A Week Away

I am in heaven. For the past six days I have been on a writing retreat. I have done nothing but write and walk on the beach. Yes, a freezing cold but beautiful beach. A friend loaned me her home so I could hunker down and write like crazy for eight days.

Years ago I read the diaries of poet, May Sarton-- a woman who cherished solitude--her best known book is called, "Journey of a Solitude"about her writing life on the coast of Maine. Reading her books in my twenties made me feel sane.  I had not yet found recovery, I didn't know about the Myers-Briggs Inventory, most of the time I was trying to have a life but fighting my own nature the whole time, and yeah alcohol and an eating disorder didn't help. :) May Sarton wasn't an easy woman but I "got" her and I thought she was lucky to have made a writing life.

I didn't understand then that she had, in fact, "made" that life by making very hard choices and by making a lot of people unhappy, and by suffering through the unhappiness of those who loved her. But there were some friends who really "got" her.

In one of the books she tells the story of a good friend who calls May to say she'd like to come visit on May's birthday. May reluctantly agrees--she'll be returning home from a reading that day --but this is a very good friend so she says, "yes, you can come."

Well, on that day, May's birthday, she comes home to find that the friend has been there and filled the house with flowers and delicious food and has left a note saying, "my birthday gift to you is this day with no company. Spend it alone with beauty and your self."

I remember thinking, "that is friendship". And that is appreciation of solitude.

This week has been precious solitude. I find at times like this that so much that I fuss about on a daily basis just falls away. I barely bathe, wear the same clothes, eat minimally and cherish my books and the beach. I am at home with myself in someone else's home.

This too is recovery. I am recovering my self.

Beach Surrender

We went to the beach this weekend. I go alone in the morning to pray, writing the names of each person on the edge of the shore and watching to see the water come up and take the prayer away.

This weekend I wrote the names of all of our family members his and mine, spouses and kids, siblings also. I wrote his name and my name and I wrote my workplace too. I live in the gap between wanting to make a complete surrender, making that surrender for an instant or a moment and then, seeing, even as I walk aback to my car fear returns and my wish to control something or someone is already back in my head.

Surrender is such an imperfect process but I do think it is a process. I really do wonder about people who say they have done it and it’s done. Do they really never worry again? Worry means I still think I can affect an outcome. Curiosity might be the antithesis of worry. Being able after surrender, to wonder: “I wonder how God is going to play this one out?”

These are the things I surrender and later worry: His health, our relationship, his family, having time together, my health, money, my job, my stepdaughter, my granddaughter, his sons, my ex-husband, his ex-wife.

Maybe this worry of mine too is something I need to surrender.

Over and over I surrender and return to these things.

The ocean’s rhythm is familiar; in and out, in and out, washing, soothing, wearing me down.

Beach Vacation

I leave tomorrow for a week of vacation. Two city days for museums and food and then four beach days for ocean goddess time and reading, beach walking and especially beach prayer.

Since early recovery I have taken all of my biggest surrenders at the beach. When I sit on the beach and talk to God and look at the ocean I am very clear that there is something bigger than me. I also do a prayer ritual at the shore. I take a stick or a piece of shell and just above the tide line I write the names of all those that I need to turn over to God. When the ocean moves and tide rises those names and my intentions are taken to sea, dissolved in salt water and taken from me.

As a mermaid at heart, this works for me.