Prompt # 4: Slow Down Turbo

Slow down turbo were the words that came from my son the guru the wise man the teacher he became.

​Dan started out, as many of you know, angry and indulged. If we had done any shrinkage early on, the advice we would have gotten and maybe, I say maybe, we might have taken, would have been So what! he’s got diabetes. No reason for him to get away with murder. He’s manipulating you because you feel guilty.

Well there’s a revelation. A child manipulating a parent who has a big fat wad of guilt sitting on the dresser waiting to be used. We probably wouldn’t have heard it. As it turned out- as Dan got sicker we got less tangled up and more able to let go. And as we let go he got to be the man who was in there growing the whole time.

When I was running around trying to control the world he would say, slow down turbo. And you know what? It helped. I can hear him still. And it still helps.

Prompt: What have your kids taught you? or if it hasn’t happened yet what do you think it will be. And if you don’t have kids how about your students, your nieces and nephews….

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PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT BELOW WITH YOUR PIECE INCLUDING WHAT CLASS(ES) YOU'VE TAKEN AND WHEN.

IF YOU HAVE ANY TROUBLE POSTING A COMMENT, FEEL FREE TO GET IN TOUCH WITH MY ASSISTANT, CISSY: CWHITE@HEALWRITENOW.COM

Letter in Support of Just One Drop

Dear YOU:

This letter (below)  is from my dear friend the brilliant filmmaker, Laurel Chiten.

Check her out and please support her most recent film; JUST ONE DROP

I did. 

Love, Nance

Letter from Laurel Chiten

I am an independent filmmaker now working on the final stages of a new documentary film "Just One Drop" that tells the untold story of homeopathy. We have been working on this film for many years and has just launched a crowdfunding Indiegogo campaign to raise finishing funds.

 http://igg.me/at/justonedropfilm

Nancy Aronie has kindly donated a few registrations to her amazing Chilmark Writers Workshop as a "perk". So if you choose to contribute, you can get a seat in my class as a gift!  I took this workshop many years ago and loved it! Life changing. Would highly recommend it! Consider buying this for yourself, or as a gift for your family or friends!

Not only are you getting the writing workshop but you are also getting a digital download of the finished film, AND a special thank you in the end credits of the film!

Just think: you can take Nancy's workshop, be on Martha's Vineyard, help fund an important film, get a digital download of Just One Drop, a thank you in the film credits, AND a tax deduction all at the same time! How much better does it get?

Please check out our campaign, watch a reel, and consider making a tax deductible contribution and come take her class this summer. There are many other perks offered too.

Thank you!

Laurel Chiten

CEO Blind Dog Films

www.justonedropfilm.com

Prompt #3

You may have read my Twizzler addiction story with the mad Russian of Brookline and how for four years no candy has passed my lips.

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You may have made your own appointment to end one of your long held habits that hasn't served you. You may have read in admiration at how long I abstained from those red twiney rubbery things in the candy aisle of CVS and at every movie theatre across our great sugar addicted nation.

But hold your awe and let out your breath because the other shoe has dropped giving me the lesson I needed to understand how others like me with their own sets of attachments and behaviors that hurt body and soul have succumbed to temptation.

I had put on Facebook on the day Dan died for folks to please send me stories that I may not have heard of my boy. Last Thursday I got a bulky manila envelope with a gorgeous letter with two moving stories about Dan from one of his best high school buddies. Enclosed was a bag of Twizzlers. I had already had marshmallows a few months prior which I aptly called “the thin end of the wedge” so I couldn’t brag anymore about how that hypnosis had worked and how amazing I was to have stuck and held my ground.

I was ripe for what happens next. Yes I ate the whole bag of Twizzlers. Aside from being hung over the next day I got  a taste of what it must be like for people who have much greater problems that a spoonful of sugar helping the medicine go down, for people for whom the medicine is the problem.

It was interesting to see how connected raw emotions are with immediate actions that don’t have the luxury of reflection. Just feel pain... pop in a Twizzler. Feel pain... pop another. Avoid pain... pop a few more. Dull the pain/chew the sadness.

