I have a card with the saying No Makes Way for Yes on my noticeboard in the hope it will enchant me to say no more often. It’s been there so long it’s yellowing around the edges. In 2019 I wrote a blog with the same title – No Makes Way for Yes. It talks all about the pressures of running a non-profit agency and how hard it is to say no all the important issues. At the end of 2021, I solved this dilemma by quitting said job, and hitting the open road on 1 April 2022, almost exactly three years ago.
And yet, since then, my diary has slowly but steadily filled up. I’ve returned to work a day a week and sprinkled my diary with commitments and projects. The yellowing sign tells me what I know already – that I need to say no more often.
I reflected ruefully as I skid towards the end of March that awareness is the first step. But too often for me, it’s the only step for weeks, months, years at a time. This month I had the fullest calendar since 2022. Echoes of the old days stole over me as I stood for hour after hour at the computer, working on project deadlines. Like a labyrinth walk (of which I’m so fond), I’m treading yet again the old, old path of over-commitment. Only this time, I’m a rung or two out from the centre.
Because now, since both my parents have died at very grand old ages, I’m spurred on by the renewed appreciation of my own mortality. That I only have so long to get shit done, to taste all the experiences I want while still earth-side. Somehow I have to reconcile this paradox — that life is short and I need to do less.
I recently realised that I haven’t ever really blogged about the volunteer work I do in my neighbourhood. I’ve been living here for twenty-three years, and for at least fifteen off those years, I’ve moved in and out of the dance of volunteering.
There’s something vulnerable about giving up this time. Most efforts are met with social media comments along the lines of “that’s lame”, or “why don’t you do ____?” Insert very time-consuming and difficult, thankless task.
But the thrill of being part of our neighbourhood once a year Cooby Fest is intoxicating. The challenge of working with local government to try and influence a more community-driven approach to how we manage our parks, footpaths and public buildings is bracing. The green shoots of hope, such as our small, annual budget for placemaking (which a fancy term for connecting and beautifying our suburbs, organising local events, planting trees, putting in seats for people to linger, getting murals on walls etc.) keeps me going.
Another motivation is the program I recently joined to mentor people like myself who want to be place makers. The Navy Seals saying “slow is smooth, and smooth is fast” was mentioned on one of the group calls. As someone who is always in a hurry, often impatient, unable to rest when I see an undone task, relentlessly driving forward until I collapse in a heap of burnout, this saying is now stuck in my brain. What would it be like if I slowed down more, wasn’t in such a dreadful rush to get things done? It’s not like my suburb is going anywhere.
One month ago, I took my head out of the sand and began re-engaging with world events. I keep repeating the Chinese curse “may you live in interesting times” as I scroll through the news. The urge to re-cover my head is overwhelming.
But in a world where the bullies in charge need us to be frightened, polarised and fighting with each other, is neighbourhood placemaking one of the important solutions? People of all political persuasions, races and faiths live in my neighbourhood. Are low-key, organic gatherings of people one of our best protections to weather this clusterfuckery? I think yes, so will carry on with my thankless tasks in my neighbourhood, and look out for the golden moments of connection.
This month I’m participating in the March Micro Marathon with Smokelong Quarterly, producing a piece of flash fiction and non-fiction each day. Simplistically put, flash is a piece of less than 1000 words. Like throwing pots, one after the other off the potter’s wheel. After this month is over, I’ll have a range of misshapen pots to re-work, with the feedback I’ve received. And then it will be time to remember that yet again, writing is re-writing.
But I thought I’d share one of the thrown pots today.
The prompt was to re-write an conversation you overheard from the perspective of the one of the people in the conversation. This was a something I heard through the curtain in a hospital ward.
Through the curtain
The young doctor shouts against my deafness, looks at her checklist and asks, do I want to resuscitate my wife? And I can only think, once I work out what she’s on about is, what kind of a question is that? She looks back at her clipboard and I figure that at the end of this conversation, she needs to have a goals of care plan for my Betty, but right now Betty’s asleep with a body full of tranquillisers and an egg on her head. Sixteen times she’s fallen since she was admitted to hospital a couple of weeks ago. Can it only be that recently? Up until then I swear she was just who she always was. My wife. My Betty. But in the madness and confusion of hospital, she doesn’t know who I am, who our son is. Where do we want to live? The doctor bellows. I want to live with Betty, but Betty can’t go home. The doctor’s very clear about that. My son has to go back home to Queensland. He’s very clear about that too. I want to be with Betty so there’s nothing else for it. I’ll have to follow her into an aged care prison, I tell the doctor. I’m not so clear about that, but what else is there to do? She makes another check on her list, wraps it up and moves on to the next bed.
