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Your harvest, your life
“The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.” ~Oprah Winfrey Late autumn inspires us to take stock of what we’ve planted or accomplished. The season of Thanksgiving — not just the holiday itself — underscores a simple choice we always have: We can celebrate all the good things we’ve reaped and experienced, or dwell on the difficulties we’ve encountered. A positive mindset is the natural outgrowth of appreciation. (Happy people are grateful people.) It’s part of the harvest we reap when we count everything on our gratitude list, large and small. ~CL
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Inner compass
“Pay close attention to your inner compass. If you stop steering by your own compass, you’ll hit a rumble strip. Don’t panic. Just question your assumptions and you’ll be back on the road in no time.” ~Martha Beck In the 1950s, most women didn’t have the choices we have today. Typically, they married and had kids, stayed home to raise those kids, managed household chores, and followed the cultural norms of the time. Likewise, their husbands climbed into their cars every weekday morning (or evening) and drove to work to support their families. Breaking that pattern isn’t always easy, even today. We humans are creatures of habit. We follow the…
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“Wild Geese”
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination.” — Mary Oliver Mary Oliver’s Wild Geese” touches a tender place in my soul, and I often share it with students in my workshops. It always sparks compelling personal stories and discussions after I read it aloud. As a child in Sunday school, I was terrified of disappointing the punitive, restrictive God portrayed in our leather-covered bibles. No matter how “good” I was, or how closely I followed the rules, I still felt judged and unworthy. Today, I follow my own moral compass, and I try not to allow the judgment of others to overshadow my…
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Adjusting our perspective
“You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.” ~Maya Angelou Whether I’m writing my own life stories or helping others write theirs, I’m amazed at how often we allow our experiences to define us. We might label ourselves as “survivors” who had the courage to overcome a personal challenge or tragedy. Or we might see our bad fortune as an excuse to throw a pity party. Writing about our lives (in a private journal or a workshop) motivates us to take a closer look at how far we’ve come. We can view negative experiences from a fresh…
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Writing your life stories
“We are important and our lives are important, magnificent, really, and their details are worth recording. This is how writers must think, this is how we must sit down with pen in hand. We were here; we are human beings; this is how we lived.” ~Natalie Goldberg What makes a compelling personal essay? And how do you turn your memorable experiences into marketable stories, a memoir, or an essay collection for your own book? On November 16 at 6:00 PM, I’ll be coaching “Writing Your Life: A Personal Essay Workshop” at the Royal Oak Public Library. Designed for new writers, this introductory workshop will cover the basic tools you need…
