Category: Peace
Friday, Jan 24, 2025 | Adventure, Art, Big Thoughts, Books, Confessions, Exercise, Friends, Fun, Girl Runner, Good News, Lists, Music, Organizing, Peace, Prizes, Publishing, Spirit, Success, The Candy Conspiracy, Weather, Winter, Word of the Year, Writing |
My to-do list for the next hour—
roast a pumpkin
write a blog post
Soooooo… the Canada Reads adventure is over for Girl Runner. It was truly lovely while it lasted. Here are the books that were chosen for the 2025 shortlist. Check them out!
I had advance warning that I wasn’t on the shortlist (call it reading the tea leaves; nobody reached out to inform me otherwise, but there were logical signs).
Ergo, my plan for “surviving” yesterday’s announcement (and I do say that tongue-in-cheek!), was to throw myself with gusto into my usual Thursday routine. I walk with a friend at 6AM, head to a pilates class at 7AM, spend the day at work in the library, come home for a bit of a nap and some laundry, then return to the gym for the evening with my daughter who is also a gym rat. We do weights, spin, and blissful slow flow yoga to finish it off, then come home to eat a late supper and completely unwind. I love this routine. It’s the only evening I spend at the gym, and the physical exertion helps me grind out my emotions about the week, empties my mind, and takes me deeper into my body, which connects me to the world. I feel very alive and purposeful on Thursdays. So I wasn’t worried about the residual effects of announcement, in all honesty.
And then. My day took a turn. Literally.
Midway through our walk, my friend and I dashed across a busy street to beat the traffic, and I stepped in a pothole, turned my ankle, and heard a series of snaps and pops. Having turned my ankle before (playing soccer), I knew exactly what was going down. The walk home was painful and longer than we would have liked, but my friend entertained me with conversation and it felt okay to keep moving and putting some weight on that foot. At home, in the front hall, I briefly debated continuing to pilates class, as planned, and then a voice of reason spoke (strangely enough, it was my own voice, out loud), and I said, “What would I tell a good friend in this situation?” And I replied, “Do not go to pilates. Take off your boots and take care of yourself.”
So that’s what I did.
To summarize, that is how I spent yesterday. I took care of myself.
I booked off work, made an appointment to get the ankle checked, dressed in comfortable clothing, elevated the leg, iced the ankle, surrounded myself with reading material, snuggled with the dog, drank tea, did not do a scrap of laundry, and rested. A day on which I’d strategized to distract myself from potentially painful feelings became a day of reflection. And it was good. It was needed, I think.
For years, when I “failed” to achieve some goal, particularly related to writing, I’d be overwhelmed with shame, expressed like this: I’ve disappointed everyone. I’ve disappointed my publisher, my editor, my agent, my family, my friends, basically everyone who cares about me. Yesterday, this thought rose up, in ghostly form. You’re a disappointment. You’ve disappointed people [in this instance, by not making the shortlist of Canada Reads].
“That’s interesting,” I replied (out loud! As if talking to a friend!). “Tell me, assuming that’s true, what could you have done to avoid disappointing them?”
After a pause, during which I scrolled backward in time through all the choices that were mine to make regarding this particular “failure,” I said, “Not write the book?”
How funny that sounded.
“Maybe,” my wise interlocutor self said, “maybe you’re the one who is disappointed, not everyone else?”
Hmmm… And in that moment, I gave myself permission to feel disappointed.
Ahh. That’s what it feels like. It feels different from shame. It’s sadness, a big sigh, letting go of what could have been (the imagined version, of course, which is never the same as what is).
“What are you disappointed about?” my wise questioner asked.
And out poured my feelings of loss: I thought it would have been really fun … to get to experience new things, meet new people, have some interesting conversations, make new connections … add a little zing of adventure and the unknown into my comfortable routine.
“Yes. That sounds disappointing. It’s okay to be disappointed …. Did you know that?”
Maybe, in fact, I didn’t know that. Maybe this has been a valuable revelation.
It’s disappointing, but it’s not the end of the world, or the end of my career as a writer, of the end of anything, except this potential experience.
