Keep Breathing
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Hello Friends, This newsletter is going out on Dia de los Muertes, just after Halloween and Samhain. I hope that however you honor this season you are well, and not feeling too overwhelmed. A lot of people are overwhelmed right now. I know that my own focus isn't the best, though I'm enjoying the rain that just arrived, and the novel I'm currently working on, as well as the two non-fiction projects currently on my desk. When I find my attention fracturing, or the doom scrolling beginning, I return to center, breathe, and shift my attention toward what I can do (including rest). There are many reasons to feel stressed these days. So this week, I'd like to offer a simple poem plus a video that I recorded a few years back. Here's the poem: Autumn
The maple teaches many things:
Turn to face the sunlight when it comes.
Let green leaves shift in colored season’s change.
Ripple in the breeze,
Or thrash hard in nighttime wind,
Learn to drink the cold, life giving rain.
Most of all, root deeply, quest for sky.
Stand tall and offer shade, and sap, and sough,
And bring to earth your own particular
Bowed branched, reaching, beauty.
Do not be afraid to let things go.
And here's the video, a meditation to help soothe our nervous systems and re-center ourselves in any situation: You Can Weather Any Crisis. It's only nine minutes long. I hope it offers help if you need it. Thanks for being here. Best wishes — Thorn In honor of the season, there's a free short story called Unlucky Thirteen up on ThornCoyleBooks. You can also listen to me read it aloud on my YouTube channel.
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T. Thorn Coyle
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