confession Tuesday

Every night after dinner we'd gather our lunch and whatever food we'd like for breakfast and carry it back to our cottage in a basket. This was my adopted basket for the week.

Me in my cottage. I look kind of sad (or maybe that's my thoughtful look). I'm not sad though, just finking about fings, as my daughter used to say.

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Dear Reader, I am back from my week in the forest. It was an incredible time at Hedgebrook, a writing retreat created from women on Whidbey Island. If you have not applied to go there (and you're a woman!) you should. I wrote more there in 7 days than I did all this fall.

There is a lot to share and I'm not even sure where to begin!

I guess we'll just go to the confessional and see what comes out...


I confess it's so much easier for me to write when there is solitude, the energy of other writers (even if not in my cottage), and time. That might seem obvious, but I think I forgot how much you can get done where there's nothing else to get done.

I confess I am trying to recreate the Hedgebrook experience at home by staying off the internet, email, and trying to follow the schedule I created there, which was write first.

I confess it's harder to do this in the real world, but I am trying. I have been on Facebook to post photos, but I have not read or watched any news and only very briefly did I look at others status posts.

I confess that I felt a little overwhelmed when I saw all the status posts. I have been with 6 other women for one week. They were the only ones around me with the exception of the chef and gardener. I had downsized my social circle and seeing it expanded so much seemed a little weird.

I confess I wrote a ton. I had an incredible time and the memories, beauty, spirit of the place will never leave me.

I confess I had a hard time entering back in to "real life." I confess I cried the whole way home on the ferry and was told I was "emotionally raw," and "perhaps, vulnerable" (which I thought would make a great title for a poem or book of poems). My husband also told me he had never heard me so emotional before. And I would agree with that. There is a long story about the tears and fears, but I was surprised at how I ended up pretty much losing the whole first part of the ride home.

A friend said going away in the woods for a week was probably a bit of a spiritual journey. And it was.

I'll write more about and post more photos if you like.

I confess the real world is much more messy than the Hedgebrook world. Much more!

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