Allow me to share something more personal this month. Ten days ago, I got married. Some of you know my first husband passed away four and a half years ago from a rare cancer. Some of you know how the writers’ colony gave me purpose and focus after his death, how the land acted as balm and heart-space, how work countered grief in a small way. I know some of you, like me, have experienced the kind of wrenching pain and loss that leaves you startled and still, as if just existing from one day to the next costs all your energy. That is a part of being human, the inescapable blend of love and loss. If you love, you will someday feel loss. And yet . . .

you can also believe that love doesn’t just end in the vacuum of loss and grief. Love expands into whatever space it is allowed. Our humanity longs for connection, for fellowship, for belonging, and yes, for love – if we open the door of our hearts to it. I’m not saying it is easy. Few things are truly easy. In the last five years I’ve learned firsthand the concept of duality – that I can hold two opposing things at the same time and both of them be true, both be valuable, both speak into my life. I can grieve and I can love. I can be sad and happy. I can think about the past even as I walk into the future.

My new husband and I built a venue in the woods at the writers’ colony. It was heart-work, honoring the land, holding the past and creating something new in the same breath. It was hard work, too, and sacrifice, and also dream and magic. It required thought and planning, but also listening and patience, waiting for the land and the trees to speak the scene. It was an idea that revealed itself as we worked and in the end it was more than we could have imagined.

On a hot August late afternoon, under the shade of the trees, we gave our promises to each other in front of our family and friends. And I felt . . .

joy, but also . . .

something quieter and solemn, something that was one part painful and two parts holy. I’m not sure I can give it a name that does it justice, but maybe it was a deep knowing of the space between endings and beginnings, the doorway and the other side of the doorway, the delicate and the bold, the thrill and the ache, the light and the shadow, and how you can only know one so well because you’ve held the other so tightly.

Now, we have a venue and I can imagine many possibilities for the space. All the wedding decorations are gone now and it feels settled and calm. Sometimes, I go there, sit on a bench and write in my journal. Sometimes I just sit and take in the sounds and scents of the forest. There is definitely something magical there.

The next time you’re at the colony, I invite you to spend a few minutes sitting, thinking, planning, or maybe balancing all the human tendencies that sometimes confuse and thwart our dreams – like wanting to write and finding lots of reasons not to write. (I’m guilty!) Or maybe just be aware of the words on the little placard just outside the venue. They say:

“And now it is yours to build upon – your sweet spirit on the verge of opening, the soft whisper in your throat that even now is saying, Here, Here, Here. Every holy breath is blending its harmony. Can’t you feel it? You are a part of the magic of the world. It is in you. Everything you ever wanted is right here.”