Body, Sensation, the Startling Now
Musings on nurturing our inner creative, plus a collection of delights for April
There are only two reasons I ever step foot in a dollar store:
To buy new school supplies at a steep discount.
To pretend that I am a Fun Family Vacation Mom.
On this particular weekday morning, it is the second reason that has me traipsing up and down the aisles of the local Dollar Tree, having a minor stroke as I fill my basket with the kind of Disney junk I swore I’d never buy: mini plastic princess figurines, Lion King stickers, Moana coloring books, you name it. I am that mom, taking my children on that kind of vacation.
Listen, I have a long list of Things I Used To Be Above, and chief on this list are things that would make Walt Disney turn in his grave. They include:
Fast-forward six years and two children later and, as Michael Scott would say, “Well, well, well, how the turntables.”
(It’s funny how the Lord uses an overpriced, fifty-year-old theme park replete with animatronics to humble you as a parent.)
In fact, it is in the very aisles of the Dollar Tree that I hear a loud voice from Heaven, saying:
“The Lord thy God has bestowed upon you offspring who hath great zeal for the Disney franchise. All day long they adorn themselves in glittering robes. All day long there is much singing and dancing.
Though such things make thee want to pluck out thine eyes, truly, truly I say unto you: deny thyself and take up thy cross.”
And I fell on my face and cried out to the Lord, asking Him to let this cup pass from me.
And this cup did not pass from me. And lo, the Spirit of the Lord was with me.
…Ok, fine, that doesn’t really happen.
What does happen: I close my eyes and try to remember how much I loved Disney World as a kid. Then I bite my tongue, get in the checkout line, and throw a few small notepads into my basket for good measure.
Maybe, I think to myself, I can practice sight words with my kindergartener on the airplane.
Maybe, I think, my two-year-old would like to scribble pretend “grocery lists” and “menus” in the long TSA lines.
I did not think that after an entire day at The Most Magical Place On Earth™, after so much magic and so much overstimulation, after so many rides and noises and lines and shows and characters, after three afternoon downpours, two toddler tantrums, one tiff with my husband, and zero naps from the toddler, my five-year-old would pull out her dollar store notepad and begin to write poetry.
“Mama, read this!”
My five-year-old thrusts her pink dollar store notepad into my hand.
I read the words out loud, trying to hide the surprise on my face. This is what she’s attending to in the middle of Magic Kingdom?
Not meeting Cinderella. Not riding a dozen Disney-themed attractions. Not seeing Mickey Mouse dancing up on stage.
Bushes. Flowers. Grass.
I am struck by her ability to quiet herself and notice the simplest things during the first calm moment we’ve had all day.
“Baby, this is poetry!” I tell her.
Her eyes light up. “Really?”
“Yes!” I nod. “Poetry is mostly just noticing the things around you…and then telling the truth about them.”
“Wow,” she says, flipping to the next blank piece of paper.
She tucks her hair behind her ear, presses her pencil to the page.
Here is the thing about being a child. You don’t know anything but the present moment. You don’t know anything but body and sensation and the startling now. You are unbound by time—too young to ruminate on the past, too unburdened to obsess over the future.
Childhood is its own universe and at the center is the extraordinary ability to pay close attention, to be fully present, to create.4
A few days later at the beach, I watch my oldest run into the ocean, arms outstretched.
I try to remember the last time I felt so free, so in my body. I think about how, somewhere down the line, most of us have hidden this tender, young part of ourselves underneath layers and layers of protective armor, like a soft mollusk tucked far back into its shell.
Like the shell I told my daughter to throw back into the sea.
“No, Baby. You can’t keep that one. See? This shell is still protecting something deep inside.”
When we return home to Minnesota, I tuck the notes into her nightstand—a dozen fragments scrawled inside a dollar store notepad. Pages upon pages of words with invented spelling: shels, solt, sand dolrs. Every sentence smudged with sunscreen and saltwater.
So much of my own healing is learning how to return, again, to this open place. How to let my protective parts go so I can enter more fully into my body.5
Writers seem to be especially aware of this sense of fragmentation and complexity—that we all contain multitudes, parts, iterations.
Maybe it’s because our work requires us to constantly face these parts of ourselves.
Madeleine L’Engle says it like this:
“I am still every age that I have been. Because I was once a child, I am always a child. Because I was once a searching adolescent, given to moods and ecstasies, these are still part of me, and always will be...”
Maggie Smith explains it like this:
However we view it, that child—the one who knows how to remain attentive and open, unguarded and embodied—is still inside all of us.