The nun with the small beard at University chides me for my bitterness at the Catholic childhood, the litany of endless sexual shaming, the nonsense tales of hellfire, the damnation and control. While at home the hellfire was more muted, but it still lapped at our feet, especially when puberty and normal sexuality emerged. Then it was essential to strangle this precious new side to ourselves.
The nun and I are supposed to be discussing literature, but now I’m seven years lapsed, it’s too tempting to challenge someone who’s right there and straddles the worlds of organised religion and academia.
“At least it gave you a system of beliefs to reject,” she said.
This phrase stays with me through the next decades, speaks to the nub of memory from age ten when I was washed through with the mystery of Easter that even the church couldn’t fully conceal. A never forgotten moment in a church that has since been demolished, when I was old enough to immerse in the gruelling story of the scourging, crown of thorns and crucifixion and young enough to to understand it whole. To this day I recall the precious washed clean feeling on Easter Sunday, awakening to resurrection after three dark days.
By my teens my belonging to this rigid religious world was being demolished, brick by brick just as the church was.
But this rejected system of beliefs pushed me out into the world to immerse myself into New Age anything – yoga, meditation, energy medicine. Today I find this light, this washed clean feeling in downward dog, again and again, and I’m free to be all the juiciness that I am.
It’s one of my favourite childhood photos, ever. And there are a lot of photos. I mean, a lot. I think it’s my broad smile. I wasn’t always a smily child, in fact I was something of a brooding scowler.
I’m sure I recall that perfect Perth Spring morning, when the sun shone, but wasn’t fierce. The wind was only slight, not the roaring gale of a Scarborough sea breeze that came in every afternoon.
Mum has us the six of us children posed on the five steps leading from our front door to the terraced lawn. We had to find a spot to perch for the image. As a four-year-old I took up the least space, and yet I’m leaning back, my blond bob skimming my shoulders. I got the centre focus of this shot at least, my eldest sister, the birthday girl is half in sun, half in shade, beloved cat in arms. Ages 12, 10, 9, 8, 6, 4. All the gang like a countdown.
With my favourite purple dress on, a lace trim and an embroidered animal on it, as cute as everyone said I was. I remember how light I felt that day, alive, at home in my body and family. That moment of connection, belonging and joy was captured forever by mum’s click on the camera. My memory may be true or false of how supremely happy I was in that moment. But that spark of the woman I would grow up to be was already there.
We relaxed from the shot. Who knows when the bickering started? Probably within moments.
When darling husband mentioned the UK Prime Minister’s name this week and I didn’t know who he was talking about, I thought perhaps I’d taken my news and current affairs sabbatical too far.
With the same tentative gesture of venturing into the shed, pulling a box from its long-held position on the shelf to see how many cockroaches are underneath it, I ventured in briefly.
But even a toe dip into current affairs requires significant amounts of yoga, breathing and lying in the dark on the shakti mat with an eye bag firmly weighting my scorched eyeballs afterwards. And yet, we mustn’t look away.
So the only comfort I can find is the perspective of history. That we have been through upheavals and entire nation wrong-headedness before.
So there was nothing for it but to return to my usual night-time listening of Tara Brach. Her reminder via Thich Nhat Hanh to keep our lights burning, never let the world dim our lights was important for me.
Where ever you are in your immersion into world affairs from full-body to a tiny toe-dip like me, here’s to your light blazing.
It was the sixth occasion I’d flicked on the windscreen wipers instead of the indicator while driving my daughter to Perth airport. She and I had a short window of overlap time between me returning from San Francisco and her heading to Sydney so I leapt at the chance to take her to the airport. Mother-daughter time on the run. It fascinated me that this was my body’s residue from my first experience of driving on the wrong right side of the road.