Relief and ease poured through me. I read the opening chapters of On Freedom by Timothy Snyder, learning about the German words for body: Leib and Körper, and feeling seen and known. (As I understand it, in Snyder’s reading, a Leib is a body that is alive, limited by mortality, yet free to choose; a Körper is a body that is dead, or seen and treated as an object by others or even by the self; there’s so much more to these ideas and as soon as Kevin got home from work, I peppered him with observations, which I tend to call “revelations!” As in, “I’m having a revelation!” Which happens far too often for them to qualify as such, see above; but that’s how I reslish seeing things—as constantly changeable and unfolding and re-forming and illuminating.) Anyway… I also napped for awhile. My ankle ached and turned purple.
By evening, I was restless.
Today, I woke wanting my ankle fully healed. Revelation: healing doesn’t happen overnight.
Slow down, dear friend. Take it one step at a time. Literally.
xo, Carrie
PS If all goes as planned, the roasted pumpkin will be turned into a peanut stew by suppertime.
Friday, Dec 6, 2024 | Art, Drawing, Organizing, Peace, Play, Spirit, Winter |
Day 6 Prompt
Draw & write. What’s in your pocket and why?
Notes: Items are from the pockets of my pink ski jacket. Materials used: black pen, crayon, watercolours. Songs included “Landslide” by the Chicks, “Quiet – Stripped” by MILCK, and “Battlefields” by Twin Flames. I’ve been spending way more time, proportionally, on the drawing piece of each “pause”; drawing and colouring is such a peaceful activity. I wrote the answer to why these items might have been in my pockets on the following page (approximately 5 minutes; no music while writing).
xo, Carrie
Thursday, Dec 5, 2024 | Art, Drawing, Meditation, Peace, Space, Spirit |
Day 5 Prompt
Draw while listening to whale song — eyes open or closed. Free-write for 5 mins.
Note: Listen to Humpback whale song by scrolling down this wikipedia link. Materials: black pen, crayons, water colours. Music: whale song. I wrote about what it feels like when someone doesn’t have time for my whimsy and playfulness, and I see myself through their eyes. I understand their impatience, even their disgust at my time-wasting; and yet, the delight of doing projects (like this one — of my own invention, for no super-obvious practical reason) carries me along. I notice when what I’m doing isn’t landing. And I’m patient. Most of the things that matter to me take time to unfold. Lots of time. It takes time to go deep. But like the whale, I need to surface too, and breathe in the world.
xo, Carrie
Saturday, Nov 2, 2024 | Big Thoughts, Blogging, Job, Library, Lists, Manifest, Peace, Source, Space, Spirit |
The problem with not having a ton of time to write is that my mind is like an over-stuffed inbox, and when I turn to this blog, I could race off in any one of a number of directions. But it’s important to pick one. That’s the essence of writing a post like this—or a story, a nicely fitted piece of business. Pick one thing to write about, Carrie, just one.
Okay, then. I want to write about children and dogs, and how both are so incredibly attuned to the world before them, and the living creatures in it, including the humans approaching and passing. Have you noticed? How a toddler in a stroller or infant strapped to a parent’s chest will meet your eye and take you in, while their rushing parent is too distracted to do the same? And likewise, a dog on a leash will veer toward the human coming toward it. I like this—I don’t mind a dog jumping on me and greeting me. But the human holding the leash usually pulls the dog away—onward they go.
Children and dogs possess a superpower—they are present. They are exactly where they are.
I see this in the library, especially with the younger students who notice every tiny detail that has changed. When I read to them, they are alert to repetition in illustrations and in language, they notice the character who says nothing but appears on every page. More generally, they soak up the atmosphere, the air of the place they are in. If something sad is happening, they know. If the energy is fraught and wonky, they respond to that.
I love this quality almost more than any other human quality—the ability to be present and tuned in. I cherish it. When I’m with children (and dogs!), I can enter into their state of being too, at least for that while. And it’s okay that I can’t stay there—I accept the imperative of being a mature responsible adult who has her lists of tasks and duties, her memories of what went wrong, and her plans to set things right. We grow up, and our minds fill up. Like our inboxes.
