#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream

Charles River Golden Tree

With eagerness and energy we walked into the sunny morning by the river where the trees were gold-lit and friendly, bowing over the river. Ah, to wake and feel well and wanting movement. Fresh air. Sun beamed on my face, warming me up, filling me up with the desire to keep going. The news is bad and full of broken hearts, and I am sorry for this. Home, I have a standing coaching call, I get to spend the hour with a writer who is full of joy, has faced her challenges, never complains, writes to open her mind and heart, to use her insights to help others. This is a lovely, hopeful, creative way to start the day. I spend a few hours writing my monthly newsletter, sorting my thoughts, trying to be clear and makes sense. I want to take a nap but I don’t. I keep working, and that feels right. One of my daughters is home, she is full of good cheer and chatty and hopeful and nervous about making a change in her life, and I listen in a way that she’ll feel my support and encouragement and faith. I am feeling so much better, after I’m done writing, I take a swim, and I feel strong and healthy. Tonight, I meet on Zoom with two poetry friends I met a year ago at the Tupelo Poetry Retreat in Truchas, NM. They are very good poets, both Ph.D.’s, professors, and I love meeting with them – they are so humble, I overcome my intimidation – and we listen deeply to each other’s poems and treat them with respect, and it’s a tender time, we’re miles apart, in different time zones, but very present in each other’s creative process. Sharing poems isn’t therapy, but it is intimate and tender time, where we share what’s in our hearts and minds, our pasts and our present. It is like this:

You know, people come to therapy really for a blessing. Not so much to fix what's broken, but to get what's broken blessed.

James Hillman