On the whole I would declare my overseas driving efforts a modest success. 9/10 would do again. See me at the top left image posing next to the rental car, and the sign I lugged with me all the way from Australia (plus a lump of blu-tack to stick it to the dashboard.) It was my visual reminder to drive on the right, remember that left hand turns are the most dangerous, and also a starred message of encouragement, “You’ve got this!”
Once safely in San Francisco with the car returned to its rental home, it was time for me to face up to my post-retreat self-guided retreat goal. To review the whole newly combined memoir and novella manuscript forged from the magic caldron of the Carmel Retreat.
The plan was to remove the worst continuity errors and make a list of areas of development that will take time and thinking. I’m not one of those who can work on a plane, so I was determined to get through the lot before heading home. I kept a list of the scenes from the messy middle through to the end (jigsaw piece images) and was very bloody happy to tick them all off before the last night was through.
Motivation was maintained by the ongoing accountability group (see middle left and bottom left) headed by Linda Sivertsen. (That’s her and me on the bottom left, one of the last pics before I left magic Carmel). The San Francisco skyline from my remote and self-contained airBnB (top right) was enticing and eventually I cracked and went to Fisherman’s Wharf on day two for some good old fashioned touristing. I returned to the centre one more time on my last full day to sit in a trendy cafe and work alongside all the other San Franciscans before treating myself to a labyrinth walk (Scott Street Labyrinth, bottom right). 10/10 would visit San Francisco again but would stay right in the centre. Where I stayed was 45 minutes to walk to the nearest bus stop with a very long bus ride to the nearest train. (Well I actually got all the way to the bus stop but by the time I’d worked out which side of the street to wait on, the bus had sailed past and I ordered an Uber). The location was perfect for someone with a mountain of editing, in short.
One last very special feature of my post-retreat retreat was joining my favourite online yoga teacher, Jackie Casal Mahrou for a live online class. I tune in to her pre-recorded yoga classes almost every day. Have done for about a decade. I really, really wanted to attend a yoga retreat with her in 2020, but, well, Covid put an end to that. Jackie was even better live, and invited me to stay at the end of the class for a quick chat. Such a special moment!
On the long flight home, I watched a gazillion movies and felt very bloody virtuous.
Now, to re-enter Perth and my life here. Wait for the other travel gremlins to work their way out. While I think I’ve re-adjusted rather well, darling husband’s knuckles were white as he clutched the dashboard when I drove him to the local beach this morning. That’s new. We dived under the beautiful water and I emerged, yet again incredibly grateful for where I live. Holidays are awesome, returning home is heaven.
“Hands up if you rang your family to tell them you had no business coming to this writing retreat.”
This question was posed to us on Tuesday, the morning of the first full day of the very last Carmel Writing Retreat run by Linda Sivertsen that I have travelled so far to attend.
It wasn’t enough for me to put up one hand. I had to put up both. Well, in truth, I didn’t ring any family members. But I wanted to. It was the wrong time of day for one, and in the end, I decided I just needed to ride the waves of unpleasant feelings. I told myself that I could just gruel it out until Friday.
I turned up to the Tuesday session the next morning with my reading ready to go, convinced of its mediocre horror. When I was preparing it in my room, I was facing away from the window. I needed to focus as, for the very first time, I stitched together one scene from the novella I’ve toiled over for around eight years with one chapter from my revised memoir. As soon as this delicate piece of patchwork was done, I looked out of the window and saw an enormous rainbow. Surely a good sign?
Linda explained that was a very normal reaction that retreat goers had. She let me read out first and a miracle unfolded. Blending the two books together actually bloody worked.
And just like that, I went from gruelling to walking on air. And I stayed that way for the rest of the retreat. Always aiming to be present and enjoy, and not hold on too tight when the time came for goodbye. Heck, I even got into a couple of labyrinth walks. Plus, I drove myself to and from Carmel to San Francisco and arrived in one piece.
It has come to my attention that the Chinese New Year 2025 kicked off 29th January-and it’s the Year of the Wood Snake. I am a Wood Snake, indeed a woman entering her third act of her life this year.
There’s going to be some shedding.
