Carol

Carol By Laura Culberg

I met Carol in a memoir writing class. She was close to 70 and had a head full of shock-white curls. Every Monday night after a brief lesson from our writing teacher, we went around the communal table and read our pieces aloud. When Carol read, she always sounded like Meryl Streep narrating an audiobook. Her voice never shook. She didn’t make excuses or disclaimers about her stories. The words flowed like music and the characters were magnificent. Her stories sounded real, honest, believable. I realize now that this is because Carol had crossed over to wisdom. She was firmly rooted in the comfortable existence of being Carol. In developing this retreat, I've thought about Carol multiple times. Carol was someone who truly lived her wisdom and shared it with others.Put Some Claws in YourPause is an opportunity to explore our strengths, to illuminate them and to share them with women going through a similar metamorphosis. The chance to do this with a group of women who have also crossed over into this new phase is thrilling. I can hardly wait for September!

The first time I spoke to Carol was during a break in class. Earlier that evening she'd shared an essay she wrote about her young adult life living on a commune. She was flipping through the pages of her writing notebook, so I quietly squatted down next to her and put my hand on her arm to get her attention. She nudged her reading classes up, angled her body slightly toward me, closed her notebook into one hand and put the other hand on my shoulder and looked down at me. I took my own hand away and asked my question. I wanted to know more about what it was like to raise kids on a commune. Our break was short so she answered me briefly, never taking her hand off of my shoulder and never shifting her gaze from mine. The interaction was so brief yet I walked back to my place at the table feeling utterly peaceful. It was a couple days later in a seizure of overwhelm at the state of my current life that I was able to articulate to myself that I wanted what Carol had; I wanted to feel that grounded and calm and present. 

I took that memoir writing class in part to find a way to make sense of some big changes in my own life. I was forty-years-old. I was floundering. I felt adrift in my emotional chaos. I was all over the place, in a perpetual search for solid ground. If I wasn’t mourning the past, I was fretting the future or struggling to make the present moment feel right. I knew from the essays that Carol read in class that she’d had similar heartbreaks, far more dramatic struggles than I, yet she seemed to have such a firm grasp on her feelings. She was able to reflect on her experiences and make emotional connections with great ease.

I think about myself now, ten years after taking that writing class with Carol. I'll be fifty in November. If I was a student in that class today I would be more like Carol. I wouldn’t doubt myself so much. I wouldn’t second-guess my opinions or ideas. I’d comfortably and lovingly offer my wisdom to the young woman in the room who seemed so awash in her own struggle.

I have more moments than less these days when I feel like I’m on solid ground, firmly on shore. It is a felt-sense in my entire body and in my soul. I am not competing to be seen or known or recognized for being who I am. I’m comfortable being who I am and I'm excited to explore the possibilities of what awaits me in these years ahead. In these moments I feel grown up, like I know things because I’m older, wiser. Put Some Claws in Your Pause is a retreat for you if you want to shine a light on where you've been, congratulate yourself on getting here and dream big about where you'll go next!