Two more writing exercises during my time at Esalen Institute

Photo - sunset at Esalen Institute, Big Sur, September, 2017.

In day three of the workshop, we were asked to write about:

What is sacred?

I spent three years in a boarding school and every Sunday during that time we went to church. The principal would come and inspect us in the main hall before our leaving on the school buses for the Presbyterian City Church. Shoes polished, check - hat, gloves, pantyhose...if there were scuffs on our shoes or a run in the pantyhose, we were promptly ordered to return to our rooms and rectify the misdemeanor. 

I found solace in the church, a place where I could just sit and be and feel at home. Our bony teenage butts on those hard, wooden pews - sitting obediently among the student brethren and other church goers, idly playing with the ribbon that marked a page in the Bible, or flipping through the hymn book and mouthing the words of a verse. 

There was a sense of being taken care of in the church - something greater had your back. I developed that feeling very early on and it continued after boarding school, when I was living with my parents again and would accompany my mother to church most Sundays - something her breast cancer diagnosis had prompted on. The ritual of church fostered a special connection with my mother, something I continued to have with her until she died, and her funeral held in that same church we'd been attending for five years together. 

After university I took off for Europe, as a 21 year old backpacker, and whenever I felt homesick or lonely, I would call into a church and just sit. There were some astronomically beautiful churches in Europe and I especially remember one in Bruges in Brussels where I sat and prayed for my mother. Great wooden paneling, intricate stone carving, gleaming lead-lighted windows depicting all the great religious motifs. 

Two years ago, I was in Rome and received an email from my cousin that my uncle had unexpectedly passed. He was a beloved fellow, jovial, and wily as a young buck. A farmer his whole life, he had some fantastic stories about time on the land. I responded to my cousin that I was in Rome, but it a most suitable place - the holy city - to be on discovering this sad news. Later that evening, I found a quaint little church just down the road from where I was staying, and said a prayer for my uncle - wishing him Godspeed for his journey on. 

Another writing exercise was to talk to...

Your heart's deepest yearning

Whenever I'm feeling alone, and that 'woe is me' feeling of despair has crept in, I will sometimes look to the times when I've felt pure contentment (or close to it). Most people think having a partner is what's going to make them happiest, but so far, I've experienced better times single. Truest to my heart is when I am on my own.

Having said this, I am never quite on my own during these times - and the desires that drive that yearning - is for connection. It's a bonus when understanding is also thrown in. Some form of contact with another living person, animal or thing - can turn into a nourishment that uplifts the soul, or keeps it steady and stabilized, saving oneself from the perils of despair.

I've found that in a community of day-to-day interactions. The morning visit to the local cafe, exchanging small talk and general observations with the barista; seeing my yoga teacher, and her acknowledgement by way of a nod, that she's glad I "showed up" to class. Doing the weekly rounds of poking my head into my colleagues offices at work to check in and see how I can help.

I also yearn for new experiences and like a butterfly that has broken from its cocoon, it's in this environment - foreign and new - when I lose myself from that conditioned trap of self. Away from routine, my senses become keenly acute and it is in navigating these circumstances that I sate a yearning to be free and content and thrilling. 

Writing workshop at Esalen Institute

Photo - the Esalen Institute, Big Sur - September, 2017

I took off for the long weekend (Labor Day in the U.S) to the Esalen Institute in Big Sur (google it for those who do not know it) and undertook a 2.5 day writing intensive with Mark Matousek (Google him too : )). 

As follows some of the works I penned (and the whole group did this) each with a time limit of around 35 minutes for writing. 

Today in a writing workshop at a world renowned health "new age" retreat centre called Esalen, Mark Matousek, the teacher, asked us to write about our conception. 

Why we were born?

It's interesting that today (September 3) is father's day in Australia. 

I believe I came into this world because my father urged my mother to have another child. From my understanding, and these things are too often vague (because parents don't usually talk about how or why their child was born) my mother was happy with just one child, my brother, and perhaps happy is not the right word, I think she thought her maternal duty was done with one. 

But for some reason my father wanted me. I say for some reason because my mother was the one who did the heavy lifting when it came to parenting. We were a traditional family in that sense - dad the provider, mum the homemaker. I know also that after I was born, my father didn't stop there. He wanted a third child.  Dad had told me much later, in a humorous kind of way, that he would have liked to know which sex was the dominant. I would have loved another brother or sister, but alas, it wasn't to be. 

As it turned out that way, so too did it transpire that my brother is very much like my mother, and I am like my father. We all adored our mother, but I would say if one were to align my brother and I, alongside our parents for a "who's alike?" character assessment, people would draw that conclusion.

 - another of the exercises was to write about "the mother's gaze" and how that has come to shape who you are -

The Mother's Gaze

What did I learn from my mother's face about love?  And how I was seen or not seen.

When my mother died, my father included the poetry line: "the maiden smiled, her eyes overflowing with laughter" in the newspaper's death notice. This line had been said of her several times when she was younger. 

My mother had a soft face, her skin was supple and she had a beautiful smile. She wore a bit of a mask though, she was a great actress. I copied a lot of that - to this day. Someone would call for her on the telephone (she was not a well person she had breast cancer for 10 years until it claimed her life at 52 years old) and she'd furiously wave at my father - "no, I don't want to speak to them"...and yet, dad would pass her the phone. He was very much of the belief that if someone had taken the time to call, the least we could do, was speak to them. 

Mum would take the receiver and instantly transform her voice into one of gaiety for the receiver's end. Very few acquaintances or friends knew the side of my mother that shooed my father away. I saw it often as she was comfortable around us. In thinking about it, I have definitely replicated her two faces. 

The romantic men in my life have struggled with me on that level. They think they're getting one Caroline, the charming and friendly one, and then another side emerges. A side that isn't always nice and chipper. Mum was triumphant in amping up her personality for others. Almost like Gloria Swanson from Sunset Boulevard "I'm ready for my close up."  

The other thing I would mention, about my mother's face and its influence on how I felt loved, was during the time very close to the end of her life when I was visiting her in hospital. The calcium in her bones was breaking down and too much calcium in the bloodstream can, I understand medically, cause dementia.

As I walked into the hospital room she looked at me with a confused almost blank look on her face. I think for the blink of an eye, she didn't know who I was. But then her reaction to my hug and kiss - was how it had been several times before, when she did have her wits about her, at home. Mum was not welcoming of my affection or embrace. She pushed me away time and again, and on this day in the hospital, she gave me a terrified look of "get away."  

This event, and the others leading up, have had a huge impact on my impressions of my mother's love. 

Photo - view from Esalen Institute outdoor dining area. Big Sur, September, 2017.