We are the white blood cells...
We must tend to ourselves so we are strong enough to embrace our role as part of the immune system of humanity.
As all hell breaks loose in the real world, I find I need to put myself to bed with something absorbing and very far from our current reality.
I can’t even tolerate those ever-popular fantasy novels that spin out wild tales of fighters mounted on Dragons engaged in epic battles between Good and Evil.
What I want are simple, sweet, reassuring tales, in which evil is measured out in teaspoons, and the protagonists always go laughing away into the sunset.
I’m finding just this cup of tea in the young adult novels of Joan Aiken. I read her most famous YA novel, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, over and over when I was about 11 or 12 years old. But I didn’t realize that it was the first of a whole series, with 11 more novels to come! What a bonanza to discover the series now, just when I need them most.
The daughter of the poet Conrad Aiken, Joan Aiken never achieved his level of fame, but she was a prolific writer with nearly 100 novels to her name—adult novels, YA and children’s books alike.
The Wolves series takes place in a 19th century landscape peopled with criminals and thieves, as well as kind aristocrats and humorous, hardworking peasants, sprinkled with Dickensian scenes of lavish wealth, urban poverty and child abuse in orphanages.
The novels’ young heroes and heroines adventure from the snowy, wolf-infested moors of northern England to homespun Nantucket to equatorial fantasy realms bearing some resemblance to South America, traveling aboard schooners run by crusty but kind captains.
There are always mysteries to be solved and animals to befriend, and the plots run along quickly, not getting mired down in too much detail or psychology.
It’s just what I need now, in a soul-crushing time when the details of real life and the anguished attempts to understand WHY America has fallen into the hands of criminals make waking into each day a passage from dream to nightmare.
I was heartened to listen to a conversation convened by Sherri Mitchell titled “The Story Goes On,” in which five indigenous wisdom keepers and Tim DeChristopher talked about how to view the time of violent change we are in now, and how to navigate the turbulence. You can watch the recording here.
I need to listen to it again, but one thing I did pick up strongly in a first listen is the importance of vision.
As much as anything else, we are in a battle of competing visions now, and at the moment, the dark vision of America is ascendant, propelled by the virality of the apocalyptic media and social media mindscape.
We who hold a different vision of a kind, compassionate, harmonious web of relationships, among humans and between humans and the rest of Gaia, must understand our role as white blood cells, strengthening the immune system of humanity in the face of this viral assault of mayhem and disruption.
Whatever you have to do to strengthen your own personal physical and psychological immune system, do it now!
I am putting myself to bed with children’s stories because I need that gentle dose of escapism to send me off into a refreshing sleep.
I try to get out for a daily walk in nature, no matter how cold or snowy it is, because I need that fresh air and the steady bilateral movement of my body to restabilize my jangled nervous system.
I am reaching out to all of you more frequently, because we have to draw together now, in community, and remember we are not alone.
I am grateful to other writers who are doing what’s needed to document the daily outrages and assaults going on in the real world: for example, Heather Cox Richardson, Joyce Vance, Robert Reich, Robert B. Hubbell, Steve Schmidt, Paul Krugman, Rebecca Solnit, and many reporters and writers at larger publications as well.
My beat is the intimate territory that connects my heart to the larger pulse of the physical and psychic landscape of this time and place.
I write to you now in a quiet house with a purring cat ensconced on my lap.
I don’t know what today will bring.
I do know that I will keep tending the fires of my heartfelt prayer that this chaotic descent we are living through, which may be the long-predicted “collapse” of our present civilization, opens up possibilities of creating something better.
In one of my memoir classes, we are writing and thinking about the element of Fire this week.
Fire destroys, but fire can also heal.
Fire can create space for new growth.
If we embrace the magical ability of humans to imagine, to envision and to communicate what we see with our inner eye…we can imagine ourselves like seeds full of potential, being released in the fiery inferno we’re living through now, ready to sprout and provide nourishment to future beings.
Joan Aiken has done that for me.
I want to pay her gift forward.
Yours in the crucible,
Jennifer
Starting this month!
Come write and speak your truth with me in this powerful four-session Bioneers Learning online class!
In this hands-on class hosted by Bioneers Learning, we’ll look deeply at some of the major social and environmental issues of our time and consider how outstanding leaders have used creative expression to make a difference.
Inspired by these models, you’ll work on expressing your own ideas with confidence, clarity, and eloquence, in both writing and public speaking, coming away with a portfolio of writing, a recorded talk, and a circle of kindred spirits cheering you on.
Four Fridays, Feb. 28 - March 21, 2025, live online from 12 - 1:30 pm with recordings available.
To write and speak our truths, we have to recharge our creative fuel cells, right?
I’m leading three in-person retreats this spring, designed to help you ground, center and reconnect to your own creative spirit.
Read on for details, and come join me!
Meet me in Petaluma, California on March 30 for a daylong writing retreat!
Come on retreat with me and Birth Your Truest Story co-host Audrey Kalman along the Petaluma River in northern California. We'll write, share, grab lunch at a neighborhood cafe, and amble to the river for inspiration. Join us to:
Trace your inspiration back to its source
Follow the twists and turns of your creative flow state
Learn to ride the rapids of your creative life and float gently through the quiet stretches
Write together and share your work
Savor the group energy of our Birth Your Truest Story creative community
March 30, 2025. Early registration ($139) runs through February 28.
Meet me in Rowe, Massachusetts for a weekend retreat in the beautiful month of May!
Come on retreat with me in the budding springtime setting of Rowe, Massachusetts, where we’ll write to explore our deep connections with our Mother Earth, Gaia, as well as how the potent theme of mothering and nurturing has shown up in our lives.
Rowe is a magical retreat center nestled in the northern Berkshire mountains, with trails through mature forests bordering a tranquil lake. It’s rustic in a way that encourages communion with the land and camaraderie with the kindred spirits in our circle.
May 9 - 11, 2025. Sliding scale tuition and a variety of accommodations on site. I can’t wait to share this special experience with you!
Come Riding & Writing in Iceland with me in June!
Riding & Writing in Iceland!
June 2 - 8, 2025
The creative tonic of Iceland has to be experienced to be understood.
Come experience the body, mind and spirit glow that comes from Riding & Writing in good company in a beautiful place, warmly hosted by our friends Gudmar and Christina at Hestaland.
Click here to find out more and see beautiful photos from my past Riding & Writing trips to Iceland.
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.
