Rhena Writes

Category: Memoir

  • Myself.

    Daily writing prompt
    Who would you like to talk to soon?
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    I wrote last week about three books about dreams and dreaming and an experience I had with learning more about myself and creative problem solving through my dreams.

    I’ve been writing down my dreams when I remember them. From time to time, I’ll think about what I want to dream about and remind myself to try to write them down after I turn out the light and as I’m falling asleep.

    I’ve wanted to lucid dream and I’ve tried a few practices towards that goal. A few times a day, I checked in to ask myself, “am I dreaming?” The goal here is to prime my brain to ask myself that question in a dream state. I also read that one way that people lucid dream is that they prime their brains to recognize that they are in a dream. Things are often “off” in dreams and if we can recognize that things are not quite right, then we can recognize that we are in a dream and assume control of the dream. As for the things that are commonly off in dream (apparently, according to what I read) is that dreamers are in buildings that no longer exist, they are conversing with people who had already died, or their hands aren’t quite right — they might have too many fingers or not enough or they might just look a bit wrong. (Apparently, hands are so complex that we have a hard time recalling them in all of their detail.)

    I often dream of my childhood home, which has since been torn down. I thought that this was the perfect way to get myself into lucid dreaming. And I tried to prime my brain to remember that when I see that home, it’s not real and therefore must be a dream. Several mornings, when I wrote down my dreams from the night before, I described dreaming of my childhood home followed by the question, “Why didn’t I recognize that was a dream???” I was getting a bit frustrated.

    So I set aside all of that. I didn’t really set aside the “goal” of lucid dreaming but, rather, I decided to trust that my mind was doing what it needed to do whilst dreaming regardless of whether I remembered or not and regardless of whether or not I knew I was dreaming. I still was writing down dreams when I remembered them, but I wasn’t letting it bother me when I didn’t. I was confident that I was still dreaming. I was confident that my mind was still doing what it needed to do to take care of me regardless of whether or not I could put the experiences into language.

    In other words, I let go.

    This letting go, this distinct feeling of ungrasping, this trust in myself …. all of that is central to what happened to me next.

    Last night, I dreamt that I was in the driveway of my home. There was a lot going on. Different people visiting, all these cars parked all over the place, more people arriving with camping chairs. I was getting progressively annoyed by all of this. In the dream, I was talking to a few people. As I’ve mentioned before, it doesn’t really matter who these people are in waking life. They are all dream representations of different parts of my personality or different things on my mind. I was talking to one person and suddenly I looked up at my house. We renovated our house a few years ago but in the dream, the house looked like it did PRE renovation.

    I started to say that to the person I was talking to, “look, my house looks….” and then I’m pretty sure I gasped in the dream. “That means I’m dreaming!” I said. Even though I was dreaming I still said “excuse me” to the person I was talking to and then I launched myself into the air and started to fly.

    Especially when I was younger, I’d often have flying dreams, but they involved a fair amount of effort. And I was often flying to get away from something threatening. In this dream, it was completely effortless and exhilarating. I wasn’t trying to escape. I was simply being.

    In fact, I think that I was SO excited that my excitement woke me up.

    Dreams in general feel like I am speaking to myself. I’m having conversations with different parts of myself often towards getting to know them all better and, as I mentioned before, often towards some sort of problem solving.

    Prior to this experience, I wasn’t even aware that I felt that part of me was unavailable to myself. I think that this is a very western freudian belief system — that we have a “deeper” self that is actually controlling us. In other words, this whole idea of repressing our true selves and feelings.

    I woke up realizing that this isn’t true. It was as if this dream dug out and released this false belief system that had been implanted in there by western “culture”.

    Last night, my lucid dream felt like a “break through” in the sense that I can talk to myself, my WHOLE self without words or language. I experienced a sense of wholeness in the lucid dream, a feeling that has carried over into my waking self.

    I am not a mystery to myself.

    ****************************

    If you enjoyed what you’ve read here, please check out other posts. Likes, shares, and reposts help get my writing out to where it needs to be. I’m also grateful for financial support. Even though I post about daily, I only send out a once a week summary email to subscribers. Thank you!

  • My body, mind, and soul, of course.

    Daily writing prompt
    What personal belongings do you hold most dear?
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    Deep breath. Come into this moment.

    What else needs to be written about this?

    I suppose I could write about how not to be attached to objects and possessions. I could consider whether or not my body, mind, and soul actually fall under the category of “personal belongings.” Certainly, I’ve had experiences where it’s clear that people around me do not think any of the three belong to me.

