Just Write {47}

The house is growing dark around me. I just got the small people to bed after a busy day of re-entry, all of us home from time away. Ryan and the kids went Up North to stay with Auntie Janie and I was in NYC for BlogHer ’12.

Ryan left this morning for a short work trip. He gets back on Wednesday and I leave Thursday for Kentucky. Life is normally not like this. We are not jet-setters. Well, I’m not while he is, but only because he works all over the place sometimes. Something about software.

BlogHer ’12 was so beautifully exhausting. I roomed with Ellie and Maggie and I saw so many people I love like crazy and on Saturday night one of my favorites of them wrote on my skin with a big fat marker, “Go to the love.” I had heard this the night before from a new friend. She talked about turning away from things or people that beat you up over and over and going to The Love instead. I want to look up the Hebrew translation of that and if I like how it looks and sounds, maybe it will become a real tattoo.

I over-slept on Sunday morning and rushed through a shower to go meet more lovely people for a quick bit and cab-share to the airport. I showered so fast, “go to the love” stayed up high on my chest, peeking out just a little above the curve of my t-shirt’s collar. I watched people squint to read it all day long.

Go to the love, people. Just go to it.

That’s why we do the Serenity Suite, you know. We’re in there, waiting to be the love. People show up and sometimes they’re so overwhelmed by…so many different things–being away from their kids, the size of the conference, the number of people around them, being “on” all the time and maybe even feelings of insecurity and fear and loneliness. They speak these things in that suite and then suddenly we’re all sitting in the quiet that comes after honesty and everyone is lighter for it. Then we laugh and laugh and eat sugary things. I love it there.

We say come on in, sister. You are always welcome here and we’re all the same. Come on in. We all get overwhelmed and we all need a place to run to for a breath of fresh air. That’s what it was and I’m so grateful for all the hosts and guests that mixed it up in there, bringing themselves to sit on a bed or the floor or in a row on the couch. The strangest things happen when you just come as you, you know? You learn a lot. Some of those things are not all that deep and meaningful, like how I was informed that Shaggy and Scooby are high all the time. But mostly you have the gift of perspective, of learning the details of the people who sit around you and you find out so many lovable things.

The Serenity Suite is just one part of a conference with so many good parts. I’m honored to have spent time there with so many amazing people this past weekend. If we met, please know I’m so glad we did. Thank you for coming by and making the suite all that it’s meant to be and more. I mean, I even got to hear four beautiful Canadians sing the best “Oh Canada” I’ve ever heard. They gave me goose-chill-bumps and it was awesome.

People come to the suite for a place to take a break and then they find a really good place for that and for some coffee and real conversation that changes the day and makes it even better. Sometimes it even helps the day go from hard to less hard. On the plane on the way home, as we lifted into the sky, trying to keep our ears from popping, a little girl said, “I’ll get used to this feeling.” It made me think of how we get uncomfortable and either we fight it alone or we say what’s going on. We say, My ears are popping. We get used to discomfort together.

Also. I’m so exhausted. Please send coffee. And chocolate….preferably Canadian Smarties.

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This is the 46th installment of Just Write, an exercise in free writing your ordinary and extraordinary moments. {Please see the details here.}  I would love to read your freely written words so join me and link up below. You can add the url of your post at any time. Just be sure it’s a link to your Just Write post, not to your main page. Then please link back to this post in your post so people know where to go if they’d like to join in.) (Any links not following those two guidelines will be deleted.)

Also. Please take a moment to visit someone else who has linked up! It’s a really good way to meet new writers and get inspired by the meaning behind their moments. Word?