Tomorrow the world turns over: our shortening days stop in their tracks, and the light begins lengthening those days for months to come. Even the dreaded month of February, out there on the near horizon, will be far brighter light-wise as our long nights tuck into themselves.
At the same time, this is a year I’ve been lightening up, not so much weight-wise (although certainly warranted by all those height-weight charts). I’ve taken a year-long unpaid leave from Goddard College, a place I love immensely but after 64 consecutive semesters of teaching there or elsewhere, I was ready for a break. I’ve just completed over 25 gigs — readings, talks, and workshops
— to promote Miriam’s Well, my new-ish novel in many states (KS, MO, OK, WI, VT, NE, MN) and states of being. In further evaluating the many ways I make a living — “What do you do, Caryn?” “Do you have an hour?” — I’ve edited out work that’s too weighty in proportion to how it fits my callings, health, sanity, and need to make some moolah. Although our family is still grieving and will be for some time, the death of my beloved mother-in-law also brings a little more mercy and light. And through two years of healing (still in progress) with my integrative physician, Dr. Neela Sandal, puzzling through anxiety issues with a great therapist, and guidance from other supportive humans and forces of nature, I’ve leapt into considerably better health which, as we
So I have a lot of reason and reality to sense so much more light, both that bright blur, like right now in the sky emerging, and the easier to lift and carry kind of lightness. The sky we live in and the sky that lives in us will keep bringing us many manner of weather, change, surprise, and mystery, and of course, there is great beauty and discovery for us to traverse in the rich darkness and weightiness of life too. But for now, as the darkness and heaviness lifts some, I’m swimming in gratitude which itself is another kind of lightness.
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