Hello Readers!
We have quite a few new subscribers here with us this month, and I’m so excited to connect with you! This is the place for you if you’re interested in living a more attentive life. Attentiveness is an art that helps you come alive to the life you’re actually living, not the life someone else believes you should live, or the imaginary life in your head.
A quick bio: I’m Kimberly, a writer and writing instructor. I tutor and teach writing classes to students at a university in New Jersey. I’m an empty nester married to my high school sweetheart Michael, with two grown kids and one college sophomore. (I’m obsessed with them.) I write about paying attention because it’s a spiritual practice that has shown me the truth about myself, others, God, and the world around me. I’m also on a journey through trauma recovery and healing from PTSD. I’m a huge advocate for therapy, somatic practices, prayer, and yoga for healing, and sometimes I write about these practices here. I’m a contemplative at heart and can usually be found reading a good book with jazz playing in the background. There’s more, of course, but let’s save it for another day!
I’d love to learn more about you in the comments or hit reply and email me with an introduction!
This week I asked my students to introduce themselves by sharing the last book they enjoyed reading. I only recognized one of their recommendations. Alas, my book tastes diverge from nineteen-year-olds.
What do you recommend from your bookshelf?
I hope your September is off to a lovely, slow start. It was nice to usher her in with a holiday, wasn’t it? Michael and I planned our long weekend around spending as much time at home as possible, which allowed me to help him tidy up our overrun summer garden, read an entire novel, finish a puzzle together while watching Frasier reruns, and bake a few loaves of bread. It was a small preview of the cozy season ahead. I also met Rachel (our oldest) for brunch in the West Village on Monday, so I haven’t gone full on recluse. Yet.
Over brunch, Rachel and I talked about how we keep track of the books we read and movies we watch, and I mentioned that one of my favorite lists to keep is a monthly highlight of the things I made. (I use Emily P. Freeman’s The Next Right Thing Guided Journal1 for this. Highly recommend.)
Initially, this section of the journal was the hardest to fill out each month. The journal arrived at a time when I was in the thick of healing and every ounce of energy, emotional and otherwise, was spent in pursuit of anything that would lead to either long-term healing or short-term relief. Life became so very small, and all my “making”, which I’d previously defined as a fairly prolific writing life, ground to a halt.
There was something so disheartening about leaving that “Made” space blank, and I realized I needed to redefine what making means to me. After twelve years of significant work, “making” no longer meant writing. Words escaped me. Brain fog swallowed my ideas. My book proposal stalled, and my literary agent wrote an email saying goodbye to which I never replied a word.
Making had to become more than writing for me to feel like a whole person. We’re created to make like our Maker, so I began writing down the smallest making wins.
I made my bed.
I made banana bread.
I made two pots of tea.
I made a playlist.
I made a decision.
I made a peach cobbler, an appointment with my doctor, plans for trip, a date with friends, a syllabus, a propagated plant, I made an outdoor graduation party festive and joyful even during the pandemic.
These small acts of creation sustained me in ways I never expected. Making the bed daily when we’re mired in grief is sometimes all we can muster. But, making begets making, and these small acts fueled the desire to make more, so in January, I researched how to bake sourdough bread from scratch and now feeding my starter and moving slowly through every step of the bread-making process has become a rhythm I look forward to all week.
Over the past four years, small bits of writing began to sneak their way onto my Made list. I made an email, an essay, a pitch, an article. Then I made a substack, a writer’s work shoppe, a sermon, a retreat talk for creative women. The words swim differently, and my ambitions have quieted themselves beneath these water-worn rocks, but I’m grateful to step into the river and capture a few of them on occasion.
This weekend, I opened the blank pages of my guided journal for September and wrote “Sourdough bread” in the Made category. I’m cautiously optimistic about what else may show up there this month. I plan to list whatever small acts of creation I choose without permission from others as to what “making” means, without side eye glances from my inner self, without judgement.
Hello, my name is Kimberly and I make things.
A Reflective Practice:
Take some time to write down your own “Made” list.
What did you make this week/month?
After creating your “Made” list, journal or pray through this question:
Despite my current circumstances and/or limitations, what do I want to make or create?
What one step can you take towards creating this week?
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I always appreciate the reflections from your own life and questions for us to reflect on ours.
I’m in a wordless season, and you’re right, it’s hard to gain a sense of groundedness in the midst of that as words have always been available to me to express what’s happening internally.
I made a list this am. I find when the poetic prose has evaporated, lists help me see. A column for life-giving and a column for life-draining. I can’t run from all the life-draining things in my life, but I can fill it with more life-giving things. So, that is my aim for the remainder of this month—fill it with life-giving things.