seek a way to recall the loving gestures instead of the hateful ones. I am allowing the magic of honoring ancestors and the mystical power of grace and forgiveness to help me forget the bitterness.

Though 2016 has been a challenging year, this gives me hope that 2017 has the potential for more.

May you continue to find love, oh Tender Heart. And heal.

“What is Christmas? It is tenderness for the past, courage for the present,hope for the future. It is a fervent wish that every cup may overflow with blessings rich and eternal, and that every path may lead to peace.”
–Agnes M. Pahro

Happy Christmas.

Debra ♥

About the Author: Debra Smouse

Debra is a life coach and the Editor in Chief of Modern Creative Life. She is the author of three books, including the recently released Clearing Soul Clutter: Creating Your Vision.

She lives in Ohio and believes in the power of Love.

December 23, 2016

The Quiet Witch by Hilary Parry Haggerty

People think of me as a tarot reader first and a witch second, it pisses me off, but also? I’m the reason for it.

My reasoning to play up my tarot reading and downplay my religion (Wicca) was professional at first: I serve people of all faiths with my tarot readings, and I didn’t want people to think that I didn’t if I was all prominently witched out.

Now I see these amazing articles with my contemporaries being interviewed about witchcraft and magick, and I get mad. Why not me? My inner voice quietly mocks, “Because you faced forward with tarot reading, you dolt, that’s why.” Don’t take personal what you wanted in the first place!

My magick is more subtle than that. I’m not being interviewed about magick, or spells, or candles, or honey jars on the Hoodwitch or the Numinous because I guess I’m just not that flash about my magick. There is a phrase in Wicca: To know, to dare, to will, to be silent. To keep silent has always been a tenant that I’ve taken very seriously. It’s one I take seriously in tarot, too… because the information ain’t for me, it’s for you (the client). In spell-work, it’s a matter of energy, of “too many cooks in the kitchen spoiling the broth.” Okay, energetic broth. The quickest way to water down your magick is to tell someone about it. Keep it private, keep it potent, keep it safe. A good general rule I follow is sharing a spell when it’s not manifest yet is to invite doubt into the process… and doubt? It’s a magick killer.

The more I know about magick, the simpler and more practical my spell-casting gets. Fancy may be fun and look pretty, but my core question is this: does it work? Is it serving my intention? To me, intention is everything. When my intention is muddled or bogged down with 50 different things, the Universe doesn’t know what to do with that. Often, I will get a response or sign from the Universe that boils down to “What do you WANT, woman?” The intention has to be clear, and so does the channel. Which means in order for me to get what I want, I have to get clear myself… which means getting out of my OWN WAY.

What do I mean by getting out of my own way? I mean that I have to tell my ego to take a backseat, or take a hike altogether.

Stripping down my magick has made it cleaner, stronger, less ego-driven. As a result, my magick has become that much more powerful for it. I don’t need to be “out there”, unusual, or brazen about my magick or my spell-work. My spells are special secrets that are more potent for their secretiveness.

And for that, I proudly say that I am The Quiet Witch… and that doesn’t make me any less of a witch.

About the Author: Hilary Parry Haggerty

HILARY PARRY HAGGERTY is a tarot reader, witch, mentor, writer, editor, and teacher. She has been reading tarot for over 18 years (11 years professionally). She was the winner of Theresa Reed’s (The Tarot Lady) Tarot Apprentice contest in 2011, and has taught classes on tarot and spell-work at Readers Studio and Brid’s Closet Beltane Festival. She writes a weekly blog at her website www.tarotbyhilary.com and contributes a monthly tarot blog “Through a Tarot Lens” to www.witchesandpagans.com.

December 22, 2016

Birthing at Hitchcock House by Bernie Brown

Ezra turned and reached for Orelia, who was doubled over in pain. “Come on, baby, I’m here. House is just up there. See the lights in the windows.” They scrambled up the bank, and the small boat paddled away, making its way through the icing creek. “Mrs. Hitchcock she ready for us. We in Iowa now. They’s a free state.”

“How do you know, Ezra? Ohhhh . . .” Orelia doubled over again.

He didn’t answer her. Ezra knew he had to get her through the snow, up to the house, and down in the cellar. All as quiet as mice. And her having pains so early.

Orelia slid down again as another pain hit her. “Ohhhhh,” she moaned.

“Honey, can you be quiet now? We don’t want to get anyone hearing us.” He pulled her to the top of the bank where they sat in the snow waiting for her pain to subside.

