A Retreat
And recommendations for resolute and beautiful books about women's fertility.
Last week a friend and I went on an overnight retreat to get some serious writing time in. It was lovely.
Except for the three or so hours we waited in the DMV for her to be seen to get her RealID.
But we went to (what I assume is) the last remaining Ruby Tuesday’s restaurant. I love a good salad bar, and RT’s is a place my husband and I would frequent when we first started dating. Ah, memories.
The retreat is a little place just outside of Nashville called Penuel Ridge. You can AirBnB a cottage or an apartment, and it’s just lovely. The Ridge has a lake, waterfalls, a labyrinth (of bricks in the ground, not, like, The Shining-style), and a freestanding meditation room called The Well. There’s also a 2.5 mile trail that traces the ridge and the property.
The ridge trail was just coming to life, and we saw swarms of swallowtail butterflies. They flew down the trail toward us and would swoop around us. Daredevils. I also slowed our pace considerably to take pictures of and attempt to identify the flowers and plants just beginning to bloom.
I brought the first 48 pages/3 chapters of my book to edit. I ended up doing line edits on that whole section, plus thought really deeply about how to rearrange the opening to accommodate some new scenes I wrote last month.
It’s scary and fascinating and exciting to do this work and watch the story take its own shape. I’m learning from it as I go.
I’ve also been thinking a lot about being perceived and ambitious in my own work and as the author of my work. So much of my life I was told to calm down, be quiet, take it easy. My mother likened me to Tigger, like the hyper tiger from Pooh tales. And society doesn’t like an ambitious woman. We want to tell her to sit down or that her story isn’t important.
But we have important stories to tell.
And if I didn’t have ambition, I wouldn’t have spent the last 18 months + the previous decade working on this story. I have a story to tell, and I’m going to put that story out in the world. When it’s done.
Recommended Reads
Blue Hour Homecoming: Finding Life on the Fringes of Reproduction by Alle Mudrick
Every Amazon review (including my own) contains the word “unflinching.” Because Alle goes there. Every time, whether she’s talking about the complications of her own body, the suffering of her children, or the beauty of the New Mexico arroyos she and her husband hike. This memoir is published by Third Rail Press, a new publishing company born of the Big 5 publisher’s fear of memoirs and stories about women’s issues of grief, fertility, and loss. Third Rail Press was co-founded by Alle and author Mary Adkins, who also founded The Book Incubator, where Alle is a memoir coach.
I’m also looking forward to reading You Might Feel A Little Pressure by Mary Adkins, which I should be receiving soon!
I’m going to let these two recommendations stand on their own today. As women’s bodily autonomy is stripped away little by little every day in the US and threats to the personhood—and let’s not forget citizenship—of women rise, it’s important to humanize these issues, read about them, and promote stories about them.