It is a relief to set everything down, to tap the keys and say, here I am, this is where I am. I choose this one thing. And that is why I love to write here, when a seam of time opens in the day, and I feel called to remember who I am. Or record who I am, more accurately.
And who I am, just now, is a woman most grateful to be in the presence of children regularly, and therefore to be present herself regularly. It’s salve for the soul. It’s healing. It reminds me that connection is our most powerful need, as human beings, and that when we connect in person, face to face, when our eyes meet, we see differently. We know differently. (Or, I do. I shouldn’t assume and speak so generally.) When I am in the presence of others, I understand the power of connection to bridge vast divides and sew up wounds and heal and care.
I have other thoughts on other subjects, but today, I choose children and dogs, and our eyes meeting in passing. Hello, living beings. You are wonderful and I love you.
xo, Carrie
Tuesday, Jul 16, 2024 | Confessions, Current events, Interviews, Peace, Play, Source, Space, Spirit, Summer, Writing |
Who were you, just over four years? Who were you, before the pandemic (those blank months/years of stasis we none of wish to recall and scarcely can)? This morning, I found some writing and drawing published on my blog from March 2020, immediately after we were sent home to wait out the pandemic. Immediately after everything stopped.
I had been running so hard, working so hard, treading water but barely. Coping, but worn thin.
And suddenly all of my responsibilities, save for the ones contained and held inside my house, were suspended. I was no longer a soccer coach. I was not leading a storytelling workshop. I wasn’t driving children to lessons and practices, nor was I going to the gym in the early morning to work out.
I was home with my family, cooking, baking, cleaning and disinfecting, mainlining the news, but also—I remember this—writing. Writing was my solace and comfort, my escape.
And reading over these reflections now, in my post-pandemic, post-artist life, I find a welcome rebuttal to my current strain of cynicism and doubt regarding the usefulness of writing. Personal passion project, I wrote of my devotion to fictional characters in my previous post here (just yesterday), as if in scorn. Without irony, this morning, I chose to pick up a pen and draw and write, in the lined pages of my notebook: “Now, I enter my listening era. I seem to have the lost the desire to watch fireflies in the back yard and make meaning of them—or to describe their pop of light, brief luminescence, in other terms. I watch them. My heart slows.”
In other words, I wrote about those fireflies.
Maybe I don’t always need writing (watching the fireflies last night, I didn’t think that I did), or maybe I won’t need it in every era of my life, but by God, writing has been a balm. Let me pledge to honour my impulse to write, when it arrives, which it will, which is does.
Here are some beautiful words I found in that post from March 21, 2020.
“The sound of my pen scratching—too fast, sloppily—across the page. I’ve only just noticed that I grip it as near to the tip, the nib, as is possible. I only just see it—my pen—as an instrument that I am playing, an extension of my body encircled by five tips of fingers and thumb, each with a half-moon circle of curved, opaque nail. There are no straight lines on my hand. The pen is straight and hard and useful to me, it is made for this task and nothing more; but I am made for bending, praying, curling, holding, I am made for giving way. I am made for praise. For contorting myself anew.
I am made for change and ever-change, evermore, now, as before.”
I am made for praise.
I am made for contorting myself anew.
I am not the same person that I was four years ago: I’d just won a major grant in support of writing Francie’s Got a Gun; I had confidence in my writing that seems to have diminished; I can recognize this change, but not fully explain it. I suspect that without the pandemic to interrupt my whirlwind of activities, I would have rolled onward. It would not have occurred to me to get a job in an elementary school.
I don’t want to lose touch with that self who wrote those words: I am made for praise.
