It was a captivating couple of weeks when Learning Healing came into the world, and it was mostly on accident. By that, I mean, it was mostly without much direction of my own volition beyond a fleeting idea to open up my last notebook (which, because I had only recently started a new one, was still on the floor next to my bed rather than being tucked away on a shelf alongside all the others that hold my thoughts from years passed). I picked it up on a whim, and everything else just happened.
Given it has been over a month since my last post here (about Working Relationships, which I haven't added to much, but its time will come...), this surge of inspired momentum felt like a long-awaited and gratefully received peak of creative flow. I let it run through me and guide the way, writing at tables in Old Town, finding new nooks in the public library, and sitting through some long, intensive nights alone at home. Now, as I write this post, there exists a one-of-one copy of the original book (whose future is yet to be determined), a downloadable pdf version, and a podcast episode. So much for a season of generative dearth. Ha.
One fortunate insight I've gained from this experience is that I don't really have those dry spells after all...
As usual, it's been a pretty eventful month with lots of big thoughts and deep feels, few of which get publicly shared by me no matter how significant they are to my own journey. This reticence has become more of my norm over the past couple of years as I've drifted further and further away from the typical uses of social media capturing all the mundanities of the everyday.
With so many people dying over the past couple of years, I often think about how nice it is that some people still post pictures of their morning coffee or photos of the ducklings they see in a parking lot. Relatively insignificant moments in the grand scheme of things. When they are gone and their social media profiles live on, it will be nice to scroll through the textures of their lives. The quieter I get, the more I wonder if those who survive me will be left wanting.
I think about this a lot.
Seriously. Like, almost every day, particularly as I experiment with new food creations in my kitchen and walk alongside a mama duck and her nine ducklings to the edge of a busy street and then troubleshoot how I can best support their safety. And, one day, something happens, like an impulse to just look back at some of those February pages, which inspires the thought to write down a few of the good parts.
And then something very personal and extremely intimate evolves that basically compels itself to be shared.
Since these excerpts were being written down, ostensibly for later reference, I considered putting them all down in one place. A little red notebook I got from the 99 cent box under a table at a local used bookstore back in 2020 finally had a designated use. And then, as I wrote down the first page, I realized, this is a book. Without structure or planning, I flipped through my old notebook pages intrigued to witness how connections might develop among the pieces that lifted off the pages as worthy, appropriate (?), capable of being easily transcribed and shared in this organically curated way. Not only did I trust the process, I was eager to see how it would (have to) end when the little notebook pages ran out.
It was quite fun, exciting, and energizing to create Learning Healing. If you read it, or listen to it, you'll get a clear sense that it's not always easy for me to know where I'm going in the moment, despite the fact that I have been doing much the same things for a couple decades now. (Even I need an affirmation of that every once in a while!) The past nine and a half months have been a particularly and unusually nebulous path to navigate. But then, something like Learning Healing happens, and I'm reminded of one of the most telling bits of insight a former mentor once said about me when I was just graduating college, which is that wherever I'm going, I'm already there.
I lean on her comment in times of uncertainty. And I continue writing in my notebooks even when I don't know if there's a good reason why I do it beyond it's just want I tend to do - and have done for so long - and it seems to help me.
Learning Healing is less than a month's worth of excerpts from my notebooks. There was much more I put down even in that month that didn't get included in the transcription. But for whatever it's worth, I am happy some of it now lives beyond the privacy of my own pages destined for some shelf in my bookcase. It's given all the other words I've written a sense of hope that maybe, one day, they too will find their way into the world.
P.S. As a special thanks to the readers among you who have offered encouragement and financial support for my creative process and writing through Buy Me A Coffee, the downloadable pdf is available to you for free with my deepest gratitude. :)