    But I cannot dwell in those moments.

    So I won’t.

    I could carry on writing here, sharing my ideas and thoughts. Offering my words up on the silver platter that is this platform.

    I could dig and excavate myself in search of something worthy of sharing. A bold statement or truth. Or perhaps a particularly poetic turn of phrase.

    But I will not do that work.

    Because if I do that work, then it will undermine the truth.

    The truth of my value. The truth of my worth. The truth of my being just by being.

    I am my own most valuable possession not because of what I can offer. But because I am.

    *******************

    If you enjoyed what you’ve read here, please check out other posts. Likes, shares, and reposts help get my writing out to where it needs to be. I’m also grateful for financial support. Even though I post about daily, I only send out a once a week summary email to subscribers. Thank you!

  • Those who ignored, disregarded,counted me out

    Daily writing prompt
    Share a story about someone who had a positive impact on your life.
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    Many upon a many a time … I was sharing something that I was excited and passionate about. Many upon a many a time, I was ignored. Or disregarded. Or told I was wrong and told that I’d never get it right. Maybe there was laughter, the cold kind. Sometimes there was a simple turning away. Sometimes there was a red pen, the words, “no it doesn’t”, an interruption.

    I’m not going to pretend that those moments didn’t hurt. They did. A chilly shot of the realization that this person couldn’t give me what I needed in that moment. But brief hurts were necessary to learn what I needed, to learn how to ease the pain or, better, replace it with joy. I had to learn how to warm myself up.

    Now I’ve learned that it’s those people who missed out.

    I learned, from them, how to care for myself, how to validate myself. And perhaps most importantly: how to see myself.

    The idea that “I can’t rely on anyone else” sounds cynical without the follow up of, “I can rely on myself.” And that’s what I’ve learned to be able to do. It’s not just relying on myself for material needs but for emotional needs too. I can’t harbor ill will towards these people. It was their actions that revealed to me just how awesome I am, after all.

    One day last, I was in the waiting room of the cancer center not too long after I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I knew that a mastectomy was possibly in the cards for me. Another woman, a bit older than me, walked past me to her seat and I noticed that she had one breast. The top she was wearing made it very obvious: it was a stretchy knit with horizontal stripes. In other words, she wasn’t doing anything to disguise her mastectomy. She looked healthy and strong. She looked like she was just going about her daily business.

    Over the months since then, I’ve thought about that woman often. And I still feel, at times, a little bit uncomfortable with my new body. I worry that I’m going to make other people uncomfortable or that someone is going to ask me questions that I don’t feel prepared to answer. Still, I have to go out in the world. And so I think about that woman in the waiting room and how I didn’t even have to exchange words with her. Just her presence, being out in the world without apology makes me feel like I can do it too.

    Today, as I was walking my son to school, I noticed another woman doing a double take when she saw my chest. I started to reach for my shirt to straighten it out and make it less obvious. But then I remembered the woman in the waiting room, just going about her business and also that I had more important things, like chatting with my son to do. Thinking about the woman who was surprised by my uneven chest as I was walking home, I thought that the look on her face probably mirrored mine when I saw the woman wearing the striped shirt in the waiting room. And so I decided that perhaps the woman who was looking at my chest this morning maybe also was recently diagnosed or has a loved one who was diagnosed. Maybe me being out in the world without a breast reconstruction, without really trying to hide my lopsidedness, looking relatively healthy and strong … maybe my presence gave her a little spark of hope in a dark time. Just as the woman in the waiting room passed her candle flame on to me, I hope that I’m able to pass it on to other women.

    And so we carry on. One light at a time.

    ************

    If you enjoyed what you’ve read here, please check out other posts. Likes, shares, and reposts help get my writing out to where it needs to be. I’m also grateful for financial support. 

  • Free your mind…

    Daily writing prompt
    What does freedom mean to you?
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    …and the rest will follow. — En Vogue, Free Your Mind

    Emancipate yourself from mental slavery

    None but ourselves can free our minds.

    –Bob Marley, Redemption Song

    After reading the daily prompt, I was thinking about different song lyrics that spoke to freedom. A few crossed my mind and I decided I would put them in my post, but first I wanted to listen to the music in my music player. If nothing else, to double check that I had the lyrics correct. But also just because I like these songs and wanted to listen to them.