Here’s me pictured next to a 2025 Wood Snake sign in Singapore airport on Friday 31st January. There are a few things missing from this picture.
The furrowed brow when I realised my eSim wasn’t happy when just about to board my flight from Perth to Singapore. My absolute must-have lifeline to drive from the San Francisco airport to my hotel in Los Gatos.
The gog-wozzled look on my face when I realised I’d messed up the very detailed, explicit instructions from the Singapore transit hotel. Don’t go through passport control. Which would have been fine if I hadn’t checked in my cabin-bag sized suitcase. Why did I do that? Why? I had so much time up my sleeve at Perth airport but I made the impulsive choice so I didn’t have to lug it around at Perth airport. Doh. I had to clear immigration to get my bag, so that was the end of that booking.
The sag of resignation when I did my usual “throw money at it” response to it being 8pm and I was tired and in need of a bed. It’s just that, with it being Chinese New Year and all, it was a lot of money. I bloody well enjoyed that bath, though, in that giant, expensive room.
The slapped forehead when I realised that I’d meant to book a night’s stay in Los Gatos to meet with a friend, just an hour from San Francisco. But I’d accidentally booked in a totally different place, which was a two hours’ drive. So much for an easy breezy dinner catch-up.
The pensive hand on chin as I sat up in my giant, expensive Singapore hotel room, freshly bathed and re-energised, and booked a San Francisco hotel room so I could get a full night’s sleep after my 15 hour flight before attempting, for the very first time in my life, to drive on the right-hand side of the road.
Still pensive, I bought a new e-Sim.
Before boarding my flight to Singapore in Perth, I was feeling very complacent, a regular seasoned traveller. But journeys are always rich with teachings/ ego deaths.
I’m happy to say that after waking up very refreshed in my San Francisco hotel, I safely managed the two-hour drive to my writing retreat in Carmel. Even though when I got into the rental car, the concrete bunker parking area was an internet dead spot. And I couldn’t get the damned Apple Play to work. (Top tip-always bring a phone charger lead. If pairing fails, plugging in will always work).
And so to shedding skin. I’m here at the wonderful, magical, dream come true Carmel Writing Retreat with Linda Sivertsen to keep honing the revision of my 2014 memoir. By now the revision is so fundamental, it’s a bit like saying I’m swapping eggs, butter, flour and sugar for a fully baked cake.
And so I’ve done it. Shed the page on my website that links people to the 2014 version of my memoir. Making way for the growth in my writing skills over the last decade, and the new iteration of the memoir that’s still in progress.
And just in case you were wondering, it is still Sunday here in America, and that’s why it’s coming to you on Monday, if you’re in Perth. So there.
For most of this week I’ve snuck off into a log cabin to work on edits of my memoir, prior to flying out to Carmel-by-the-Sea next week for a writing retreat. I wanted to take a better draft of the memoir there to work on. A retreat before my retreat if you will. You may recall that I am now using the journal gifted to me 44 years ago for my 16th birthday for my day-to-day journalling. (You can read about it here in the Permission to be Cringeworthy blog. Lol.)
There are just a few entries from the past in this red journal with a golden sun, but mostly, it’s blank pages. When I do find an entry from the past, I end up writing to my young self, filling in the gaps, connecting the threads of myself across the decades.
And this, I’ve discovered in this week of editing, is what’s important to me. Once I thought I would write to effect social change. But really, what I want to do is connect. Me with myself. My reader to themselves. Us to each other.
It’s Australia Day today, and this is a day for disconnection, especially on the socials. For our First Nations people, this is the date when colonisation began in the east and eventually spread across the nation. #NotADateToCelebrate. Even our mainstream media notes that some people spend Australia Day attending reflection events, and that’s what I did. It wasn’t a protest, nor was it a celebration. It was a time for sharing culture, for truth telling, for showing up to hear just a fraction of what stolen generation survivors have experienced. To imagine, just for a moment, what it would be like to have your own child taken from you.
Perhaps it’s a phase, but I’ve currently lost my taste for protest, for activism. I find myself unwilling to engage in any kind of debate that makes me right and you wrong. That leads to disconnection.
So in that field, beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing, beyond social media and its economic model to engender and encourage arguments between us, I’ll meet you there.
