unravelling

Wow. Some of the comments around here the last few days are just leaving me, well, speechless. I want to thank you with everything I have, and to offer you something, anything in return. But besides an open invitation to my table (you know you’ve got that, right?) I guess I’ll have to stick to what I’ve got to work with (a wooden spoon and a camera), and I’ll just say that this week I’m going to give you some really excellent recipes this week. I promise.

But not today.
Today I’m sick. No swine flu or anything like that, but just sick enough to keep my butt in bed while Joey takes the girls to dance class, takes the girls to birthday parties. Yes, I’m milking it a bit, but he lets me and I think that’s very good of him.
But no cooking today. Dinner will probably be something involving cheese melted on something made of corn, and I don’t even have a back stock of photographed recipes (except Onion soup, but I’m saving that for a day when I really need it).

I do have something I want to tell you about, though. You see, I haven’t been entirely forthcoming. Yes, there have been all sorts of wonderful things going on involving life and careers and trying to be brave. But I have had a secret weapon in my back pocket that I haven’t told you about. It’s called Unravelling. Ways of Seeing My Self.

Susannah Conway leads these courses a few times a year, and through writing and photography exercises, she gives people a shot at trying to figure out what they might want to be working on, and how they might want to go about it.

She is a truly lovely woman. Just being able to interact with Susannah makes this course pretty wonderful, but one aspect of it that I am finding to be so powerful is the community that has grown from it. There are about 135 students from all over the world, all coming from different lives and situations.
I have, at many times in the course wished that I was participating more fully. Sometimes the writing assignments don’t happen, or I feel resistant to a particular photo assignment. I hear all of the tales of other students “unravelling” and I chastise myself for never fully delving into anything.
But I’m over half way through, and when I look at what has happened in the last few weeks I have to laugh at my thoughts that I am not fully participating.
This class has been a major factor in my risk taking lately, and I have delved in so much that my life has actually shifted since the opening class- not only in my work, but my general outlook, and most of all, my courage. I have actually found a way to slow my pace enough to look around me, and I wasn’t sure if that could ever be possible at the speed I was moving.

So that’s it. That’s the whole story. It’s not a secret weapon anymore. In fact, if it draws you at all, I’d get yourself signed up for the next one.