An Update of Sorts

Apologies for skipping a post last week. Along with actively preparing for (another- final?) moving experience this week, I received notification that my e-book (long in the making) was ready for publication. Wow! Then, I proceeded to get sick.  Of course. My limiting beliefs tried to stop me from leaping into the ravine of unknown possibilities. A bonafide anxiety response– brain assigned to keep me safe. All of this has been fast, furious, and hard to believe. Yet, we are lucky, and I am grateful.

I read somewhere that the recent full moon was the Listening Moon, which asks us to wait. Appropriate for my current mood. I have observed that there is waiting to be done in the liminal space of creation and publication. There is some hurrying, some leaping, and a lot of waiting in the terrifying silence before the leap. It sounds dramatic. However, that is how it feels when you have been working on a publication for several years, and then you get to the moment of publication, and everything screams to a halt; you are at the edge of the cliff, and the force of momentum has almost pushed you into the ravine—a ravine in which you cannot see to the bottom. Instead, fear causes you to pull yourself back from the ledge, and you wait. There is the silence and the terrifying beauty of the potential future. This scary moment reminds me of my favorite mentor poet, Rilke, who often put beauty and terror together in elegies, poems, and famous letters. For me and so many, he is an inspiration: an angel.

For beauty is nothing

but the beginning of terror, which we can still barely endure,

and while we stand in wonder it coolly disdains

to destroy us. Every Angel is terrifying.

~from "The First Elegy" (Duino Elegies) tr. Edward Snow

And so, comforted by his words, I allow myself to leap into the unknown and let the currents carry me toward the sunrise of the future.

The little book I created for educators will be out soon – marketing and more will be made as we slip this home for another. I hope you will join me here as I unveil it!