Peach Blossoms in February
A Writing Workshop Announcement and a Garden + Chronic Illness Essay
Writing Workshop Announcement
This Friday, April 25th (12:30-2 EST), I’m facilitating a writing workshop for subscribers to the wonderful Sarah Teresa Cook’s For the Birds, as part of her Resiliency Circle offerings.
The theme is “What Moves You.” These days, the daily news moves many of us toward anxiety and fear, especially those of us attuned to meanings and connections. In this time together, through poems and works of art, we will find words to connect with things that move us toward life and beauty, even amid worry and stress.
To participate, Sarah has generously offered free one-month trial subscriptions to her newsletter. Click here to sign up. Then find the Zoom link and RSVP for Friday’s Resiliency Circle at the bottom of this post.
I’m looking forward to writing with you!
Garden + Chronic Illness Essay at Asterales
In 2020, I began writing a bookish memoir of all the houses I’ve lived in. By spring 2022, it had morphed into a bookish autism memoir of all the houses I’ve lived in. Soon after, my developmental editor advised that “the garden chapter is good, but it doesn’t really fit.”
Today, that garden chapter is at the gorgeous Asterales Journal. I hope you click over and read it; you’ll find the beach, sun blight, zinnias, Walt Whitman, Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, plenty of poetry, and a Vermont farm.
Despite my awe of the garden, I have to admit that I’m no expert. A gardening friend who is several years beyond me in experience points out that if you’ve been gardening for ten years, you’ve only done it ten times. It takes lots of practice, trial and error and accidental success, to accumulate the practical knowledge needed to plant the right seeds at the right times. You can experiment—you must experiment—but you only get one try. Then you pack it up for the winter and let the ground lie fallow till next spring.
By the end of the following summer, I finally received a referral to a local cardiologist, who after further testing, and despite inconclusive results, found a name for this sideways body experience that had begun at the shore: Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, or POTS.
The symptoms themselves—leaden legs, shortness of breath, and dizziness, followed by heavy sweat and a prickling sensation—I can only describe as body-panic. Then, after the initial onslaught, extreme fatigue sets in, all exacerbated in the heat. Which is to say, if I eat and drink and sleep and exercise well in winter, I almost forget I have this thing. But during the hot season, I approach my body the same way I’m learning to approach the garden: intentional springtime planning as the new year’s season progresses toward warmer weather and a ready eye toward expected hardship and surprising outcomes.
Read the rest at “Nothing Like Peach Blossoms in February.”
Beautiful essay Rebecca. I can so relate to having to sit out family activities, and learning to say no to social events. I love the balance you're finding.
Rebecca, that was really something.