Take a deep breath and ponder.
Recently as I walked the Alamosa levee in sight of a long stretch of snowy Sangre de Cristo peaks––just north of where Mount Blanca towers over the southern part of our valley––a recent writing prompt came to mind: “What gives your life meaning?” For the past week I’ve been rolling this question over in my mind, each time finding something new to add to my mental list. On this morning, as with most, I started my walk with the mountains straight up in my view, and I prayed for our …
Finding tools to strengthen mental health and then practicing using them can contribute to a better life.
Shame is a heavy burden. Staying quiet and invisible adds to that weight. There have been too many times when I didn’t speak my truth, either for lack of courage, thinking my story wasn’t worth being told, or the fear of, “My God, what will people think of me?” Despite voicing my memories almost thirty years ago, come my book’s publication date of June 11, there my life will be: flapping around like laundry on a line in front of everyone’s eyes. Sexual abuse is ridiculously prevalent. With so many …
Walking in single digit temperatures by the Rio Grande River and later beside Blanca Vista Lake, I hear thumping, knocking, and the rumble of water beneath the ice. I become still and close my eyes, waiting and listening as the morning sun warms my back. Recently I was reminded of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s words, “The earth laughs in flowers.” I say the earth speaks in the groans of water coated in layers of ice. The winter chatter of the river and lake are as beautiful to me as …
Finding Ernest wasn’t likely, but it was worth spreading the word with every Navaho I encountered while visiting Chinle, Arizona and Canyon de Chelly. News travels at its own pace on the reservation, and I hoped someone would tell him I was looking for him. “Used to be a hiking guide down in the canyon. Played a flute.” Without a word the motel clerk shook his head, as did the server in the motel cafeteria and a motel cleaning woman. Two Navajos I saw hiking the next day squinted their …
Eight degrees in Alamosa is not that cold in the context of San Luis Valley winters. Our first winter here it got down to forty below, and our new Texas neighbors behind us noisily packed up and moved in the middle of that frosty night. But eight degrees in the wee morning hours felt plenty chilly as I stood in our backyard, clad in my robe and furry slippers, watching our newest adopted dog watch me. “C’mon, Ruffi. Do your business already.” Ruffino looked at me, then at the top …
Silence, I’ve read, is a good way to bump into yourself. This past week I headed back to the Lama Foundation, only this time it wasn’t for singing in circle with a group of gentle and inspiring women, but to visit the high hermitage there, built onto a mountainside where floor to ceiling windows frame New Mexico’s northern stretch of the Taos Gorge. In the past four decades, I’ve been a silent retreat junkie: 1980s at Laity Lodge’s Quiet House in the Texas hill country, a month …
Townsend Warbler (photo by John Rawinski) Last Friday I went birding with the experts, John Rawinski and others. John wrote a book on birding in the San Luis Valley that I will soon own. He recognizes every feathered creature in this area, and during the approximately seven hours we birded, eleven of us tallied around 90 species. (I maybe saw 70 of those, one being the Townsend Warbler above.) It was exhilarating, if you like birding, to be out on a pristine fall day, soft breezes on the edges of …
Blogging about sexual abuse is new for me and also a challenge. This post is a first. Since I have recently written a book about sexual abuse and survival, I’ve been encouraged to write about these topics in other forums. But it’s hard. It was difficult enough to get to the place to write my story, which involved arranging considerable support to create stable ground from which to work. Then I’ve had to read and reread my story multiple times in the writing, editing, and proofing process, continuing to experience …
June 2017 with sister Amber (photo by Connie Odé) Gavroche Napolean Eagle was a mighty man and the most challenging dog I’ve ever had. He bit more people at Denver’s Max Fund dog shelter than any dog they had ever had at that point, and he bit me five out of the eight times I’ve been bitten by a dog. Max Fund tried to catch this fifteen-pound street critter …