Ezra wadded up a faded blue kerchief. “Here now, next time a pain hits, you bite this.” He tried to stuff it into her mouth while she sucked in air.

She spit it out.

“No, baby. You gotta do it. You listen to Ezra now. There can’t be no hearing us or this whole trip for nothin’. We’ll never reach the promised land.” He stuffed it back in and barely pulled his fingers out in time not to get bit.

Orelia struggled and ran in a painful lop-sided way, holding her belly, the holes in her homespun shawl lit up by moonlight. A distant owl hooted. A quiet growl came from the brush.

A lump of hurt choked Ezra as he watched his wife, at least that was how he thought of her. They’d get married proper when they got to Canada. He couldn’t stand seeing her run that way. She stumbled and he put one arm behind her knees, another on her back and tipped her up. He grunted. She was usually so small, but the baby made her off balance and clumsy to hold. She buried her face in his shoulder.

Up ahead he saw the flicker of three lanterns in the windows. That meant they was expecting three runaways. Old Simon had fell out the boat into the icy black river. He didn’t bob up, not even once. So there was just him and Orelia and the baby.

The sight bucked him up. He staggered faster. Orelia screeched into the cloth, into his shoulder. Her teeth sunk into his flesh, and he winced. At last he reached the open cellar door, ready to receive them.

The steep, uneven steps tripped him up, and he bumped Orelia’s head against the frozen dirt wall. Orelia’s pain made her punch him hard on the arm in return.

At last they were in the cellar. He had to put Orelia down on the dirt floor. “Just for a minute, baby.” Around them, jugs of preserved foods lined crude shelves. Dusty bottles of wine lay on their sides in a rack. Above, he could hear a piano playing a lively Christmas tune. “It must be Christmas Eve,” Ezra said.

Thumps on the floor be dancing. “That party noise keep ‘em from hearing us.” Even so, he moved the shelves ever so carefully to reveal the safe room. He didn’t want to leave no marks in the dirt floor. Then he returned to Orelia, panting now, and helped her to a straw pallet. He found matches and lit the candle before lifting the shelves back in place.

“Baby’s comin’,” Orelia spluttered between pains. Then she pushed so hard her whole body shuddered as she groaned a mighty, low groan.

Ezra had to open her legs to see. He hated doin’ that, but they was beyond being shy now. It was a necessary thing. He’d seen his mammy birthing babies back on the plantation.

A bloody bony head appeared, almost purple. Joy wiped away the struggle, the fear, the constant fear. “Baby’s head,” he whispered.

Orelia thrashed, grunting and shuddering and clawing into his shoulder.

He grasped the slippery roundness and pulled best he could, slow, steady.

Out it slipped, a wiggly bloody little one.

It were the baby. It were born. “Orelia, honey, it be here. It’s a little girl.”

He took Orelia’s shawl and wrapped the baby in it.

Above, the music had changed tempo. He recognized “Silent Night.”

The baby gave out a newborn mewing cry, and they exchanged their scared look. Could such a little sound be heard upstairs? They might be in a free state, but it was still illegal to hide runaways.

“Let’s call her Christmas,” Ezra whispered.

Orelia smiled down on the bundle and whispered, “Christmas. Our very own Christmas.”

The shelves moved. Had somebody heard them? Come to arrest them? Take them back South? Both Ezra and Orelia sucked in breath.

A lady stood in the flickering candlelight. “I’m Mrs. Hitchcock.” She came to the straw pallet. “Oh, dear God, it’s a baby. A baby on Christmas Eve. Oh, she’s lovely.”

Orelia said, “She cried once. We was afraid y’all heard.”

“We did hear. The mayor was here, but he said the night was so magical he had heard the newborn Jesus cry.”

“Praise be to God,” said Ezra.

Mrs. Hitchcock left to bring water to wash the baby, and food and blankets to keep them warm.

“Orelia, honey, our baby, she born free.”

“Free,” Orelia repeated what Ezra had said. A fierce, proud light shone in her eyes as she looked down on the tiny child.

It were a holy night. Oh, holy night.

