Off to Humber & the Space Between

This afternoon I leave for Toronto to attend the Humber Summer Writing Workshop! My tummy is a bowl of fluttering knots and I feel shaky with anxiety and excitement.

It’s a beautiful morning. The sun is shining strong and it smells like summer on the cool breeze. The birds are awake and singing sweet songs in the trees. It’s early…so the rest of the family is still nestled in bed. The dogs are up and playing in the back yard. In the distance, a train’s deep horn hums. In only a few hours, I’ll be on a train too!

This is a dream come true! I’ve been hoping for years to have the courage to apply to attend this summer workshop. See, it’s not just having the courage to do the writing and submit, but also having the courage to leave the kids and the hubby for eight days and seven sleeps. I think that’s what’s pulling my tummy inside out the most.

I haven’t left these lovelies for this long ever. INHALE DEEPLY.

We can all do it.

I know it in my heart.

The schedule is set. Everyone will be loved and cared for.

It’s okay to have this adventure – all of us.

My bags are packed. I’ve got books to read and books to write in. I’ve got plugs and chargers. Toothpaste and soap. I’ve got courage in my step and excitement in my heart and nerves in my belly.

My teacher is the fabulous Kyo Maclear.

“Life and death. Survival and extinction. The common and the rare. The robust and the disappearing. I had come to see that birding was about holding opposites in tension. It elicited a twoness of feeling – both reassuring and dispiriting – especially in a city where so little landscape had survived modernity’s onslaught. In that twoness was a mongrel space between hope and despair.”  Kyo Maclear, Birds, Art, Life pg. 229-230

A quote from Maclear’s book, Birds, Art, Life fits like a song to a bird with how I’m feeling right now…and many days for that matter, except to say that one can insert ‘writing’ in the space where ‘birding’ is….and ‘parenting’ too. I think it was the lived experiences of this ‘mongrel space between’ that truly motivated me to send in my application to this workshop.

And so, off I venture…into the space between. I’ll keep you posted on this journey.

Peace.