Because we all are, aren’t we? And there are many ways to offer praise. Sitting in the near-dark watching the fireflies, just watching, sometimes that’s fully enough. And sometimes it’s not—and that’s when the impulse to write, to record, to transform, to imbue, to capture, to contort, to burnish, to imagine pushes its way to the surface and I pick up a pen, this instrument, and let my hand play music that seems to come directly from the universe; a universal impulse to make and re-make anew.
xo, Carrie
PS My career—such as it is!—is featured in a post today on Conrad Grebel University College’s website (where I lived during my first year as undergrad), one of 60 alumni featured in honour of Grebel’s 60th anniversary.
Monday, Jul 15, 2024 | Adventure, Art, Family, Fire, Friends, Fun, Peace, Source, Space, Spirit, Spring, Summer, Yoga |
In April, I embarked on a “spring burst”, aka return to the gym, with the initial intention of spending a month trying out spin and weights classes, in an effort to boost my cardio and strength.
I was a runner for many years. But it’s high-impact, and I am a woman well into middle age, and no amount of yoga seemed to help with the pain that would flare while running, even relatively short distances. It’s hard to stop doing something you love, and there is no replacement for the runner’s high, or being outside on a misty morning before the world has woken up. But. I’m trying to listen to my body and be softer with myself, so I let the running go (mostly). As of this spring, I’d been doing yoga twice a day for at least a year, and meditation regularly, and an occasional weights class with friends. Sometimes I’d bike to work. But suffice it to say, there came a moment in my weights-class-with-friends when I was gasping for air, my heart racing, and the thought arose: gee, I could really use some more cardio in my life.
Ergo: Carrie’s spring burst.
The first spin class damn near killed me, mostly because I go hard, no matter the challenge. I almost fell off my bike. I was light-headed, panting, dripping sweat, and not even close to keeping up with the instructor’s choreo directions. Yes, I go to a gym where the spin classes have choreo; and yes, this adds a certain soupçon of danger and thrill to each sweaty, fast-paced, rhythmically pumped up class—but that’s why I return, to be frank: to be challenged, mentally and physically, to occasionally reach a goal I’ve set or smile at myself while trying. I also look forward to the moment in each class where my worries vanish into the effort, and my mind goes quiet.
My spring burst has stretched into a summer of strength, or maybe a summer of sweat (haven’t come up with a title yet).
I’ve tried every available class, from weights to power to pilates to yoga to the hilarious humiliation of a what seemed like an aerobics class to boxing. As mentioned, I throw myself in deep, and am therefore currently in gym rat mode. It’s not that other things aren’t happening, social and emotional. But this is the place I’m returning to, as a form of a vacation, to give my mind rest, and to enjoy my body. Weight training is apparently critical during the peri-menopause / menopause era; and that’s me. Age happens, and with age, limitations; yet my body and mind can adapt and learn new things.
Summer loving. Bougie gym summer.
We aren’t travelling very far this summer. The kids are all living at home. The schools are closed, so I don’t have a job in the library for nine or ten weeks (haven’t done the math). I’m trying to revise a book manuscript, but honestly, if I do so, it will only be because it makes sense for my mental health, and not any other reason. The costs of artistic ambition seem altogether too steep; and this is not a new Alice-Munro-revelations-thought for me either, though has probably been somewhat cemented by that. I’ve long wondered and worried about the wisdom (for myself personally) of pouring so much energy and time and attention into what amounts to a series of personal passion projects—at times I would feel possessed, as if I was trying to cure an obsession or compulsion with novel-writing. And maybe it did help, for awhile—I have no regrets. I’m proud of my accomplishments. And—and! I hope for something quite different: a humble legacy of love and care, for strong and lasting connections and relationships, built on trust and kindness and open doors.
That’s my aim. That’s my over-arching goal.
What I’m finding is that if I prioritize connections, serving and feeding relationships, including paying attention to the the feelings and sensations in my own body, I can’t go wrong. The discomfort and disorientation of being disconnected, not in a right relationship, is a powerful cue for change. This might mean entering into difficult conversations. This might mean being open to hearing hard truths. This might mean hearing “no,” when I’d prefer to hear “yes!” It might mean shifting direction, allowing my priorities to shift too. Whatever possibilities lie before me, I hope to choose connection.
Summer delight. Summer solace. Summer song.
xo, Carrie
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