About the Author: Bernie Brown

I live in Raleigh, NC where I write, read, and watch birds. My stories have appeared in several magazines, most recently Better After 50, Modern Creative Life, Indiana Voice Journal, and Watching Backyard Birds. I am a Writer in Residence at the Weymouth Center, which is the perfect spot to work on my novel-in-progress. My short story, Same Old Casserole, was nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

December 20, 2016

The Magic of Three by Cathleen Delia Mulrooney

Once a month, we meet up for coffee. Usually, the cup of coffee extends to several and then often pushes over into lunch. Words spill. The rise and fall of voices. Steady flow of conversation. One of us throws out a sentence into the currents and the others slip into the stream of thought. We tread back and forth around politics, personal life, art, culture, gender, racism, and the focus point for all of it is our shared creative life. We are writers. Women writers. There is a strange magic that begins to run its course when you find your allies—in our case, creative allies. There is a spark. Incantations in cafes. Enchantment over paper cups.

This starts to sound like the plot of a silly modern fairy-tale. It isn’t. I can say this honestly and plainly. I don’t know where I would be without these two women. But, I know that I wouldn’t be writing.

One of them is twenty years my senior. Elegant. A cancer survivor. Married. Mother of two grown children. Beautifully transparent with her feelings and her life. She writes a little bit of everything, but mostly we’ve been working with her novel—a historical/contemporary fiction piece about women searching for their own strength and agency. The other is five years my junior. Stunning. A survivor of a lifetime of struggle. Married. Childless. Guarded until you know her. Her writing also spans genre, but her masterwork is a novel that defies definition with a character who defies the entire world she finds herself in. Me. Tattooed. Divorced. Single mom of three teenagers. Guarded in most ways forever, but open in occasional moments that pass through like weather. My writing right now is mainly focused on a novel about women and voice, violence and the body, sanity and silence.

We have different ages, ethnicities, statuses, tax brackets, zip codes, experiences, bodies, and daily routines.

And yet.

When I am with them, I am able to sink into that part of myself that few people ever get to know. The dark thickets of my creativity. For every way we are not alike, there remains the common denominator that we are all females and creatives—identities that require more than just a little bit of magic to maintain.

We aren’t raised in a culture that values female friendships. Too often, women are pitted against one another in terms of their beauty, their sexuality, their success, their ability to appear “perfect” and desirable to the male gaze. Women’s primary role is seen as one in service to husbands, children, partners—so, therefore, friendships with other women become secondary at best. Then, as writers, there should be competitiveness and envy between us. I should secretly rally for their failure and my own success, jockeying in place to surpass their skills and publications. But, both of my writing friends had a book come out this past year—I didn’t. I was happy for them in a genuine way, knowing how hard they have worked, knowing that creative fortune favors the determined and they absolutely outdid me in their tenacity and resolve.

The paradigms about what women are like and what writers are like are completely fragmented by my relationship to these two people.

Magic is defined as “the power of apparently influencing the course of events by using mysterious or supernatural forces…wonderful; exciting…to create, transform, move, etc., by or as if by magic.” The word is one I wouldn’t use lightly. The word is one I would use for what we do when the three of us get together. We create a safe container to allow inspiration in. There is a known, friendly, supportive audience awaiting the words I manage to scrape free from my self-doubt and the insecure edges of my consciousness. My words move and transform and take shape on the page because I can trust that two talented women will receive them for me.

Somewhere in the ritual of coffee cup and notebooks splayed open wide and pens rattling around the tabletop, I know we are influencing our own course of events. Writing is a solitary art. It lacks the swagger of music, the ability to take up tangible space like visual art, and the approachable presence of the stage. Writers are often wildly introverted, so the idea of sharing writing in process—half born and half formed—(and then having to speak about it) can seem like a nightmare. With them it is, instead, a gift.

When I completed my MFA in Creative Writing, words left me. I found myself completely silenced by the intensity of the experience I’d just had and the requirements to work under such restrictive time constraints. My muse rebelled–decided to ditch me and my outlines and run off to Hawaii to drink rum and weave red blossoms into its hair while befriending tropical birds. I couldn’t blame my creative voice for skipping out, but it was painful. I could still occasionally chisel an essay or a poem from the stone block I was living with, but fiction, my wild-eyed sidekick, my first love, had left me.

My notebooks filled with heavy black lines, crossing out whole universes. Voices rose in me then fell quiet like awkward guests at a party, drifting by the punch bowl with nothing to say and a thirst that could not be named. I doubted everything. Especially myself. I was certain that any skill or talent I may have had was spent on a thesis novel that sat like a stone on the page, unyielding. A dead thing. A dead end.

