For the Birds: October nourishment

What you wish for: a thought experiment / writing prompt. Plus BIRDSEED, this month's Resiliency Circle, and spooky tenderness.

Thanks for being here! Paid readers of For the Birds:

• Receive one writing prompt, worksheet, or creative tool each month

• Gain access to The Resiliency Circle, a low-stakes / highly nourishing community

• Directly fund the growth & longevity of this creative project

When you can, thank you for reading closely, sharing widely, and financially supporting the labor of writing:

Note: Today’s audio comes in two parts! If you are supporting this newsletter with a paid subscription, you have my endless gratitude.

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Year-round skull-spider

Dear readers,

Next week, I leave home for a Vipassana meditation retreat, where I will spend 10 days practicing what’s called “noble silence.”

As with most endeavors, I thought about this one quietly, privately, and at length. When I was ready to act, I became a burst of kinetic energy, the kind of person who sometimes catches those around her off-guard.

You’re doing mushrooms? You’re going where?!

Nothing I do is truly spontaneous. Everything I do starts off as a notion hibernating inside me for a long, crafted winter, where I first acclimate to all new ideas before pulling them out into physical reality.

I am chock full of long winters.

HOW many days???

Yep: Ten. No talking. No reading.

Oh! & no writing.

Year-round “chicken girl”

No poems. No essays. No note-taking and no journaling.

When I check-in at the retreat center, I will hand over my phone and carry with me only the clothes, toiletries, and bedding I need to live simply and without entertainment. I will be taught one thing only, which I will practice for roughly 10 hours a day and for 10 days straight: How to observe my direct experiences without the mitigating effects of interpretation, distraction, or mindless consumption. My partner, if all goes according to plan, will not hear from me until the moment he is picking me up on day 11.

I do not plan to sneak anything forbidden in. Not even a piece of paper folded up in my shoe (a true thought I had), nor my teeny tiny copy of René Daumal’s The Lie of The Truth, which would surely fit in my underwear (also a true thought).

We are not being sternly surveilled, by the way. These are just the thoughts of an obsessive rule-follower, an afab body still trying to cross “people-pleasing” off her resume.

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I am not without some nervousness about the whole ordeal. Writing is one of the primary methods in which I cope with living. It’s how I process, regulate, observe, and integrate, and it’s also how I commonly experience a very specific flavor of purposeful joy.

But I want you to understand something else: My relationship to words on the page is not without complication.¹ I have been known to hide there, to seek this writerly place not merely for sanctuary, but for escape. To enthusiastically retreat into a wormhole of special interest, yes, big yes, but also to indulge obsession and compulsion against my best interest.

What I’m trying to say is that I am nervous to go 10 days without writing, but I am not afraid of it.

I think it’s an important distinction.

Year-round photos on display (which “creep out” my very accommodating partner)

I’ll still be here, showing up in your inbox due to the magic of scheduled publishing, but I won’t be here-here. I suspect I’ll be in The Language-less Place, or any of the adjacent internal-cosmic environments where psilocybin took me last August.²

If you are a current / recent / soon-to-be client; a peer, collaborator, or engaged reader; or another kind of wonderful person who I find myself interacting with on any regular basis, please know that if you reach out between the 9th and the 21st, you will not hear from me until I am back in this world on the 22nd.

I look forward to returning, but I also look forward to going away. And to growing my relationship with the weird, familiar space that exists between the two. The space where our creativity thrives?

I think so.

In solidarity & warmth,

~Sarah

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BIRDSEED

~a monthly playlist, curated by M: lover of whales, Stephen King, & dried flowers~

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October Resiliency Circle: Parallel writing session

Inspired by the neurodivergent concepts of parallel play and body doubling, let’s use this month’s hour to gather and do some writing / co-working in each other’s gentle company.

I’ll open the space with a bit of ritual & encouragement, and then I’ll set a timer for a full hour of writing (making our gathering closer to 70 minutes this month). At the end, I’ll close us out with brief ritual & reflection.

If you’ve been thinking about attending The Resiliency Circle, but haven’t made it over the fence yet…

I hope you’ll join us this month! I hope you’ll utilize the substack feature where you can “unlock” a post and try attending for free. I hope you’ll message me and ask for a comped subscription if $$ is the main reason you’re not attending. I hope you’ll read this short summary of what the heck The Resiliency Circle is in case it’s precisely the kind of thing you’re looking for. I hope you believe me when I describe these gatherings as low-stakes / highly nourishing. (All our commitments don’t have to be exorbitant ones!)

I hope you write the thing inside you, trying to get out, trying to remember something about the sun.

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It’s spooky season, the tenderest time of year!

Here’s how I’ll be celebrating, both on and off the page…

• With a smattering of vintage decorations around our household, where I’ll continue my tradition of “accidentally” “forgetting” to take one thing down each year as I turn our tiny blue home into a year-round creepy fortress.

• With a short essay about my publishing experiences (spooooky!).

• With many thoughts about the emotional connections between Autism and witchcraft.

• With an essay about traveling while being neurodivergent *and* trying to be myself rather than a complete ghost.³

& more. How will you celebrate the thinning veil?

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What you wish for

~A creative thought experiment~

I’m compelled to describe this thought experiment as a delicate one, something easy to roll your eyes at. It requires a bit of affectionate trickery to get you into a truthful headspace—at least, it does for me.

Which means I want to show it to you, slowly and with gentleness, and then ask you to quick, quick: Name what comes to mind! (A loving urgency, not a capitalistic one.)

When this exercise has worked for me—both as a thought experiment and as a journaling prompt—it has provided deeply useful results. It’s simple enough to make me feel kind of silly for needing it, but profound enough to warrant the humility.