As long as I keep remembering that everything is a lesson and everyone is a teacher I can go forward.

PROMPT 3: Got any backsliding stories of your own???

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PROMPT #2

Apologies to the snow bound writers:

I'm in white sand instead of in white snow.

I'm in aqua water instead of slipping on ice dams.

I'm drinking piña coladas instead of hot ginger tea. 

I am not asking for your sympathy.

I'm asking for your words.

PROMPT: Write about your fantasy vacation or the real one.

SHARE YOUR WRITING WITH THE COMMUNITY: Please leave a comment below with your piece including what class(es) you've taken and when. If you have any trouble posting a comment, feel free to get in touch with my assistant Cissy: cwhite@healwritenow.com

Letter from Nancy

Dear Brilliant Writers All:

So the 19-year old whiz kid begins tampering with my website and I love everything he does. It’s gorgeous. It’s smart. It’s stunning.

It's …me?

Maybe.

Then he (Eli) suggests we partner up together and he will do a video every week of me telling one of my Ram Dass stories or my Eckert stories or an Alan Watts story or even one of my own escapades. Then, I’d add a prompt that I would write and get ya’ll to write.

He says we’ll charge three hundred dollars for a year subscription and he will handle all the PayPal stuff.

And the best part is - the part I totally get excited about - is that it will create the kind of writing community that I have been trying to make happen for EVER!!!!

He says people will write more if they are paying for it and they will comment more if they are paying. And I am in. Cissy is on board. Eli and I make a few videos which he makes look soooo gorgeous!!

But then I start to feel ambivalent.

How do I charge for what I was giving away free? How do I justify the switch? How do I say ‘hey everyone here’s the blog you were contributing to for nothing; now pay’?

I take a walk in Gay Head and my right brain and my left brain have a little sit down.

I keep asking myself:

Am I in business or is this my spiritual practice with a bit o profit? Do I really want more?

I love my life. I love my solitude. I could see that his plan was going to up the ante to a larger forum. More people. More workshops. More money. 

More-More-More is not where I am now.

I called Eli (as in Dagostino) and said, “I can’t do it.”

So all of those little notices saying a big surprise is coming are moot now. The child genius that he is took down the blog and changed the site. I’m keeping the visual changes and keeping the old way.

If you go to chilmarkwritingworkshop.com it’s the same - but it looks different. Better.

So thank you my darling ones for your patience.

Please - please - please contribute to the blog. Prompts resume again next week. 

I'm asking you a favor. No, I’m begging you to make comments to each other. You know how good it feels when someone flips over your words. Flip for each other. Please!

And maybe I’ll get to work with you this spring, summer or fall at a workshop. Yes???

XOXOXOXO

All my love!

Nancy

PROMPT #1

Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!!! 

I bumped into someone in Cronigs, all of us in that joyous shopping pre-storm energy. She was buying roasts and chickens and turkey burgers and I was buying heavy cream (for my coffee and my phlem support) and we exchanged anticipatory excitement about the impending white out they always promise but never deliver.

I said, “Happy baking.”She said, “What are you going to bake?”

And I said, “Nothing but I always think that snow storms give permission to eat the naughty no-nos of regular days with regular schedules with regular weather. But snow means chocolate chip cookies and blueberry muffins and apple pie,” and the more I talked the more I knew I was going to come home and bake.

I’m not a baker. I don’t measure. I never have all the ingredients.

Joel has shoveled a path for the cat and a path to the hot tub and I have carried in almost a half cord of wet wood for the stove and fire place. It’s so cozy in here. And just now writing about baking I heard myself say – “Oooh I could bake an apple pie….Ever so often your inner baker speaks. And I could actually do it if I knew  how to make a crust.”

We both cracked up.

But I will call Angela, my angel of a daughter-in-law, (who makes the best pies in the world) and she will tell me what to do and either I will go without or try it out. These kinds of risks are soul growing (and stomach stretching).

What if it turns out underneath the facade of being a writer, a teacher, a talker, a walker, a midnight stalker, I’m really a baker.I’ll keep ya’ll posted. I already have the name for my company: BAKED!

PROMPT: Your baked story!

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