Kapalua Beach Maui: One of many Beautiful Beaches
Aloha from the beautiful island of Maui! As we come to the last months of 2021 and prepare for the upcoming holidays, we pause to give thanks for all our blessings of family, friends, health and for every situation that has led us to this precious moment in time. As well-known writer Clarissa Pinkola-Estes observed recently, “you were made for these times!” As difficult as recent events have made life, including the pandemic and the ravaged state of our environment due to disrespect & unconscionable actions against Mother Earth, I share Pinkola-Estes’ belief that we have within us the will, the creativity and vision to create a future where all can live together in harmony and love. Embracing a future with such awareness and caring will require strong, balanced and compassionate actions in the world. I call this hopeful approach the Call of the Wild Woman, meaning to listen to the call from the wildish part of ourselves that understands & remembers our origins and connection to everything in nature and our kuleana, responsibility to malama the aina, care for the land. (For more Wild Women stories, myths & writing exercises: Wild Women Write: ReConnecting with the Wild Feminine.
FINDING THE MOTHER TREE
Like many others interested in nature, especially trees, I have been inspired by Susan Simard’s book “Finding the Mother Tree“ in which she scientifically demonstrates the connection between trees through their elaborate underground root system, including cooperation with fungi. Not only do the trees communicate with each other, Simard says, but they send out nutrients to any ailing trees & help care for one another! (***Film-maker Ridley Scott was also inspired by Dr. Simard’s Mother Tree & used it as a model for the magical tree in his film Avatar!)
Maui’s Famous Banyan Tree
This is the famous Lahaina, Maui’s Banyan Tree with it’s many keiki (children) growing around her. Each Christmas, the enormous Mother Tree is decorated with sparkling lights for the holiday season for all to enjoy & celebrate the gift of this beautiful tree that has survived invasions by sailors & their whaling vessels (the prison where many of these drunken, rowdy sailors were locked up stands behind the tree); until today, when tourists & locals alike gather to have their photos snapped underneath her branches & those of her extensive offspring!
Marjorie in Montmartre, Paris
WRITING NEWS
This past year of limited social get-togethers allowed me time to finish writing my memoir, something I’ve been working on off and on for 10 years, sometimes setting it aside for years at a time! As I tell writers in memoir classes, writing your memoir is a marathon, not a sprint! The working title is: Then There Was Paris: A Southern Belle Comes of Age in 70s Paris.
My mother said I used to be a nice girl; a good Christian girl that people looked up to. “What happened to you?” she asked me. This memoir answers that question.
My story describes a childhood growing up in the lingering days of the racist Jim Crow South, the impact of restrictive Southern cultural values on girls, and the debilitating effects of fundamentalist religious indoctrination. I was a true Southern Belle, Beauty Queen, demure and always smiling, aspiring to be a missionary to the heathens and disliked my mother with a vengeance. Following an early marriage at nineteen to a young military officer and the birth of two children by age twenty-one, we lived a military life that took us to remote places from Kwajalein Island in the South Pacific to the deserts of New Mexico and finally to the US Embassy in Paris.
In Paris, I discovered the radical feminism practiced by the French and became a leader in creating the first English-speaking feminist N.O.W. chapter there. After being radicalized in my views on women and the far-reaching negative effects of patriarchy, I began to discover a more authentic self, one free of racism, restrictive religious doctrines and sexual prohibitions regarding who one could love… leading to no longer calling myself a Christian, developing outright disdain for the military, to radical declarations of sexual freedom, a love affair and eventually, a crumbling marriage.
Leaving Paris after four years, and after many twists and turns, ended up in Alabama, coming full circle from where the journey had begun. Having been accused of being an unfit mother, a lesbian and marijuana smoker by my husband at a court hearing, he was awarded temporary custody of our two children. Left penniless and without my friends, life again in the South was difficult and sometimes hilarious for a feminist and a sexually free woman who no longer cared to be known as a nice girl. Along the journey to climb out of the black hole my life had become, there were many who helped me turn my life around and to live through a traumatic divorce and fight to re-gain custody of my children. The bittersweet ending comes when I was accepted to Law School and headed off to a new life in California with only my daughter!
Marjorie & Children in Paris
My memoir will be published next year! Updates and opportunity to pre-order will follow! As always, thanks for your support and friendship!
Looking for Last Minute Christmas Presents?
These colorful journals, totes and t-shirts from images designed by Denise Weaver Ross are available at Redbubble and make great holiday gifts for yourself or a writer whom you know.
CLASSES
I have been fortunate through the years to have guided many talented writers on their writer’s journey. This year I was able to Zoom and teach two successful writing courses using my writing workbooks Wild Women Write and Writes of Passage as texts. The writing and art-making in both classes was simply amazing! Here are some examples from recent Wild Women Write class:
Spirit Mask: Elizabeth Prosapio
Cauldron of Inspiration:
Rebecca Leeman
Cauldron of Inspiration:
Carey MacDonald
MAUI WRITING RETREAT:
COMING SPRING 2023
While living in New Mexico, I enjoyed facilitating Writing Retreats for many years at the Mabel Dodge-Luhan House in Taos as well as Ghost Ranch. Because I will focus on publishing my memoir Then There Was Paris in 2022, I’ve decided to push the annual writing retreat forward to the Spring of 2023. This will also give everyone time to save their money to come to Hawaii for the retreat!
New Writing Class: Jan. 16th – Mar. 27th, 2022
Are you looking for a supportive & small writing group of no more than 8 people? Do you want to improve your writing skills? Do you enjoy writing to fun & creative writing prompts? Don’t have time for writing homework? Then this class is for you.
This class that will meet 2x per month on Sundays from January to March. In past writing groups, so much good writing has sprung from writers diving into a writing prompt and spontaneously penning truly amazing stories and characters! You’ll be encouraged & given feedback on how to use dialogue, using consistent verb tenses, how to identify your own writer’s voice, how to calm your inner writing critic and how to write compelling, imaginative characters that jump out and leave us all wanting to hear more! And much, much more!
No Homework!
Cost: $245 for 6 sessions
Dates: Jan. 16, 30, Feb. 13, 27, Mar. 13, 27, 2022
Mahalo, thanks for reading this newsletter and A Hui Ho Kakou until we meet again! Stay WILD!