So Now What?
Last September, Steve and I jumped in our Jeep and took a 2 week road trip heading West to Montana for a few reasons…fly fishing, returning to a fondly remembered childhood place, and to see my friend and celebrated author, Laura Munson.
As we hit the road, one of my aspirations was to sit and write on Laura’s porch. I met Laura many years ago, through our mothers, who became dear friends later in life. We were both at the “end of the pack,” with much older siblings, and felt a sort of kinship through our stories.
I’m smiling as I remember that Fall afternoon when I settled into her cozy home with a hot cup of tea to spend the afternoon working through her “So Now What?” writing prompts. That day I began a process of checking my narrative – my internal conversation and noticing where I was putting my energy. Learning to look at my past with compassion, and writing through the process, helped me begin to create a vision for the future.
Knowing how valuable that afternoon of writing was, I asked her to share her thoughts on, as she says in her reflection, the importance of finding your radical voice.
After over a year of isolation for so many of us, I think that we are experiencing, globally, an acute form of cabin fever whether or not we live in a house, apartment, or actual cabin. We all have our own pandemic story and our own pandemic lessons. Personally, I was two weeks into a two month a book tour when the pandemic hit. So I cancelled thirty-eight events, and came home— bought beans and rice and toilet paper like everybody else, and sheltered in place on my Montana land with my adult children. That was my pandemic silver lining.
That said, one of the greatest losses was the pause button I pushed on my Haven Writing Retreats which I’ve been leading for nine years with over 1,000 alums from all over the world. Without these intimate, intense gatherings of word wanderers and seekers, there was a huge hole in my life that seemed to erode even more whatever was this “new normal.” I didn’t realize just how much Haven, and the people it attracts, was part of how my heart beats.
Almost every month I have the high honor of guiding eight brave souls through a program that goes to the root of their self-expression. They come to a gorgeous Montana ranch, set on a square mile of stunning land looking into Glacier National Park, to take an interlude from their lives and to find their voices using the written word. They take a deep dive into the themes of their lives and write their way into their truth, their wonder, their wildest dreams. It’s like a miracle every time and over and over again I get to hear, “Haven just changed my life.”
Part of the pandemic loss was to think of all those lives that weren’t being changed by this program and its power. All of the stolen moments by the stone fireplace between two people who would likely never meet in their daily lives, sharing their heart language like sisters. The dinner conversations about books, and words, and creativity. The spontaneous eruptions of laughter. The tearful, clinging, hugs on the last day. The forever friendships that take root and grow. The books that are born. The stories that are finally released into the Montana skies. It was like losing a loved one, putting that pause button on Haven, especially during a time when we needed it most. Every retreat leader I know felt the same way, as did anyone who facilitates profound group gatherings. Well…I believe it’s safe to say…that at least where I live…gatherings are possible again, and we now understand just how deeply we need them. We are not meant to isolate. We need each other. We need safe places to tell our stories and express ourselves in the unique and essential way that only we can.
Ironically, or maybe not, what I could help people with during the pandemic, is the chance to transport yourself mentally to a small gathering in Montana through the magic of the imagination. Eight years ago, a year after I started leading writing retreats and understood the value of them, like watching extreme transformation in motion every time, I decided that I wanted to capture the enchantment of them in a novel. So I wrote Willa’s Grove. It makes sense to me that it’s a bestseller. People need that enchantment right now.
While the book isn’t about a writing retreat, it is about the power of coming together with kindreds outside of our daily lives and creating the safe space to tell our stories in order to find what’s next in our lives. To help each other break down what we thought our lives would be like, and then what they actually have been. To admit our inconvenient truths and to get real and raw with our pain and our dreams. Never when I wrote this book could I have imagined how timely it would be. So while I couldn’t engage in leading a live gathering, I could share a book that would transport people to Montana in their minds, and help them figure out their own answers to the question we all are asking right now: so now what. The women of Willa’s Grove find their so now what’s together. And now that we can gather again safely, I believe that people will be hungry to follow their lead.
It is my hope that this book will start a movement of gatherings, friend to friend to friend in the spirit of our futures. We can dream them alive again. Let’s be intentional about it. Courageous about it. Playful and curious about it.
This fall, people will be coming to Montana to do Haven again. I’ve never had more requests for the introductory phone call. We are all starved for connections, and self-expression— namely the specific sort of voice that writing gives us. Whether we go on a writing retreat, read a book about gatherings, or create powerful gatherings of our own, this is a time for radical storytelling. No more pretending, hiding, saying we’re “fine” when we’re bleeding inside. Now is a time for radical voice. No one has your voice. No one. It is my hope that you will wrap your arms around that beautiful voice of yours and lift it up in words that are the stuff of mountains and sunsets and dawn and that moment just before you wake, when the world feels pure and simple and you do too.
In closing, I hope all of you are waking, and/or awakening, to a new normal filled with rich possibilities.
Author’s Note…
Laura is as beautiful and as fun, as she looks online. She has been featured in the New York Times, USA Today, and is the international bestselling author of the memoir This Is Not The Story You Think It Is, and the novel Willa’s Grove. She is also the founder of the top-ranked Haven Writing Programs. She lives in Whitefish, Montana. To learn more about Laura’s writing, or her Haven Writing Retreats, go to lauramunson.com
Zen Moment
“No one has your voice. No one. It is my hope that you will wrap your arms around that beautiful voice of yours and lift it up in words that are the stuff of mountains and sunsets and dawn and that moment just before you wake, when the world feels pure and simple and you do too.”
-Laura Munson
