POSSIBILITIES—Transformation is exhilarating as we reinvent and transform, accepting our problems as challenges. Explain how you found being open to all possibilities helped you adapt and yield then move forward with potential change.
Crazy Woman canyon beckons us this sultry late-August afternoon with promises of cooler air held tight against her walls, nerve-soothing water tumbling down her creek, chokecherries ripened black on the bushes that line her road...This is my first summer picking and preserving wild berries. For years I've heard people talk about making chokecherry jelly and wine, but I've never learned how.
Most days, I hide inside my log house in Maggie Valley, hunched over my computer, listening to my characters tell me what to do...Even when I'm not alone, I often feel encapsulated in my own universe, where all the planets whiz by, circling around, all the stars and moon, all the heavenly bodies are separate from me as I whirl in my own solitude. But this day, I'm on my way to a two-day retreat in a secluded valley sanctuary fifty miles away.
"It's a lot like dying," Donald has begun telling our friends. "Except you get to see where all your stuff goes." He's referring to the state of our rapidly emptying home. Each week another room is decluttered, swept free of its past, its stories. I box up books, dishes, paintings, photos that house our history. Then, with a black marker in hand, I make my selections, dividing the goats from the lambs: Urgent. Goodwill. Garage Sale. Store. No Rush. Attic, keep dry. Breakable.