Finding her again is difficult. It will probably take an immense amount of coaxing and comforting. You will likely have to hold her hand tight and remind her how old you really are, now. You may have to show her one hundred times that she is safe, that she can leave the shell behind and find a new way forward.
It could be an entire lifetime of re-mothering, of nurturing our own attentions, our own bodies, our own creativity.
But it could be one of the best ways to spend a life, because every day we will start to notice—slowly at first, and then, all at once—how beautiful the world really is.
Right here. Right now.
Onto this month’s delights!
Currently reading (or recently finished): What My Mother And I Don’t Talk About (Melissa Febos’s essay in this collection absolutely wrecked me in the best way), She Deserves Better (another win from Sheila Gregoire on the absolute nonsense of purity culture), Grief is For People (a powerful, humorous, moving memoir),
’s Fat Talk (a superb deep-dive into diet culture’s troubled history and how to parent body-positive kids in a largely fat-phobic society) and ‘s beautiful debut poetry collection, Instructions for Traveling West (on desire, freedom, and finding ourselves).A few things I’ve been loving lately: The perfect summer dress, the cutest swim crop-tops to pair with high-waisted bottoms (great if you’re tall and/or have a long torso), and these Nike ultra-high waist shorts.
Some things the kids have been loving lately: My oldest loved playing this Seek and Find game at the pool in Florida! What a hit. And these water shoes were the best for hot, shelly beaches (and will come in handy at MN’s North Shore this summer, too!) This Ocean Anatomy book was also super fun to explore with the kids before heading to the ocean. (We enjoy all of Julia Rothman’s books.)
A few good eats: Easy Baked Salmon (garlic! lemon! evoo! YUM!), this Jennifer Aniston salad (IKR?), these Baked Chicken Drumsticks (my oldest loves these), and this Blueberry Chicken Chopped Salad.
Watching + listening: This month, I watched The Holdovers (Such a charming movie with lovable main characters you will absolutely want to cheer for), Dead Poet’s Society (I had not seen this before and the mental health/suicidality content coupled with Robin Williams’ appearance was perhaps a bit too much for me, but wow did I love it, all the same), and Schitt’s Creek reruns because Dan Levy as David Rose makes me so, so deliriously happy.
I enjoyed listening to this conversation between Rainn Wilson and Kate Bowler, this episode of We Can Do Hard Things with the founder of IFS, Richard Schwartz, and Coffee + Crumbs’ podcast episode on kids and tech with Jean Twenge.
Some good writing I’ve read online lately: I thoroughly enjoyed this piece by
on what really gets us when we read good writing, this piece from Electric Lit on the mother artist, and this piece by on living in the moment and finding hope.In case you missed it:
Part-Time Poets put out a special issue for the release of Taylor Swift’s new album, TTPD! Whether or not you’re a Swiftie, this collection was on fire and worth reading. SO fun to write with these ladies.
AND Part-Time Poets’ twelfth issue comes out tomorrow, where I share a poem I wrote last year.
That’s it, friends!
I’d love to hear one way you’re nurturing your inner creative these days.
If something resonated with you here…
Would you consider sharing, re-stacking, or sending to a friend?
These words are my labor of love, and your recommendation is how this community grows.
What the actual hell was going on in 1940 that made Walt Disney go: “I know what kids need! A movie like Pinocchio, where the children turn into literal asses, smoke cigars, demonize all pleasure, and are told by a Blue Fairy, ‘A boy who won't be good might just as well be made of wood.’”? (Also, Dumbo, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Peter Pan…IYKYK).
Why are women constantly getting rescued by men, and why is the pinnacle of life falling in love and getting married?
I do enjoy Disney World. It’s just that it makes me feel a little bit like I’ve sold my soul. But I grew up going there often, and I truly loved it as a kid. Now, I have more mixed feelings and mostly go for my children.
This is one of the biggest reasons that today’s social media, smart phone-induced mental health crisis among youth is so devastating. This kind of technology is insidiously stealing our children’s ability to pay close attention to their lives and engage in their own creativity. It may sound alarmist, but it’s really, really not. (And it’s true for adults, too.)
Spoiler alert: I suck at it. The parts of me that want to guard against pain and refuse to trust and refuse to hope are hanging on tooth and nail. It’s really hard to get those protective parts to back the heck down. Trauma Brain is a b*tch.
a true wild heart indeed. that pic tho!
That is AMAZING that she is writing poetry!!! I loved this. My oldest asked for a bedside lamp and a bookshelf the other day and I was thrilled, like “you are so MY child” 😆