Co-Creating at the Coast

This is an excerpt from the weekly News-Loveletter. If you would like it sent to your inbox directly (with all the other juicy bits, including a mini joy practice), you can add yourself to my mailing list here.

Seda and I went to Newport, Oregon, last weekend to celebrate our October birthdays. We packed up fast after a full week of work and peeled out of town just in time to catch the sunset on the beach with Leo.

It’s a Renaissance, really. Seda and I met in the Bearlodge Writers group in Sundance, Wyoming, over 30 years ago, and this weekend we came full circle to retreat and write together again. We are both stepping towards writing full time (mine will be a split of teaching and writing), and we are both ecstatic about the lifestyle it allows.

You can see we’re pretty happy eating our simple breakfast after an early walk on the beach. It was so much fun to stroll and dine together before Seda departed for a neighborhood coffeeshop. She enjoyed working on her fantasy novel there while I pulled together the contents of a free workshop I’m excited to deliver next Saturday. (See below in the notes about what’s going on at Collier Connections for details on the workshop, Heal Yourself and Your Relationships NOW, and registration link. It’s hot, I’m tellin’ ya. :)

Seda wandered happily back every afternoon. One day we went to Nana’s Irish Pub for lunch (and we met another Seda there, about 10 years old!!). The next, we cooked up salmon with roasted eggplant and peppers and tossed an arugula salad from the garden. Our getaway was sheer bliss, including the time that I lovingly prepared what I intend to be a pivotal workshop for you and your friends.

So many good feels … joyful intimacy with Seda, play on the beach, eating simple and special, preparing the workshop, reading Sasha taqwšablu LaPointe’s memoir Red Paint while soaking for hours in the tub, and walking the beach in a mist that drenched. Just. Plain. Yummy.

I thank you all for hearing my celebration, because being able to share it this way amplifies my experience, reminds me of how amazing my life is, and helps me attune to the best of myself in this moment. This is one of the practices of the Core Alignment with Joy Series — The Satisfaction of Closure.

When have you taken a break for a minute, an hour, a day, or a weekend and made the very best of it? In reflecting now, are you appreciating the nourishment this recollection brings?