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Wrestling Bears Under a Full Moon

2016 May 24
by WWGD

Spark-WWGwynethDo

I wrestled a bear this weekend.

It wasn’t black or brown and it wasn’t covered in fur. But it was in the wilderness. And it was scary and intimidating. And it  had been chasing me down for a while now.

And I wrestled that bear.

I went to my very first creative retreat in Ojai; a writer’s retreat for women called Spark that is hosted regularly by Kelle Hampton and Claire Bidwell Smith. I went in with a lot of hesitation. My passion for writing had gotten stale and I wasn’t even sure if I enjoyed writing any more. I was investing time and energy and money into three days of the unknown which is particularly difficult for a planner like me. And I was going it alone which ended up being one of my favorite parts of the weekend, but was incredibly intimidating at first.

So what happened at Spark? I met some beautiful women. Women from all over the country, each with their own story to tell. Their own words to write. Their own bears to wrestle. All of us were mothers, which was a common thread, and writers. But beyond that, we were coming together without any perceptions or expectations. And we left with so much more.

I engaged my senses and finally realized just how important the sensory experience is to me. The trees felt so tall, the sky looked so blue, every bite of food felt nourishing and fulfilling and the full moon looked extra bright that night and every sip of rosé tasted like my first. I took it all in – sometimes with new friends, sometimes in silence – and it filled me up.

And I wrote. A lot. A lot more than I have in a long time. Some of it was light, some of it was heavy. Some of it was inspiring and some of it was kind of shitty. Some of it made me cry and little bits of it made me laugh. I shared it with the group, which was a first for me. My voice shook here and there, uncertain and nervous. I shed my tears and fears and dove in headfirst because that’s what our resident Buddhist chef Goyo told us all to do. And I kept on writing. I am writing today. I will write tomorrow. And I will write the day after that.

During one of our last “share” sessions of the trip, I wrote a piece about body image. Mine, yours, all of ours, really. It wasn’t what I set out to write when I put my pen to my paper that morning. I wasn’t looking to go there, to feel that, to say those words. But they came spilling out of me and I had to share. I refused to look up while I read. I didn’t want to meet the eyes of the women around the room, to know they were likely looking at me and my figure in a different light. I just kept reading and finished it with a small, silent exhale.

When I looked up, tears and warm smiles surrounded me. And I knew it was mine for the sharing. They were my words but they belonged to all of us, in some way, big or small.

A woman from Chicago who I had just met two days prior was the last to leave the room, moving onto our next activity. I really liked this woman from the start. She had left her four children behind to step way outside of her box and come to Ojai and write and read and create for three days. And you could see in her eyes how much she needed it.

“That was really great,” she told me, pausing in the doorway. “That was really, really great. You wrestled a bear, girl. You wrestled a bear.”

I thanked her and we moved on with our day.

But that bear – and that weekend – will always stay with me.

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2 Responses
  1. May 24, 2016

    Love this and loved meeting you. So glad you shared that writing- it was so powerful. xoxo

  2. Kelly permalink
    May 25, 2016

    What a beautiful post. Thank you for sharing and for being so brave. xoxo

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