    I opened up my music player on my computer and everything looked different. Well, not everything, but just enough that I couldn’t figure out how to search for specific songs, something that I’d done just a day ago. Unfamiliar. I was lost and frustrated. I wanted the system to work the way that I was used to, the way that I had expected it to. And it wasn’t.

    I was internally raging at the designers who made this music player, who changed it so often as to make it impossible for me to keep up who made it so NOT intuitive.

    And behind that, I was raging at myself. Annoyed that I wasn’t able to keep up with rapidly changing technology. Regretting that over the years I’ve sold off all of my CDs. It was so easy back then when I could just find the album I wanted and pop it in the CD player. Past me should have tried harder to keep everything the same for future me. Arrrgh!

    I know. It’s ridiculous. Take a breath.

    Because now me actually doesn’t want to have stacks and stacks of CDs to store and maintain. (No matter how satisfyingly familiar the clack clack of jewel case against jewel case sounds, no matter how much I relish unfolding the liner notes.) Present me really, really enjoys the convenience of being able to pull up music.

    No. This internal rage was something else. It was me demanding that I “get it right.” I’ve listened to both songs, Free Your Mind and Redemption Song, perhaps dozens of times in my life. And yet, still, part of me felt that in order to write about them properly today, I needed to listen to them again. In other words, my lived experience is never enough. Even for my own blog.

    Where does this come from?

    Something that someone once said to me popped into my head. I was in high school and I was wearing a new dress. This person came up to me and said, “I liked your dress until I saw that it had pockets.”

    At the time, I didn’t realize what an odd thing that was to say. And I suspect it’s because when day after day, people are commenting (overtly and covertly) on your clothes, the way you look, how you sound, and your body in general, one comment more comment doesn’t particularly warrant attention in the moment.

    But now-me can see how truly strange it is that someone might comment on someone else’s clothes in this way with an air of taking offense that a dress might have pockets and that said-pockets might be used and useful.

    This was far before the “it has pockets!” meme. Perhaps it is was this meme that made me realize just how “out of pocket” that comment was. (Yes. I did just have to write that.)

    So how does all of this relate to freedom and what it means to me? Some days, it feels like I’m caught under this massive pile of these sorts of comments and experiences that make me question myself. Comments from teachers and professors that infer that I’m not trying hard enough or that I’m not enough; implicitly messaging of the society that I live in that disregards bodies that look and behave like mine; the culture of comparison and competition that seeps in everywhere. It takes a great deal of my mental, physical, emotional energy to overcome these comments and expectations.

    But increasingly, I’ve been able to see where I’m getting a helping hand. People who wear dresses are suddenly on-line espousing the benefits of pockets and are genuinely excited about something so simple. This provides the ammunition I need to shoot down the “I like the ‘I liked your dress until’ comment.” Or better yet, to just ignore it. Focus, instead, on how much my daughters enjoy pockets. I’ll read a line from a book and it will feel like the writer reached out and lifted one of these expectations I’ve been living under. (As with Cole Arthur Riley’s reminder, “I am no one’s burden. I am no one’s savior.”)

    Or, yes, sometimes it’s a song. As with En Vogue’s Free Your Mind, “Before you can read me, you got to learn how to see me. I said.”

    In the end, it comes down to me. It’s, in part, up to me to write myself down so that there’s something there to be read, something to be seen.

    In other words, as Bob Marley asks, “Won’t you help to sing these songs of freedom?”

    ***********************

    If you enjoyed what you’ve read here, please check out other posts. Likes, shares, and reposts help get my writing out to where it needs to be. I’m also grateful for financial support. 

  • …making self into its own new religion…

    Daily writing prompt
    Do you have a quote you live your life by or think of often?
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    “For how else can the self become whole save by making self into its own new religion?” Audre Lorde, New York City, 1970

    This is the quote I wrote on one of the first pages of (one of) my 2025 journal/ notebook. It’s a hard question to internalize into a mind and soul full of demands to be selfLESS. It begs the question: How can one be less oneself? Or more importantly, why would one want to be less than oneself?

    I do not.

    How does one make self into its own new religion?

    I wrote a bit about this here in this blog post: Me! Me! Me! Me! Me!

    And I wrote a bit about how important Audre Lorde’s writing has been to me here in this blog post: Tomorrow, I Will Learn to Whether I Will Become an Archer.

    Yesterday, I wrote about my holidays and posted rather late in the day. I’m reposting it here because it’s connected to this quote about making the self into its own new religion. Celebrate This Breath and Then the Next.