And, that may have been the end of the story right there. The MFA curse come true. Student loan debt. A powerfully transformative experience and then it was over. No promise of success. No clear path forward. But, then, two years into my creative exile, the three of us started meeting up in cafes and emailing our work to one another. Each of them had a longstanding novel in the works for us to begin with. I was untethered from my thesis and wanting to start something new. After a few false starts, I did.

Slowly, with the support and encouragement of these women, a new novel stitched itself together. While it did, my muse started to hear our conversations as she skinny-dipped beneath a bone-white moon. She noticed that I was recommitted to the work again once I agonized over and then scrapped almost two-thirds of the novel, but didn’t give up. I told my writing group members of my plans and they didn’t recoil in horror that I was going to cut so much–they agreed, offered support, and told me to keep going. I am, I told them. I will.

Those words magically brought my muse back to me. She came home not wanting to talk about her time of sea and sky, but watching patiently to see if I kept showing up for the work, even when it felt impossible. I did. I am. But, without our monthly meetings and the emails, texts, and calls, I can tell you in no uncertain terms, I wouldn’t be.

The cups of coffee cool on the table at the cafe. We have spent the morning discussing one another’s work and our next steps. I walk into our meetings with that low-level anxiety creative women know all too well–how dare I say that, how dare I share that, how dare I put that on the page or paint it or photograph it or sculpt it or sing it or let it out into the light? Who am I to take up so much space?

You’re one of us, my writing women tell me. That’s who.

Audience. Friendship. Support. Creative sisterhood.

Read us what you’ve got. We’ve been waiting to hear your work.

Words more magic than these may never be spoken.

Cathleen Delia Mulrooney

Restless. Sleepless. Book-lover. Wordsmith. Deep roots. Prodigal heart. Teacher. Guide. Wanderer. Witch. Tea, tarot, hot baths, stitchcraft. Curator of narrative relics, remnants, & curiosities.

Cat is also a freelance writer, editor, and teacher. Her poetry, fiction, essays, interviews, and reviews have appeared in a variety of online and print publications. She has been teaching writing at the college level since 2000, and has facilitated creative writing workshops in elementary schools, high schools, prisons, and private organizations, as well as workshops exclusively for women to write their body and tarot-based narratives.

Through her Queen of Cups Tarot community, she offers private, group, and online tarot readings. Find her online at http://cdeliamulrooney.com and Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/queenofcupstarot/

December 19, 2016

Medicine Lodge by Patricia Wellingham-Jones

I approach my place of healing
Branches of cedar and pine lace into wall and roof
I enter through a deerskin draped over the opening
Round stones form a fire ring in the center
I sink onto a pile of soft wool
Flames flicker my wounded spirit skyward

About the Author: Patricia Wellingham-Jones

Patricia Wellingham-Jones is a widely published former psychology researcher and writer/editor. She has a special interest in healing writing, with poems recently in The Widow’s Handbook (Kent State University Press). Chapbooks include Don’t Turn Away: poems about breast cancer, End-Cycle: poems about caregiving, Apple Blossoms at Eye Level, Voices on the Land and Hormone Stew.

December 18, 2016

Sunday Brunch: Senses of Snow

Yesterday morning, I sat in my sunny kitchen and read an email from my aunt, sent from her 19^th-centry farmhouse in Connecticut. She had included pictures of her land, blanketed in the first snow of the season, and her cozy living room with her real pine Christmas tree (ours is plastic) with the snowy outdoors in the background.

Instantly, I was nostalgic for snow.

If you asked, I would tell you that I don’t do winter, that I’ve ‘done my time’ with snow. It’s true, I never want to live in a place with Serious Winter again, but there are times – usually around the winter solstice – that I find myself longing for a snowed-in weekend.

Partly, it’s because of that special snow hush, that preternatural silence. It’s the opposite of rain which is so much static. I mean, I love rain, but the sound of it can be overwhelming.

(Did you know that the reason dogs dislike rain is that it confuses their ability to track the direction of sound? On the other hand, even my dainty Chihuahua who will ‘hold it’ all day, refusing to go outside if the ground is wet, loves to whuffle in fresh snow.)

But snow… snow fills the space between words and music. It quiets the incessant electrical hum that is such a part of contemporary life. It stuffs itself into our unnoticed negative spaces, leaving only a clean, white background.

We don’t often get snow in the part of Texas where I live, so I have to rely on memory when I want to capture the experience of a snow day.

– I’m six and we live in Golden, CO, and my friends and I risk certain death careening down the snow-packed hill that forms the street we live on. Thankfully we never make it to the busy thoroughfare that is the first cross-street.

