Rhena Writes

Tag: writing

  • Keeper of all knowledge…

    Daily writing prompt
    What’s a job you would like to do for just one day?
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    … of myself. (If you’ve been following my posts, you saw that coming.)

    I’ve sometimes thought that it would be nice to be a postal delivery person. They walk a lot of miles. I enjoy walking. And I like the idea that maybe I’ll be delivering a love letter or a postcard from some far-flung destination or a homesick lament from sleep away camp. But then I remember that most mail is bills. And advertisements. And I remember how much my dog hates delivery people and that that and the weather must make their jobs very hard. I talk myself out of it.

    So maybe I’d like to be a wizard for a day. Or a bullet proof shield, able to place myself around American and Palestinian children alike. All the children, in fact. But then I remember that one day would not be enough.

    Maybe I’d like to be a fan, strong enough to blow away all the climate change (but not so strong as to throw us back into an ice age). I think it would take less than a day. But is a fan really a job? Or just an object?

    I think I’d like to be a people pleaser and when I say people, I mean myself. I’d like to be a greeter like at Walmart — but just greeting myself, continually all day. Asking myself if I need any help and then giving it to myself.

    For 24 hours, I’d like to be a park ranger. I’d like to be an elder. An ancestor. I’d like to be a child again, imagining like it was my job. I’d like to be a swimmer.

    I’d like, for 24 hours, to be a connector, like of ideas. Did you ever notice that both Joel from The Last of Us and Hopper from Stranger Things are father figures in fraught relationships with super-powered teenage girls and a variation of the name Elle (Ellie and Eleven) AND they both have biological daughters named Sarah who died? I would like to connect these sorts of ideas for people because clearly SOMETHING is going on here and I cannot be the only person who is thinking about it.

    For 24 hours, I’d like to be a weaver. An illustrator. A singer and musician. A storyteller. A shaman. A healer. I’d like a day to heal the world or at least the little patch of nature outside my back door. That would probably be enough for me. I’m no one’s burden, after all. I’m no one’s savior. Are we talking about jobs? Or skills?

    If I had a day to be any job, I’d like be the keeper of the flame.

    **********

    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. 

  • Once again: me, myself, & these writers.

    Daily writing prompt
    List the people you admire and look to for advice…
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    I admire myself and I look to myself for advice. I’ve been through some stuff and I’m unlike anyone else in the world, so I’m the best person to look to for advice. No one else understands me as well as I understand myself.

    Just earlier today, I was feeling rather anxious. I asked myself what I needed and then, based on the answer, I sat down and wrote in my journal for a while to sort and sift through my anxiety and other feelings. By the end, I came to a sort of piece of advice for myself. This advice was uniquely tailored to me and this situation and yet, it’s something that I will be able to return to again and again when I feel similarly anxious in the future. And maybe at some point I’ll be able to share this advice through my writing and it will be helpful to someone else.

    I also admire and seek advice from a great many writers. Here are some blog posts I’ve written about books that have helped me over the past year or so.

    Hood Wellness by Tamela J. Gordon

    The Man Who Could Move Clouds by Ingrid Rojas Contreras

    Bad Indians by Deborah A Miranda

    Remember Who The F*ck You Are by Candyss Love

    Black Liturgies by Cole Arthur Riley

    Cancer Journals by Audre Lorde

    I will be writing about more books by writers that I admire and from whose wisdom and advice I’ve benefited, learned, and grown. If you’re interested in more book recommendations, please subscribe!

    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. 

  • A map towards myself

    Daily writing prompt
    What gives you direction in life?
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    I am a cartographer, constantly looking for the streets and paths, coastlines and rock formations that both define me and are markers to the paths into a deeper understanding of myself. All roads lead to me and I’m currently bouncing between three often intersecting passageways on my journey to myself: body, mind, and spirit.

    Body: I listen to my body. Here’s how. I lie or sit in relative stillness or whatever type of stillness my body is asking for. I focus on my breath. The depth. The texture. The smoothness or bumpiness. I do this without judgment. My breath communicates a lot to me about the state of my body. Where is there tension? I center my body.

