Booga Booga

Okay, I had a meeting and was having a bout of nerves. I thought ten or so minutes of meditation would do the trick. I'm terrible at meditation--you know that scene in "Eat, Pray, Love" where Julia Roberts is in India and can't get her monkey mind to settle down after weeks of pasta? That's me.

So, the phone rings. While I'm meditating. I am actively reaching for a higher plane and I am subjected to the banality of a ringing phone. I mean, really. I meditate for a few more minutes and check my voice mail. It's someone telling me I need a document that I have no idea where it is. I check this trunk where I keep all my papers and find it. As I'm closing up the trunk, I notice a stack of greeting cards my late mother sent me during the last years of her life. I pull out the card that says, "Reach for your dreams." I read it. She'd signed it, "I believe in you." I cried like a tiny, baby infant.

I don't go in for all that New Age booga-booga stuff. But I'd like to believe my mama still takes time out from eternity to talk to me.

For the Next Woman

 

The Women's Voices Project, a 13-year collaboration between Cleveland Public Theatre and the Elyria YWCA Women's Campus Project,  gives women in recovery from domestic violence, addictions, and other adversities the tools for creative expression as they transition to more independent living. A few months back, I was invited to lead a writing workshop. I met some women who were funny and feisty, some shy and soft spoken, all of them were committed to living happier lives. I was one of several teaching artists through out the program, led by CPT education director, Chris Seibert.

Last Friday, I went to see the performance that came from months of self-discovery and writing, a reading called "Survival Skills." It reminded me of all the ways theater can be a visceral, immediate vehicle of truth-telling.  Each woman shared two pieces, one about a memory, another about a pivotal moment in her struggle. When the final woman read her story--which included being locked in a closet for six months by her abusive husband--there wasn't a dry eye in the house.  It, like the other women's stories, came from a real place. There was no quick, sit-com wrap up with an and-that's-how-I-learned-to-forgive coda. The woman asked "Where was God when I was in the closet?" and held all the messy emotions of healing up to the light for the next woman, whoever she is, to be encouraged by.

If you ever get a chance to see the Women's Voices project, or the brother show, the Y-Haven Theatre Project, go (and leave a little coin behind!).

Here I Go Again

Yeah. I'm back.