The Best Christmas Gift

I’ve been seeing chatter on both Facebook and some of the blogs I follow about the Best Christmas Gifts given or received this year.  My 'best' actually encompasses both the give and receive categories, but first a little back story is in order.

In February I decided to start a creative writing workshop for incarcerated women at the county jail, so I spent some time on the Internet researching model programs.  Surprisingly, I found very little. Outside of the PEN American Center’s Prison Writing Program, I found one program in Western Massachusetts for incarcerated women that uses Pat Schneider’s AWA method, one originally developed for use in her writing workshops with low income women but later adapted for use with other marginalized populations.

Armed with some basic ideas, I drew additional inspiration from my own experience teaching diverse adult populations over many years and wrote a proposal to the jail administration.  After 9 months of negotiations, personnel changes and personal setbacks that delayed its start, we ran the first workshop on October 2^nd.  5 women attended.  The next week, the facility was in lock down.  The week after that, no one showed for the workshop.  

The following week, a few women returned from the initial meeting, others had lost interest, and still others had been released.  Since the workshop ‘pilot’ was open only to the “worker” classification of inmates—those usually incarcerated for shorter durations—we limped along in fits and starts for the first couple of months.  Weekly I heard from those attending the workshop that there were many women who wanted to come but weren't eligible as non-workers.

After some diplomatic negotiations with the Captain, the workshop was opened to all of the women in the facility, but with limited participation of 6 per workshop.  In the weeks since, we have been running at capacity with reports from those in attendance of having to fight for their spot.  They tell me it’s a get set, get ready, and go! to line up for admittance and that if they’re not fast, they don’t get in.

With a more consistent group, we’ve been able to build off of each preceding workshop.  We started with a look at words and some of the popular devices used in poetry—alliteration, repetition, rhyming patterns, concrete vs. abstract imagery, onomatopoeia, clichés, and fresh ways to use language—and looked at poems that effectively use these devices.  

Then we wrote.  We began with Haiku practice.  For those that didn’t want to write poetic line, they could write stream-of-consciousness or whatever they liked either on a topic of their choosing or from prompts that I provided.  (I’ve had one gal the past two weeks who has been writing in a tone and style that is a cross between medieval literature and a Harlequin Romance).

In the past month, I’ve started bringing their writing home and typing it up for them so they can see their words in print.  I give them back two versions—one just as they’ve written it and the second with light penciled comments, suggestions and encouragement for further development, if they so choose.  I’ve brought them Rumi, Carroll, Frost and Levertov, Oliver and cummings and Snyder, and then when they asked for Shakespeare, nursery rhymes, Psalms & Proverbs, and more Beat Poets, I brought those, too.

This past Saturday, on Christmas Day, I brought them all of the above and one more gift:  enclosed in red and green envelopes a slip of paper with the address of the PEN American Center where they can send for a free handbook for writers in prison.  I also brought them poems by the 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd place winners in PEN’s Annual Prison Writing Contest, proof that voices of writers inside are heard and published. 

Not all will continue writing when they leave the county jail, but for some of the women in the workshop who already know they are headed for prison sentences, writing may be a comfort during the months and years ahead.  

One thing is certain. Our workshop was the greatest gift I gave and received this Christmas. It seemed so for them as well.

Do Not Seek, And You Shall Find

Last week I went shopping for an Ugly Christmas Sweater for a party to which we’d been invited.  It was the third store in as many days and still no Christmas sweaters, ugly or otherwise.  Although not particularly enthusiastic, I had made the attempt and now with strike three affirmed that I could move on guilt-free.  Since I was already in the store I decided to look around.  Known mostly for its ‘dress for less’ clothing, this store also has a row of aisles at its opposite end lined with everything from picture frames and house wares to furniture and gift items at reasonable prices.  Not really in a Christmas-shopping mood, I wasn’t looking for anything in particular.  Just wandering.