    Here’s an example from my morning walk with my dog of prioritizing my body. It’s very hot here right now. In spite of my light clothes and my hat and it still being relatively early in the day, I was sweating and uncomfortable as I walked along the sunny sidewalk to the nearby park. I was looking forward to walking through the cool freshly cut grass in a shady spot of the field. There was a couple already at the park with their dog off leash. Past mornings, when I have seen an off-leash dog in the park, I have gone another way even if that other way is less comfortable or convenient for me. But today, my body was insistent, craving the shady spot on the field, so I continued on. I listened to my body. There was no run in with the other dog or her owner’s. My dog and I got to enjoy the cool air of the part of the field lined with trees. The people there watched me the entire time I was walking through the field, but I just kept doing what I was doing. And here’s what I learned: I am allowed to take up space with my body. I am allowed to enjoy a walk through the park. And I can trust myself and my body.

    Mind: My mind is curious. I keep it engaged with reading and learning. And lately, I’ve been learning more about my mind by engaging more actively with my sleeping dreams. Here’s how I do it.

    1. I prime my mind both during the day and right before I go to sleep, telling myself that I am going to remember my dreams.
    2. I keep a notebook and pen next to my bed.
    3. When I wake up — whether that’s in the middle of the night — or in the morning, I jot down a few notes about any dreams that I remember.
    4. Later in the day, I use the notes to write a more detailed description of the dream. I focus on both the images and the feelings. And then I free write about what the dream is revealing to me about me. It’s both a very informative and liberating practice. And it turns out, I’m pretty fascinating.

    There are variations to this practice including priming myself to lucid dream (in other words to realizing that I’m dreaming and to consciously control the dream) and to posing a question or a problem to my dream self. It’s pretty remarkable the answers and the solutions that have come up in my dreaming state.

    Spirit: My body has created life and now I offer my spirit opportunities to be creative too. I write. I make music. I create art. I create moments and myself too. I daydream. And I return to my body, my breath, my dreams. Yes, I know that those are pathways I’ve mentioned above under “body” and “mind”. But these three parts are always connected, like a three-legged stool creating a solid base for the center of 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. My writing is offered freely here and 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.

  • 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.

  • Right now. This is a risk.

    Daily writing prompt
    When is the last time you took a risk? How did it work out?
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    Every time I write, whether it’s pen to paper or hands to keyboard, I’m taking a risk. I know. It doesn’t seem like it. I’m sitting in the comfort of my own house. I’m doing something (writing) I’ve been doing every day for the last month and which I’ve been studying for much, much longer. It should be easy, right? Low-risk? Safe even?

    Nope.

    It’s time and energy towards something that’s seemingly frivolous. What if I’m misunderstood? What if I run out of ideas? What if the creativity spring runs dry? What if I wasted it all on this one post? What if the time I’m taking towards doing this would be better off spent raising chickens or cleaning my kitchen? What if a meteor hits my house right as I’m sitting here? What if I develop carpal tunnel syndrome from all this typing?

    What if I die a Taurus? What if I die on purpose?
    What if it wasn’t even worth it? What if I’m walkin’ alone?
    What if I choke on this Slurpee? What if I make it big?
    What if my car exploded
    While I’m casually pumping the gas and smokin’ a cig?
    What if my life was loaded?     (Lyrics from Doechii’s Stanka Pooh)

    It’s putting myself, my thoughts, ideas words, images out there. Judgement and ridicule waiting just around each corner. Or they could just collapse out there in the world, unseen, unknown, unrecognized?

    But there are worse things. Like what?

    Playing it safe. I could just go clean the kitchen. I could just stand up from this desk and, well, quite literally do any number of other things: go for a walk, read, drive to the beach, buy a plane ticket to the Maldives, take a nap on the couch, blow dandelion seeds, steal a car, etc… And, yes, all of those have risks involved.

