Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beach, bird, cormorant, love, sea on February 19, 2020| Leave a Comment »
And while I am at it, I should like to send you
a postcard from the shores of my body,
wish you were here, it is warm and there
are so many places for us to explore
together—but even as I write these words
the letters grow ink dark wings and fly
over the sea, a colony of cormorants,
silent as they soar, and I a beach with no footprints,
the waves lapping, everywhere the scent, the sting of salt.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged frienship, hummingbird, love, positivity, thoughts on February 18, 2020| Leave a Comment »
for Colette
Beside my bed, she left
a beautiful beaded hummingbird
and a story about how the Mayans
believe that these birds will transport
all of our good wishes and desires
to another. Tonight, there is no one
I wouldn’t send this bird to—
not just to my loved ones,
but to my unloved ones, the ones
I would rather forget, the ones
I would rather ignore. Oh little bird,
with your bright body and shining wings,
let’s get to work. Let’s send out
extraordinary beauty tonight,
extraordinary love.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dream, play, snow on February 16, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Next time the boy
throws the snow
at my face,
please let me see
an invitation
to play,
though it’s cold,
surprising,
his eyes bright requests.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged heart, medicine, music, song on February 16, 2020| 2 Comments »
Not tea, not pills,
not herbs, not tinctures,
not creams, not salts,
not drops, not injections—
what the heart needs
tonight is a song
so true that its cells rhyme
themselves with the beat.
Tonight, the only medicine
this tired heart needs
is to listen.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cancer, grief, loss, love, valentine's day on February 15, 2020| 4 Comments »
Every year the red or pink envelopes would arrive,
three of them tucked into the post office box—
one for my daughter, one for my son, and one
for me. Sally always remembered. My children
were, perhaps, a bit cavalier about the cards—
they’d read the Valentines and smile and set them aside.
But I had an inkling of the longing to give love
inside them. How beautiful her heart.
How lucky I felt to be chosen by her.
How lucky to return her love.
This year, only bills in the post office box
and catalogs for sheets and seeds and clothes.
And the part of me who knows she is gone
shrugs as if I should just go on. But the part
of me who misses her longs today to find
her familiar script on a red envelope. I know
that it’s unreasonable. That doesn’t stop hope.
I tell the part that misses her that it’s okay
to grieve. That it’s okay to feel empty today.
That it’s okay to want to believe in miracles.
I love the part of me that misses her—I love
how it insists on remembering this gift:
Such a wonder to be loved by someone,
such a marvel to love them back.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged garden, garlic, love, patience, planting on February 14, 2020| 2 Comments »
When everything had died,
but before the ground was frozen,
I planted the garlic in four long rows—
dozens of cloves deep enough
in the earth so the frost
couldn’t push them up and out.
I think of them now as winter
continues to gather the world
in its white embrace.
I think of how, beneath the snow,
they’re preparing to flourish,
to root, to leaf, to grow.
It’s not so different, I think,
from the ways you love me—
how, sometimes, when everything
seems barren, you’ll plant seeds.
And though we see nothing for a long,
long time, there, like cloves beneath the surface,
each seed multiplies into many.
So much of love happens invisibly.
So much of love takes a stretch.
When the cloves ripen, some we will consume.
They will mark us with their strength.
Some, like love, we will plant again.
Posted in Uncategorized on February 13, 2020| Leave a Comment »
We’re baaaack, for a special one-day mission! Have you ever wanted to be a SECRET AGENT??
My friend Sherry Richert Belul and I invite you to participate in a very special Valentine’s Day Secret Mission as part of Operation Love!
We’ll be going live in our Secret Agents Facebook group tomorrow morning (February 14th!) at 7am PST/10amEST to reveal the day’s mission.
{We can’t wait!}
Please join us live if you can; we’d love to see you and feel your stealthy, loving, ninja awesome agent energy while we are on live.
All you have to do is log into your Facebook account at the designated time and pop over to our Secret Agent group.
Keep refreshing the page if it is 7am PT and you don’t see us. (Sometimes that ole refresh makes everything right again. Just like in life.)