– I’m a seven-year-old in Colorado, coming home from walking my dog. Her poodle-paws are matted with ice and we’re both shivering, but my mother greets us with a warm towel for her, and a bowl of tuna with hard-boiled egg mixed into it for me.

– I’m seven or eight and I’m standing on the back porch, looking at the snow falling across the beam from the amber porch-light. Years later, I’ll be watching an episode of Star Trek: the Next Generation, and the image of the star field will cause me to utter, “That’s what falling snow looks like.”

– I am ten years old, and even though it was sixty degrees earlier in the day, a soft, slow snow has started outside. My mother and I are curled up on the couch, watching the Winter Olympics from Lake Placid. It’s a perfect weekend.

– I am twenty-four, and Fuzzy (my husband) and I are driving my belongings from California to South Dakota, where we’re about to start our life together. We get iced in, as well as snowed in, in Kearney, NE. My mother covers an extra night at the Best Western, and we spend the day watching cheesy movies, cuddling, reading, and just talking.

– I’m thirty-four, and it’s our first Christmas in Texas. My parents are visiting from Mexico, and we decide to hold an open house and meet the neighbors. A few days before the party, a light snowfall coats the neighborhood in frozen glitter, and Fuzzy and I walk through our snow-dusted neighborhood delivering invitations.

– It’s the year I will turn forty, and February brings a “snowpocalypse.” We have eighteen inches of snow, black ice, rolling blackouts, and a frozen pipe (miraculously, it thaws without bursting). We are also (apparently) the only people on our block who own a snow shovel (a remnant of that time in South Dakota).

It is that last snowfall in my list, the one in 2010, that stands out in my mind, because that’s the year I learned that snow has a sound I never expected.

For the first time, I heard the soft hiss that occurs when snowflakes meet the water in my (unheated, but still running) swimming pool. That sound, always reminds me of the way granulated sugar also hisses as it falls into a mug of steaming-hot black tea, but with an element of cold.

We’ve had some snow since then, of course, but most years it’s ‘technical snow’ – a few flurries whip around for an hour or two and then they harden into freezing rain or fade into a brittle gray sky. I’ve learned to appreciate those days for themselves, though. I put a log (DuraFlame, not real wood) on the fire, and enjoy the flickering heat for a few hours.

Some years, I re-read childhood books that have winter scenes, so that at least the landscape in my head looks like winter. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe with its opening scenes that take place in Deep Winter is a perennial favorite (always winter and never Christmas is a concept that lingers), but the book I always go back to is Laura Ingalls Wilder’s The Long Winter. It’s in that book that we see Ma create a ‘button lamp,’ and Pa come up with the idea of twisting hay into sticks to use as fuel in the wood stove. It involves some of the bleakest moments of all the Little House books, but it also includes some of the warmest and happiest.

Yesterday morning, I sat in my kitchen looking at the pictures of my auntie’s snow-covered environment.

Yesterday afternoon, as Fuzzy and I crossed a parking lot to enter a restaurant for lunch, it was a sunny, if blustery, day, with a temperature of roughly seventy-three degrees. When we left an hour later, the temperature had dropped to fifty and the sky had thickened. By midnight the thermometer read twenty-two.

We won’t get snow – the sky may be gray and heavy, but there really isn’t enough moisture, but the cold has its own magic. Snow hushes sounds, but wind sings mournful songs in the trees and whispers stories into the chimney. Gray weather lends itself to lamplight and endless mugs of hot tea whether it comes with powder or pouring.

I fell for snow when I was a child, and I fall for it over and over again when I see pictures or read books, but despite the special memories, I’m glad I no longer have to deal with slush footprints, soggy feet, or being so cold my chin-muscles go numb.

Well… mostly.

Photos by E. P. Klindienst. Used with permission.

About the author: Melissa A. Bartell

Melissa is a writer, voice actor, podcaster, itinerant musician, voracious reader, and collector of hats and rescue dogs. She is the author of The Bathtub Mermaid: Tales from the Holiday Tub. You can learn more about her on her blog, or connect with her on on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.

December 16, 2016

Making Magic When the Heart is Heavy by Jeanie Croope

I know I’m not the only one who has ever tried to be merry when it felt the world was crashing down around me.

My dad died in mid-December many years ago, but I remember that time as though it was yesterday.