    I could do what I was doing before, the low-risk, safe option: writing and submitting that writing for someone else (a publisher or editor or judge) to “approve” my writing, to decide it was worthy of publication. But in the end, that “safe” option was much more damaging to me, to my emotional health. I allowed each rejection to be a blow to my self image, my self worth. I let them dim my light.

    Finally, I decided to stop playing it safe, to stop asking for approval from other people, and to start saying “yes” to myself. I started this blog. Each time I hit publish, it’s a risk. Someone could “steal” my words or twist my ideas. I have just enough experience in the world to know that there are ways in which what I publish here could be used against me. But I don’t spend too much time thinking about that, doing risk assessments, or trying to protect myself and keep everything one hundred percent safe. If I did that, I’d be trapped in an endless cycle of perfectionism, double checking, making sure I was pleasing everyone else all the time. I know where that cycle kept me: in silence.

    Instead, what I do is I trust. I trust the source of my creativity, I trust my lived experiences and, above all else, I trust myself. I breath. And I smash that button: publish.

  • 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.

  • Read, Write, Redefine

    Daily writing prompt
    Write about a time when you didn’t take action but wish you had. What would you do differently?
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    I wish that twenty years ago, I had decided to read, write, and redefine on my own rather than going to an MFA program in creative writing.

    I learned recently that James Baldwin read through an entire library on his way to becoming the writer that he became. I wish I had done something similar. I certainly read a lot during my time in the creative writing program, sometimes as many as five books a week. But these were chosen by professors and instructors who were already, more or less, part of the literati. There were few women writers that we read. There were even fewer writers of color. For me, I was reading for the class I was in, to pass or, sometimes, to try to “impress” the instructor. I wish I had been reading for myself. I grew so used to reading for classes that once I was done with my MFA, it was many years before I started to read for pleasure. Even now, I sometimes have the thought while I’m reading that I’ll have to summarize or answer questions about it or respond to the writing in some way that will be acceptable to an instructor. I have to remind myself that I’m reading for only one person now: me.

    A similar thing happened to me with regard to my writing in my MFA program. All of the writing I was doing was for an audience outside of myself. I spent a lot of time and energy on trying to get it “right” and almost no time exploring, having fun, thinking my own thoughts. I was fixated on being a “good” writer, on receiving praise so that I never focused on what my writing was and was not doing for me. (Praise that I was never going to get.)

    At the time, I fell for the idea that I needed an MFA in order to write, in order to be “successful” and in order to have a community of writers. I thought that the degree would be a stamp of approval that would open up the world of writing and publishing. In other words, I’d fallen for an elitist way of thinking: hook, line, and sinker. I worked while I was in the program (three research fellowships) in exchange for tuition reduction. This was less time on my own writing. I spent hours and hours each work reading and responding to my classmate’s work. This, too, was time away from my own writing. And, honestly, it sometimes feels like that sort of workshop set up is actually just having students doing the professor’s work. I rarely received feedback from instructors that was truly, well, instructive. Each of them seemed to have an image in their minds of what was “good” writing and I either wrote towards that, earning accolades by the second or third submission when I’d decoded what they were looking for or, well, not.

    For one of my admissions essays I wrote, in all my earnestness, that I was looking for a “community” of writers. I didn’t realize that this was just me parroting what MFA programs claim to not only offer but exclusively so. I truly believed that these elite institutions were the only place that I could get support in my creativity. How naive! I’m sitting now, at my desk, with music on my phone, a scented candle lit, the sunlight hitting a handmade vase of flowers just so, the breeze playing with the grass and shadows playing with the outside my window. And all those many years ago, I thought that I had to climb into an ivory tower in order to access a creative community and the support I thought needed. Like I said: naive.

    So the last action I wish I had taken was: redefine. What do I wish I had redefined twenty years ago? Success, community, expression, support, reading, and, perhaps most of all, writing. I wish I had sat a minute and thought about what I really wanted and needed and that I had had the courage at the time to just give those things to myself rather than looking outwards to these institutions to give them to me. Well, here’s to hoping that it’s not too late to give those things to myself now.