However, if you’re sleeping or working or walking the dog or out planting seeds of kindness, that’s okay. You can watch the video any time tomorrow, set forth on your spy mission, then report back at the end of the day.
You don’t wanna miss this mission because Sherry, our esteemed happiness coach and fearless mission writer, has a heart-opening, simple and surreptitious prompt to help send you out into the day with purpose and love. And I will be sharing a special poem that prompted the prompt! It will change your day! (This is Rosemerry revising Sherry’s letter. You know Sherry would never toot her own horn that loudly! But we all know how incredible she and her work are!)
Thank you for being a part of our world!
And — we thank you for being exactly who you are: phenomenal Secret Agents of Change with loving hearts.
What a difference you make.
We’re so excited to create mission of love with you tomorrow!
With big, happy hugs from your spymasters,
Rosemerry and Sherry
P.S. Don’t forget to pop over to the Secret Agent Facebook Group bright ‘n early tomorrow morning when Rosemerry and Sherry go live at 7m PST/10am EST.
P.P.S. If you have friends whom you think would enjoy these kinds of missions, please have them sign up here: https://simplycelebrate.net/secret-agents-of-change. The more the merrier! We will notify everyone via email when the next Operation launches! Also, make sure you send them to our Facebook group if they want to join in tomorrow’s LOVE!
P.P.P.S. Kindness is no small thing. Never underestimate how important your single act of kindness can be.
Stay Connected:
If you would like to know more about Sherry, her book Say It Now, and her coaching business, Simply Celebrate, please click here: https://simplycelebrate.net/
And if you would like to know more about Rosemerry, her books, her daily poems and her creative consulting practice, please click here: https://www.wordwoman.com/
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged difficult subjects, Emerging Form on February 13, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Have you listened yet to the podcast I cohost on creative process, Emerging Form?
It’s so fun! Every other week, science writer Christie Aschwanden and I take on a new subject, and this week it’s how to tackle subjects that bring up fear, shame, sadness, and anger. Engaging in a creative project can be hard enough when the subject matter is fun. But what about when it’s emotionally taxing, too? In this episode, we talk about many techniques for working with topics that make us uneasy—from changing perspective to creating rituals. Then we talk with Thea Deley, speaker, writer and improviser, and ask her two questions: 1) When do you know you are ready to write about something difficult—what is the role of perspective, and 2) How do you navigate stories that might hurt someone? We are interested in your answers to these questions, too!
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, dark, moon on February 13, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged clothes, happiness, inside job on February 12, 2020| 2 Comments »
I keep staring at it in the catalog at the Ametist linen/modal dress,
in amethyst, a linen shirt dress the catalog describes
as “wonderfully forgiving.” Well, that sounds good, of course.
And the dress, with its shimmering linen, its turquoise
and aubergine flowers, well, it’s beautiful. And perhaps
because I do not feel beautiful, I stare at it as if
it has a secret I need woven into its threads, as if I could buy it
and then be as happy as the model who is walking
through a sunlit field with a large bouquet of long-stemmed
dusky penstemon in her hand. She looks over her shoulder
as if there is someone or something there that delights her,
as surely everything does when she is wearing
her amethyst Ametist linen/modal dress with its “generous fit.”
Perhaps I would rather not remember that I must
be the one who is generous, I must be the one who
is “wonderfully forgiving.” Easier to imagine slipping into a dress
and letting the fabric do all the work. Harder to remember
that beauty is less about how we look and more about
the way we choose to see. Oh, to buy that dress
so that I might notice how little joy it really brings me.
Is this the way we meet the self? Through disappointment?
I decide to make my own catalog. Of my clothes.
I walk through the kitchen, modeling my yoga pants
and a fuzzy top pretending I am me
walking through the kitchen in my yoga pants and fuzzy top.
It’s not much of a stretch. I smile over my shoulder
at the tea pot, the dishes that need washing, a lunch box.
And why not smile? Perhaps there’s a secret I need
woven into something here—in the stack of mail,
in the charging cord, in the marker, the dish towel—
some chance for delight, something beautiful waiting
if only I choose to see the shimmer.