This turned out to be a productive and therapeutic process, although it took me about 17 days instead of 10 or 11, and although I’m not an Actor by profession. Indeed, I’m always hard pressed to answer when asked what my profession is, since career has always appeared for me embedded within ever-changing contexts of opportunities and interests that arise, often in contrast to whatever it is I am seeking. In the last decade, career has centered around research and writing, but even then, not in a straightforward way.

                                                          (me acting, sort of)

I took the Actor’s Challenge as an ‘artistic activity’ challenge and found the format of the program – which includes a central question (this time about ‘power’) every day, meditation, timed and un-timed writings, creative expression, physical activity, and giving – deeply satisfying. I’ve participated in and facilitated online retreat type programs before, and this measured against those very well in terms of inspiring long-term habit formation.

Plus, it came at just the right time.

More than half way through the program, already hooked into the practice, the US election arrived; most of my feelings displaced themselves for safe keeping while my intellect worked to catch up. I didn’t do the work on the Wednesday following the election, but maybe I picked it up again Thursday, going through motions while waiting for emotions to fully return.

I’m not sure I’ve been ‘that’ thrown since the morning of 9.11.2001.

When I finally let myself turn inward, handing over the reigns to these wonderful facilitators, the tears came. And kept coming. Guidance began to stir ever so slightly within deep vulnerability, freeing up another part of me to more directly desire the struggle, to find my bounce and form words, nourishing what I needed to begin, to rise.