    I’m sitting here trying to figure out how I can write a longer post on this topic. Why? There on no word counts here. This post will not be graded or assessed in any way. There’s no one watching over what I write and telling me “not enough!” Well, except for me.

    So I have to dig deeper. What do I want? Do I want to have a longer post? Do I have more to write about this topic at the moment? I must be quiet and listen to that deep, deep inner voice: the self. What do I want? What do I need? I need rest. I’d really like to read a little bit. I’m in the middle of two books that I’m really enjoying right now. And I’m rather hungry, so I’d like to get some food. And I’d like to get a few sentences written in a few other projects. I’d like to play the guitar. And I will do all of those things at some point today. None of these things feel like they are particularly selfish, even though they place my self (my needs and wants) at the center. And nowhere is my deeper self asking me to write more in this post. So I won’t.

  • Celebrate this breath. And then the next.

    Daily writing prompt
    What is your favorite holiday? Why is it your favorite?
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    The trunks of banana trees, sliced into thick rounds, make for the perfect floating lantern. The bigger ones can be loaded up with flowers, incense, a candle, coins, and candy, (along with any manner of spiritual detritus that one might want to send away) and still remain buoyant once they are placed on the surface of the water. These gifts are for the Water Goddess. Children wait further down river to retrieve the money and sweets perhaps in her stead. My guess is that witnessing the joy and exuberance the children experience in the water is the real gift to the Goddess. Well, it was a gift to me anyway when I got to partake in Loy Krathong in my father’s hometown many years ago.

    The paper lanterns, the ones that float upward into the sky are lifted by the heat of the candle inside. They cannot bear the weight of so many offerings, but wishes and blessings in the form of words can be written on the paper before launching them into the night sky. And the hope, of course, is that they do not land in a dry patch of forest or a thatch rooftop and cause a fire. Unlikely, of course, as this of Loy Krathong is celebrated at the end of rainy season in Thailand while everything is still wet.

    During the day, there are performances, dancing and singing, likely a parade. There is a fair, too, with food and vendors.

    Or at least, that was what I remember from the year that I got to celebrate Loy Krathong in Thailand. The floating lanterns — both in the sky and on the river — are beautiful. I think now the whole thing would be considered very instragram-able. I feel lucky to have been able to partake before instagram, to have the memory of launching my own floating lantern into the river that used to come all the way up to the very back door of where my grandparents lived. I can’t really say why it’s important to me or significant that my memories of this holiday are from before Instagram but somehow it is.

    One year, as a child growing up in DC, we went down to float lanterns on the reflecting pool between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. Of course, they weren’t carried away on the current. That we had to retrieve them made the purpose of the ritual — to send away our bad luck — a little less poignant. And it was much colder in DC in November than in Thailand. Trust me: no children were wading into the reflecting pool to retrieve floating coins and candy. Still, it was lovely. And perhaps, in retrospect, it brought home to me the sacrifices that immigrant communities make especially when attempting to hold on to something of our ancestral homes.

    One of the things I love most about holidays like Loy Krathong is that they are tied to the seasons and the earth. Although I haven’t really lived in a culture that celebrates it as its own holiday, I love winter solstice. I love summer solstice too. Many years ago, I visited Norway in June. The long hours of sunlight were beautiful. (And, also, yes, at times a little eerie and disconcerting.) On the flip side, every year, I find winter solstice unexpectedly cozy. Something inside of me (maybe my Norwegian ancestry?) wants me to acknowledge each of these special dates, turning points on our solar calendars. Is it possible to celebrate a holiday alone or is this something that must be done communally?

    This question of what is my favorite holiday called forth these vivid memories of the few times I got to celebrate Loy Krathong. Still, I didn’t get to writing this blog post until rather late in the day compared to when I usually respond the daily prompt. My normal routine was disrupted by a doctor’s appointment and other parenting and household tasks in addition to the fatigue of radiation that I’m still experiencing. I’m glad that in between these chores, I had the memories of lanterns, bobbing along the river current and floating on the night air, to call upon. At the same time, I cannot say that Loy Krathong is my favorite holiday. Certainly, some of my favorite holiday memories are of this festival of water and light, but I do not celebrate this regularly enough in my current life to call it my favorite.