As I was browsing, I came across some decorative photo albums and thought of my eleven year old niece.  Having recently seen her newly painted blue bedroom, I picked up the blue and green album with a retro 60s Mandela design, thinking she might like to put pictures in it of friends both old and new (having recently moved to rural Northern California from the San Francisco Bay Area). Then I looked behind me and discovered a lone jewelry-box size treasure chest among a collection of lacquered decorative boxes, perfect for the-hand-me-down jewelry I’d let her pick out the week before.  Jewelry that came with a promise to wrap it up for Christmas along with one or two new gifts and an expressed regret that my husband and I weren’t able to do more for her this year.  

The small wooden chest, a two-tone light green and cream color with pink flowers, carried a Parisian boutique stamp and showed manufactured wear in all the right places to give it that antique look.  Lined in brown velvet with two brass handles at each end and a matching lock on front, it was like finding a gem amidst the non-descript, mass produced uniformity perched on the store shelf.  I added it to my cart and went to the next aisle over, where I found a glass picture frame rimmed with flowers of delicately etched stems and pink crystal heads, a perfect home for a recent picture of the two of us; then, in the clothing bin at the front of the store, I found fluffy black and peach slipper socks waiting to keep her feet warm on these cold winter nights; and finally, in the accessories bin next to that, a jeweled handbag holder (shaped as a mini-purse) to hold her first purse, received on her birthday in September.  

Across the aisle a display of porcelain kitchen accessories caught my eye.  At Thanksgiving when my husband asked where our gravy boat was and I replied that we didn’t have one he mentioned that he’d like one.  Sure enough, one gravy boat remained awaiting my arrival.  And at a steal of a deal.  I put it in the cart and wandered back over to the house wares aisle where an attractive set of black and cream dish towels with a rooster motif and red and tan borders caught my eye.  I thought of my sister and brother-in-law who had mentioned getting chickens now that they are living in the country.  In the cart it went, along with some matching pot-holders, on my way to the check out.

Suddenly, I felt the Christmas spirit, which had been largely absent.  I didn’t need to pursue it to find it, only to be receptive to it finding me. And instead of an Ugly Christmas Sweater, I received the beauty of the season.

Spiritual Awakening at an Economic Crossroads

The day before Thanksgiving I ran into a former colleague in the lobby of our local movie theater.  My mother and I were coming out of a matinee and he and his son were going into the latest Harry Potter film.  Not known for our congeniality when we worked together, our unexpected encounter was friendly and in an odd way comforting.  He asked me what I was doing now and after saying “nothing,” I quickly added, “Well, that’s not true. I’m writing for a local magazine, blogging, doing freelance stuff.”  He looked impressed, but more likely was being polite.  I hoped my cheery offering that I was publishing would banish the self-consciousness I felt for being without a job after more than a year.

A late bloomer when I entered the corporate world at 40, some part of me had felt that I’d at last arrived at the place of long sought-after security and stability.  Overnight, I’d gone from a college adjunct living one paycheck to the next to Consultant, then Regional Account Manager, and finally Client Service Manager.  I had my own laptop, expense account and corporate credit card.  Employer-paid medical and a 401K (which I’d never had to that point) were the icing on the cake.  It was a huge move professionally and financially from where I had been the previous ten years.  With this increase in income I had bought my first new car, was able to take real vacations and when my husband and I married, to move into an ‘upscale’ neighborhood surrounded by a golf course.  On the surface, everything looked right.

For the first several years the work was exciting and I enjoyed the travel, compensation and perks that came with a corporate career.  But when I married for the first time at 43 and two of my husband’s three teenagers came to live with us, I found the once stimulating work and the non-stop travel exhausting when combined with my new family responsibilities.  I had soldiered on for another two years, subsequently receiving a promotion to management that put me back in the office full time, but something important was missing and I knew it.  When layoffs hit the office where I worked and I was demoted back to traveling Consultant, the writing was on the wall.  In September 2009 a work day seemingly like any other turned out to be my last.

