loss freed me and saved my life.

I was thrilled to be invited to talk today with Jen Louden about savoring and serving. You'll find that interview here. Here's an excerpt, an answer to one of Jen's delicious questions:

Loss freed me and saved my life.

It gave me my real voice, not just my “professional” voice, the one I used to write and speak in. It tore all that down. It revealed the architecture of life to me, the one we decorate and hide and clutter up. Took all that down, down to the bones of it, the rebar and concrete. It gave me a measure, a tone, a note. Like a rondo, it let me see a life in which the note “a” is repeated over and over again, but sounds different each time because it is the counterbalance to a different note (a different circumstance). So life goes like this: A, AB, AC, AD in which “A” is constant but sounds different when juxtaposed against different people, different circumstances.

Loss opened me up.

I hope you'll read the rest of our conversation, here.

I'm looking forward to continuing that conversation when Jen, Susan Piver, and I meet in Boston on September 23-24, 2011, to lead Walking into Fire, a writing retreat. Based on our successful retreat of the same name recently in Portland, Oregon, we're thrilled for the opportunity to engage with a room full of amazing human beings and writers again soon.

I would love to see you there!

[image from here]