    And I feel this ambiguity particularly on a day like today when I was busy but also very much felt like a patient, very much still in the midst of dealing with cancer. A blood draw. Drugs. Pain. Fatigue. I’m painting a miserable picture here. But that’s not my intent. Or it’s only part of my intent. Because in between these moments of being poked and prodded and even within the pain and discomfort, I have to find a reason and a way to celebrate. I cannot wait for the full moon of the twelfth lunar month. I cannot wait for summer solstice. I cannot even wait for this weekend. I have to find the holiday, the reason to celebrate in each moment. Each breath. And so I do.

  • Yes. I’ve been camping.

    Daily writing prompt
    Have you ever been camping?
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    … and I’d do it again, but only if my kids really wanted to go camping with me. I enjoy the comforts of my bed, a nearby bathroom and toilet, the climate control, the absence of bugs.

    Don’t get me wrong, there are certain things about camping that I still really enjoy: the simplicity, all the little gadgets and gear, a camp fire, setting up a little patch of space to make it your own, even if it’s just as big as a sleeping bag, the night sky.

    I mentioned before that I went to some very bougie schools. One of them had an outdoor education program on a few acres of land next to Shenandoah National Park. It was pretty bare bones: platform tents with cots, outhouses, a basic shower house. But there was a fully functional kitchen and a classroom building both of which had electricity and running water. Each year, we’d go stay there for up to a week with our classmates and teachers. I spent a few summers there working as a counselor.

    Once, much later on, I went camping for one night with a group of friends. It was much more rustic than that. We basically carried some blankets and beer through a stream and into the woods not too far from where some of them lived. It was nice, but in the morning, I was aching and sore, maybe even slightly feverish. One of the friends we were with had spent a good portion of time living in a jungle in Southeast Asia. He was a refugee and his life was less “camping” and more “surviving” and I assume that this version of staying out overnight in the forest probably looked pretty cushy from his point of view. My whole body ached. “You’re not used to this,” he said by way of explanation as to why I felt sick. And he was right.

    The one time I had come even close to the way he had lived in the jungle, I went to visit an army camp in the jungle on the Thai-Burmese border. For me, the hike up the mountain was difficult. At the top, there were a few bamboo and wood buildings, similar to the ones in the refugee camp where I’d been teaching. I was given a room to myself while the soldiers shared a communal one. I was the only woman at the base at the time. Tired from the walk, I slept well even with just the bare-bones accommodations of a few blankets on the floor. But that wasn’t really camping.

    I’ve taken my kids car camping. They enjoy all the coziness of sleeping together in a family tent where they can explore the myriad zippers and pockets, consider how best to set up their own spaces. And the s’mores too. One time, my daughter carried around the bag of marshmallows the whole time, as if it was a comforting stuffed animal. I think she was rather shocked when we eventually ripped open the bag and roasted the contents over the fire.

    No matter how flat the ground, it always seemed like the few times we went camping with the kids, we’d end up having shifted, rolled, and slid through the night. I felt like the princess and the pea, only it would be a rock or two that I inevitable end up on top of and would feel even through the camping mats. I suppose that enough of these sore and achy mornings and the idea of camping has lost its appeal. Or maybe I am a bit of a princess.

    Over the past year, I’ve had many nights when aches and pains from chemotherapy, surgery, and radiation have disrupted my sleep. I’ve been grateful to have a bathroom (and painkillers) so close by. I spent a small fortune on various pillows and bedding in different shapes and sizes for maximum nighttime comfort. So for right now, I’m glad I’m not sleeping on a forest floor.

    But maybe, JUST maybe… I can begin to imagine a time when my body feels well enough that sleeping directly under the stars, even with a rock in my back, will be all the comfort it needs.

  • The shrug emoji is my fave

    Daily writing prompt
    What are your favorite emojis?
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    There was a time that I convinced myself that emojis were not an effective way to communicate. Yeah. I was probably a bit of a snob. More than a bit. I believed that complete words were more effective. I was awfully precious about the power of written language. But also I felt I owed the world and everyone in it. (Well, except myself.) Text me a question or thought? I’m going to respond. And I’m going to respond thoroughly and completely. I’m going to consider every single eventuality and variation embedded in the question and my response. It was exhausting.

    It’s not that I use emojis all the time now but I’ve come to appreciate them. It’s probably the influence of my kids. It’s hard to hate on anything that brings them so much joy. Parenthood changes a person. Or at least it changed me.