There’s something about long-term unemployment at midlife that makes you question your values.  Not just the material ones, but the spiritual ones too. However, since they were closer to consciousness I started with the material ones.  Newly unemployed and concerned about our sudden financial decline, I called every creditor that offered programs for ‘low income’ customers.  My husband and I weather-stripped doors and curtained previously uncovered windows.  We received a supply of wood from a family member that took us through the cold winter months.  We re-calculated our food budget and bought a seal-o-meal so we could stretch each meal as far as it would go.  We juggled bills and combined trips to town to save gas.  In short, we responded creatively to unexpected and challenging circumstances and I wondered why we hadn’t employed some of these methods even when times weren’t so lean.

Although our resources were fewer, they weren’t altogether absent and I saw, perhaps for the first time, that my ability to live should not—must not—be dependent upon my employment status.  This came to me most powerfully one day when I was standing in the backyard, hanging clothes on the line and my husband said that we needed to buy “such and such.”  In that moment I realized that consumption, like life itself, would continue with or without that job.  It was a profound insight and the beginning of a spiritual awakening.

Looking back I saw how subtly and powerfully my career had come to define me.  When it was suddenly gone, I had the painstaking work of rediscovering who I was apart from it. I’d grown accustomed to being in the driver’s seat, navigating my life mostly by wit and will and believing I had more control than I did. Being bumped to passenger was humbling and I started writing again to gain some perspective on my circumstances.

As I wrote, I discovered that my pursuit of what I thought was a “successful life” had left me depleted and depressed.  Certainly not in the beginning, but definitely as time wore on. All my achievement, my contributions were outside myself.  Until I stopped working, I hadn’t seen this nor had I known how much I’d needed some down time to rest, read, or knit; to go to a movie, walk or bike; to sleep in, meet a friend for lunch, or simply do nothing for a few hours.  It was in these quieter moments that I began to nurture my creative self, at the heart of which was a blocked writer.

I’d written since I could hold a pencil.  For me writing had always been my way of making sense of the world but in the past few years my journal entries had stopped. I was too busy and felt ‘dry’ creatively.  The funny thing was that as soon as I ceased my frenetic work pace and started writing again, my creativity flowed forth.  With nothing to lose, I started the blog in March.  I wrote about my regret for having turned away from the writing life in Six Degrees of Separation, figuring that many people could relate to their own road not taken; about my dying friend George in Passages, knowing that loss and grief come to all of us sooner or later; about my quest for a healthy body in Midlife Midriff and a healthy diet in What’s Really For Dinner?, believing that men as well as women might laugh as they identified with my predicaments.

Having aspired to be a writer since I was a young girl, and now feeling emboldened, I queried a regional magazine about freelance opportunities.  It had been years since I’d written anything of publishable quality and although I knew I had it in me, my confidence hadn’t yet been fully restored.  (Anyone who has lost a job will know the feeling.)  Nonetheless, I took a deep breath and followed the inner edict to ‘just do it anyway’ and that leap of faith led to becoming a contributing writer for enjoy magazine, a Northern California lifestyle monthly.

Around the same time, I joined a local writer’s forum and started a critique group with another writer I met at the Member’s Read event.  As our bi-monthly meetings progressed, the discipline to write deepened; I had someone waiting to read what I was producing.  I started sending my poetry to literary magazines and began a second blog for the women’s site, skirt.com.  More recently, I’ve been in negotiations to write a column for the local newspaper which I hope to syndicate to other dailies in the newspaper chain. The college where I taught before I entered the corporate world?  They called last week offering me three sections for Spring semester.  Officially, I’m not “unemployed” anymore.

This journey to a new livelihood has brought many insights. First and foremost, that although I was living a materially successful life, I was not living a spiritually meaningful one.  I don’t know that the two are mutually exclusive—who’s to say that one can’t have both? But for me it took a significant reorganization of my finances to prompt a reorganization of my values. The spiritual awakening that followed was the necessary ingredient for my creative life to take form and set me upon my current path.

The ability to translate the raw material for every article, for every blog, for anything that I write into inspiration, comes from within.  It's nurtured by a connection with Spirit, which points up the most important lesson of the past 15 months: I can make do with less materially but I cannot make do without creative purpose in my life.