To put this in context, it would be useful to think of me as The Christmas Kid, Mrs. Claus in Training or The One Who Can’t Seem to Quit. I love the holidays and while I refuse to put up one decoration before Thanksgiving, the day after, all bets are off! I have a rather small house and by the time I put Christmas everywhere, I’m often quite sure it is far too over the top and I should have quit long before. And I’m always glad I didn’t!

But then Dad died. It wasn’t unexpected. I just didn’t think it would happen before Christmas. Phone calls. Funeral arrangements. Just trying to get my brain around what it would be like to have no parents at all.

I had already scheduled a Christmas party for several days after the funeral. I toyed with cancelling. Everyone would understand.

But I needed those people. I needed to be busy making snacks and cleaning the house. I needed the energy of those who loved me surrounding me with good cheer. And smiles. Because smiles were pretty tough to come by that Christmas. I could — and would — cry later.

I am grateful to have a strong friendship network. Several of those friends knew Dad too, visiting him in the hospital or nursing home, giving me a badly needed night off. All, at one time or another, had joined Dad and me for Christmas dinner.

Christmas dinner. My favorite meal of the year. The Spode dishes, mom’s silver, lots of lights. How could I do dinner without dad?

And I didn’t. One of that friendship trio, Bonnie, invited us all to her home for dinner. It was warm and friendly and a safe place to simply “be” and a gesture I will never forget.

Facing down the holidays during sad times can be a challenge for any of us. That “sadness” may not just be the death of a beloved family member. It can be a divorce or separation that sends a family into divided loyalties and deep grief. It can be the loss of a job or a tragedy, like a house fire. Perhaps a dear family member is in the hospital or has recently faced a catastrophic diagnosis. It may even be despair about the state of the world. We all have our triggers, our life occurrences.

Every one of these situations — and many others — can send that happy holiday heart into the dumps.

If there was a set combination of solutions that would work for everyone, I would patent it and be a wealthy woman. The fact is the glorious differences that make us unique mean that no one set of rules can ever make us, if not happy, at least at peace with the situation and be able to recognize and engage in celebration.

Here are some ideas that have helped me and others I know during these times. Perhaps they’ll resonate with you. If you have other suggestions, feel free to enter them in the comment section.

Try to surround yourself with people who are aware of your fragile state and will let you be you. That means that if you want help with the heavy lifting they’ll be there with that casserole or help with the dishes. But they will also recognize that sometimes it might help you to be busy and “have a job.” (Those of you with grieving friends, take note!) They will also recognize that if you aren’t your usual life of the party, it’s OK. They won’t try to jolly you out of a quiet moment.
Try something new. That Christmas dinner at Bonnie’s helped save my holiday, putting me with good friends in a spot that wasn’t quite so raw with memories. The support, the new surroundings that year, all made it an easier holiday.
Do unto others. Maybe this is the year you find a cause, volunteer at a soup kitchen or take cookies to a senior center. Wrap presents for needy children or volunteer at the food bank. Practice random acts of kindness. It’s amazing how giving back can help fill a hole in the heart.
Try to remember the good things. Light a candle each evening in memory or revisit memories in photo albums. Honor that experience by remembering the best of times. If your house is burning or your love is in ICU, that’s not easy and maybe not possible. But we often have the opportunity to reframe how we think of an experience.
Try a little “creative therapy.” If you write, scribble your thoughts, coming any way they like. Let your heart purge its pain. If you draw or paint, try to put your feelings on paper using a visual medium. Grab your camera and photograph something that offers a reflection of your feelings or your hopes for the future.
Live in hope. It’s can be difficult to see the light of hope at the end of a dark tunnel, but have faith that it is there. Recognize that these intense moments are the “now” and not the “always.” Find a talisman to carry in your pocket — a stone or bead, piece of jewelry or cat toy — something you can touch reminds you that person is with you and that peace and healing will come. You simply have to open your heart and let it find its way in.

There is a Native American saying, “The soul would have no rainbow if they eyes had no tears.” It’s hard to remember that at the holidays — but hold fast to the hope that the rainbow will appear. It may not be in the bright, shiny lights on the tree or the dangling baubles. And it may take awhile. But the rainbow will return, bringing that spectrum of life from black and white back into color.

About the Author: Jeanie Croope

After a long career in public broadcasting, Jeanie Croope is now doing all the things she loves — art, photography, writing, cooking, reading wonderful books and discovering a multitude of new creative passions. You can find her blogging about life and all the things she loves at The Marmelade Gypsy.