    Back to the shrug emoji. Maybe I like it because I’m Gen X. We’ve always been characterized as the aloof, apathetic generation. And maybe my love of the shrug is born of that. If it is that, there’s an element of “giving them what they want” in my usage of it. In other words you (the older generation) characterized us as being apathetic, so that’s what I’m going to give you. I’m not going to waste my time trying to convince you that I and my entire generation are more than what you’ve reduced us to. Instead, I’m going to enjoy simply being. I have nothing to prove to you. And if you interpret that as apathy, so be it. There’s nothing to be done about that.

    The shrug is more than just apathy anyway. I had the realization recently that there’s immense power in the words, “I don’t know.” I used to feel like I had to be everything to everyone. I had to always know the answers. I had to have the right words at all times. The shrug absolves me of all of that in the same way that “I don’t know” does. I’ve taken to just saying those words, even in response to questions as seemingly basic as, “how do you feel?” I’ve absolved myself of always having to have a response to that question. To all questions, in fact. I think that this kind of behavior is sometimes called “stonewalling” and it may be considered, in some circles, anti-social. And if me centering myself above the questioning of others is anti social, then so be it.

    In other words: 🤷🏻‍♀️

  • Fave discussion topic: me, myself, and I.

    Daily writing prompt
    What topics do you like to discuss?
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    I used to pretend that I didn’t like to talk about myself. It seemed, at the time, more polite. I’d act like I enjoyed talking about the other person, politics, the news, art, books, science, whatever topic the other person was interested in. I’m very good at listening very intently — or at least giving the appearance of doing as much — and asking all the questions to keep the conversation going towards the other person.

    I can see now that that was all an act. At the time, I truly thought that was who I was: someone able to hold everyone else’s stories and interests. The truth is that I was carving out bits and pieces of myself to make room for everyone else. The end result is that I reached middle age barely knowing myself.

    They say it’s better late than never. And honestly, I think I started to realize this just in time. Somewhere inside of me, there’s a little spark of myself, my true self, not the mask, not the illusion I created to please everyone else. But a spark is all that’s needed to create a flame and then a fire. And so I add some dry kindling (paper will do for these early stages) and blow gently. For now, even the exhalation of breath through my nose is enough. But soon, I will purse my lips and pull from deep within my lungs. I’ll push out air and form words through my throat, my tongue and teeth. These will join together to sentences and paragraphs. And each one is part of me. And the spark will become a flame and soon a fire, fed by my own care and nurturing of myself. I will discuss myself and in doing so, I will also grow myself, the same self that I unwittingly dismissed in favor of something else, outside of me, for all those years.

    And the flame is me and it grows stronger each time I speak of myself to myself. And is soon able to consume and enjoy any topic, relating it all back to myself which grows stronger and takes up more and more space. Expansive. Steady. Whole.

  • The risks of living and writing.

    Daily writing prompt
    Describe a risk you took that you do not regret.
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    I do not regret anything that was a risk. The only things that I do regret are the decisions I made that involved no risk at all, that were the easy or the safe way to go. I wrote yesterday about one of my more obvious regrets that involved very little risk: attending an MFA in creative writing. The bigger risk would have been to trust myself and go it “alone” without the so-called support of a large institution.

    This followed on the heels of a different risk that I took that I do not regret: volunteering as a teacher in Karenni Refugee Camp on the Thai-Burma border. I’ve written a bit about my experiences there here and here.

    Some of the reasons why it was a risk was that it wasn’t strictly legal for non-refugees to be living there. And the job didn’t really come with the dressings of a job in the west: a contract, insurance, union rep, HR, running water, etc…. I wouldn’t really leave with references for my next job.

    Today, I’m still trying to sort out how I can write about my time there, how the risks involved barely register now compared to how I grew from being there. I wrote my whole creative writing thesis on the topic of my time there and some history of Karenni people. And I’ve tried to shop that writing around a bit. I’ve written a few things (here) about it that have been published.

    Ironically, I think that the in moving and teaching in the camp, I took the bigger risk and I have no regrets about it. Even though I was often “confined” to my house (concerns that the refugees would get in trouble with local authorities for “harboring” a foreigner), I felt a great expansiveness and even freedom. I felt that I could be present to myself in those moments. It was trying to return to the states and live more safely that I regret. “Safe” means small, narrow, confined. In the camp, I wrote on occasion, but not nearly as much as I did when I returned to the States and entered my MFA program. The difference was that my writing in the camp was just for myself. There was no judgement involved, just expression. Not so when I was studying writing.

    I hope that in this blog, I find more ways to write about my time in Thailand and specifically in the refugee camp in ways that feel expansive and freeing and, yes, maybe even a little risky. No. A lot risky.