Breaking through the numbness, awakening the heart

Thoughts in the wake of yet another disaster

Watching the disastrous floods in North Carolina this week, totally inundating Asheville and other towns that were built along rivers coming down from the mountains in that beautiful part of the world, I had a surreal sense of déjà vu.

As with the mass shootings in the US, there’s a sense of another day, another disaster, and in order to keep functioning one has to build up a certain numbness, a certain detachment.

Until the day it happens in your own back yard.

Let us acknowledge that the numbness we have had to develop as individuals is a big part of what maintains the system that is causing the disasters.

Last night, in the first of my Writing to Right the World classes, we talked about the value of strong emotions in producing writing that will break through the static, get people’s attention, and touch their hearts, the feeling place from which all work for transformative social change must come.

In writing my own memoir, I surfaced a moment of terrible grief and anger from my childhood, out of which came my first short story, written in pencil in a spiral-bound notebook, when I was about 8 years old.

You can read the memoir to find out what I was so upset about; what I want to emphasize here are two points:

1. The further I went along in my education and social conditioning, the more alienated from my emotions I became;

2. The more we are able to share deep, powerful emotions in our writing, the more compelling our writing—in any genre—will be.

My education, all the way through to earning a PhD in comparative literature, along with my social conditioning in the heart of capitalist empire, all but killed the gift for writing and storytelling that I came into this life with.

I got it back by dint of a lot of soul-searching and determination, through the process of purposefully writing my memoir—going back through my life story to understand, as the title indicates, “what I forgot…and why I remembered.”

You can read the memoir to find out what I forgot…what I want to underscore now is my sense that there are too many of us in my generation who are going through life in this kind of numbed-out state, because it’s necessary to keep functioning, and that’s what we’ve been well-trained to do.

We have been socialized to avert our eyes and keep moving, in the classic bystander scenario.

And it works, as long as the floods and fires are happening someplace else, to other people.

But as in the famous poem by Pastor Niemoller, who was a Nazi sympathizer until they came for him, if you ignore the plight of others and think you can go about your own life unscathed, it will eventually catch up with you.

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me.

We are standing on the brink of big change, friends. Those of us who are fortunate enough to be high and dry, safe and sound—we have a chance, and a responsibility, to not look away from the chaos happening in other places, the disasters engulfing other people.

We have an opportunity to rekindle our numbed emotional energy center, and live and act from that place—not going off like loose cannons, but channeling that strong emotional energy into envisioning and working for the kind of social transformation necessary to rapidly shift global human civilization into a new era.

I call this era the Gaiacene: the period when humans wake up to our individual and collective power to become the intelligent stewards of this intricate Being we are part of on Earth.

As I came to the end of writing my memoir, I received an image of Earth as a great Garden, along with the vision that human beings could reject the Judeo-Christian patriarchal myth of separation from the original Garden of this planet, and once again take our place in the animal kingdom as peaceful intelligent cultivators and regenerators of all life on Earth.

I do not give up on this vision.

To make it reality will require each one of us to begin to feel deeply again—to care—and to act from that strong caring emotion in ways that foster positive transformation—first in our own lives, then in our immediate spheres of influence.

The ripples will spread out further and further into the world, especially in this “hive mind” time when information travels the globe so quickly.

If you are a writer, write to right the world, sharing not only your grief at what is, but also your passion to create a better future, and your vision of how that could happen.

If you are a dancer, go dance and wake people up, One Billion Rising-style.

If you are a teacher, teach from your heart and think deeply about what skills, abilities and qualities today’s children will need to thrive in the 21^st century.

It matters not exactly what you do, only that you snap out of the trance that is marching us in lock-step over the cliff, and wake the people around you up too.

We can solve all the challenges that beset us. Where there is a will there is a way, and the heart is the seat of the human will. The head must listen to the heart, and then the hands will know what to do.

Don’t wait till the floods come for you. Start now, where you are, by simply allowing yourself to feel deeply, and listening to the internal promptings that come to you from your awakened heart.

And then take the next step of sharing what your heart tells you, what you are coming to know, so the wave of change can grow.

Margaret Meade was right: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed individuals can change the world. In fact, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

Now is our time. What are you waiting for?

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My 2025 International Writing Retreat Schedule

Because we can't stay glued to our desks all the time!

Come get away from your screen and give your creative spirit a much-needed boost with one of these upcoming trips!

Riding & Writing in the Azores

January 4 - 11, 2025

Click here or the photo above to find out all the details about this trip to the magnificent Patio Ecolodge on Faial Island, Portugal. Reserve your spot now!

Riding & Writing in Iceland!

June 2 - 8, 2025

Click here or the photo above, from my 2024 Riding & Writing retreat at Hestaland, Iceland, to find out all the details and how to reserve your spot on this awesome creative tonic of a trip!

The Art & Craft of Purposeful Memoir: Annual Tuscan Memoir Retreat

September 27 - October 4, 2025

Click here or the photo above (a detail from the floor of the Duomo in Siena) to find out all the details and how to reserve your spot at our dreamy private villa in Tuscany!

Writing workshops you can count on to stimulate your creative spirit!

In my writing workshops, whether in-person or online, you get the benefit of my decades of teaching lively small-group, discussion-based college literature and writing classes.

My classes are interactive and thought-provoking, cultivating writing that is intuitive, generative and organic—emerging from within rather than based on an artificial structure imposed from without.

In my writers’ circles, I create a warm, welcoming atmosphere and carefully structured opportunities for instructor and peer feedback that is non-evaluative but highly effective and productive. Sharing is encouraged but always optional, and confidentiality is a must.

My students are often surprised at how much they are able to produce in my workshops, and how deeply they are able to tap their own inner reservoirs of stories, images and metaphors. Try it and see for yourself!

Giving a workshop at Edith Wharton’s home, The Mount, on “Telling the Truth Through Fiction.” This workshop is available as a self-paced class at Birth Your Truest Story, here. Photo by B. Docktor.

Friends, it’s my pleasure and my passion to support you as we stretch towards living our lives creatively and to the fullest.

The motto of my author consulting business is “Writing to Right the World,” and the motto of my book publishing business, Green Fire Press, is “Books that Make the World Better.”

If these intentions resonate with you and you are working on a book, or have one in mind, don’t hesitate to get in touch!

Supporting creative people bring their work more strongly out into the world is one way I try to make the world better.