Change Your Story … Change Your Life
Dear Friends,
I love you and am happy about so many things, but I just can’t write a simple cheery note about what’s coming up without acknowledging what a hard summer it has been. I watch myself and listen to myself, as if at some distance, doing the next things in front of me, speaking about intermittent overwhelm and exhaustion, both of which are true, but beneath those truths lies something deeper, and that something is grief. Profound grief from too much violence, too many lives lost—and senselessly so in this gun-soaked country—children’s faces looking up, holding wonder like a cup. Grief from war, heatwaves, fires, floods, and drought, a Supreme Court gone rogue, democracy on the brink of collapse. Endemic Covid asserting itself as a brutal force. A cloud of confusion and disbelief that’s hard to shake off.
So please know that if you are suffering, you are not alone. If you are struggling to find equanimity, let alone joy, you are not alone. If you are grieving … you are not alone. I don’t have answers other than to keep fighting when you can, and resting when you can. As for creating, carve out little spaces. I am a fan of the pomodoro method, where you set a timer and write for 20 minutes. To use the method for real, you do that four times in a row or something. But the way I use it, once is enough if that’s all I can manage that day for my writing. Even with pomodoro, I don’t manage to sustain my creative practice daily, but I do sustain it regularly enough to keep my writing life from dying on the vine, and my novel, big mess that it is, continues to grow an inch at a time.
Meanwhile, teaching also sustains me. Something about the energy exchange, the inspiration, the deep human connection, the feeling of having known one another forever. The circle of truth, poetry, and love that arises. We had an incredible Visceral Self workshop in June—truly rejuvenating. And last week I taught a 90-minute workshop on literary constraints that also boosted my spirits and imaginative energy. And our first-ever in-person manuscript revision intensive (in Troncones, Mexico!) has only one space left and wow would I love to have you join us for that paradisiacal experience. This is your time to polish a piece of work to the highest shine possible, in the most nurturing, inspiring, gorgeous surroundings imaginable.
Last but never least, brand new on my agenda is something big and beautiful—a real immersion in the power of narrative to literally transform the way we think and live: change your story, change your life. This four-day retreat is for writing, of course! We’ll be doing that nonstop. But it’s also for transforming. It’s called Thriving Along Disturbed Edges: Explore the Path of Past, Present & Future to Plot Your Next Best Chapter, and it will take place September 8-11 at Hackmatack Retreat Center with the wonderful Tyler Lewke & Grant Goehler guiding meditations (these rockstars co-led Re-Emergence with me last year at Hackmatack!), and Billie Oh guiding yoga (Billie & I just co-led the Visceral Self Memoir Intensive in June).
The premise of the retreat is simple: How you arrange the plot points of your life into a narrative can shape who you are … and who you will become. Narrative is fundamental to being human. We understand ourselves and others through the lens of story, and we achieve agency in our lives by creating coherent, empowering narratives from what can otherwise seem like disparate, random experiences. Through narrative, we may find redemption even in times of deepest suffering. We may find compassion, empathy, and softness even in times of greatest achievement. And we may find crystalline clarity even when the future has never felt less certain. At this extraordinary intensive, we will tune into the past, present, and future through the music of language to consciously unearth our narrative selves. We will become whole-hearted creators with new, deeper ways of seeing and sensing the world and manifesting ourselves as intentional architects of our next chapters. We will support this life story work with deep immersion in nature, guided meditations and breath work, yoga, and other structured exercises designed to reveal coherence during this life-altering journey.
Participants will leave this retreat with exciting new insight into their old stories and a dramatically expanded and clarified vision of the chapters not yet written. We are all narrative beings. For writers, this retreat will provide you with plenty of new material, sharper insights into any current works in progress, and powerful new tools to bring to the page for unearthing and illuminating your best work long after the retreat is over. This retreat will harness words as one of our most powerful tools, but you need no formal writing experience—only an open mind and heart, a willingness to play with language, a deep curiosity about your place in the world, and a desire to step into your next chapter with the truest, most powerful life story guiding you.
Space is limited, and the retreat is half full as of now. I am very happy to answer questions to help you decide if this is the right retreat at the right time for you. Just send an email to elephantrockretreats@gmail.com.
With love and gratitude,
Jeannine
