Serenity Now

Rivendell Spiritual Retreat, Bowen Island BC

This summer has changed me.

Only halfway and I already feel as if I could not do it more justice. And our family still has so much more to go.

I am packing now. Picking up little things. A pen. A book. A bit of birdseed that has escaped from my backpack. I’ll try again to feed the chickadees this morning.

I didn’t bring much to the room on this retreat. A backpack full of journals and notes. Clothing for a few days, mainly shorts and sweatpants. Comfy clothes. Easy to prepare food. Coffee.

And my computer.

I thought about not bringing any electronics as they suggested, but I type so much faster on a computer than I write by hand, and productivity was on my mind. When is the next time I will have three solid days of silence to write? There’s a book in me – it’s been trying to squeeze its ways out for months now – but books don’t write themselves, and they don’t get written at all when there are dishes to be done. Kids to attend to. Dogs to pick up after (wait, a husband to pick up after…the dogs need the walking…or maybe it’s the other way around).

Violet and Lucy are at Camp Good Times. They’ve been there for six days. I have not had any contact at all. I thought, initially, I would stop breathing at some point during this week, or that the sky would fall down. Or, at least, I’d get a call at some point that they just couldn’t survive without me.

Surely my husband would call. At least with a question about how to use the kitchen – how to find the salt or the paper towel or the number to the take-out place.

But there’s the internet for that. And apparently, he found the salt. And the kids are fine.

Rivendell is a spiritual silent retreat built up Cates Hill on Bowen Island. It’s Christian driven, but there is no bias whatsoever, and no pressure to “participate” in anything. More or less, it is a “safe space” to escape, from expectations, from stress, from yourself, essentially. Or at least, the self you think others need you to be.

It’s been a real bumpy road for a while. I needed some smoothing out.

Things came to a head recently. Maybe a month ago, I don’t know. Ugly things. Unprocessed things. Likely expected, in the context of our experience over the past couple of years, but uncomfortable, nonetheless. Lots of anger and sadness and fear seemed to keep manifesting itself in strange and unpalatable ways, despite what seemed like massive effort for the opposite.

I’m an Optimist. An Eternal one, and self-aware, and proactive about all the things that come along with a positive approach to life. So how could some negative things continue to be so sticky?

I kept telling myself, you’re doing it all right, Shawna. You are doing the self-care stuff. You are running, and writing, and meditating, and talking. You are “getting back at it”. You are letting go of the need to keep talking about what happened, obsessing about the struggle. You are moving onward and upward. Good for you.

But I needed a shift, a turning point. Something I could sink my teeth into and say, New Chapter Starts Now!

They put me on ADHD meds. Shift, boom, pow! Never mind a new chapter. Try a new book entirely. New genre, even.

Let’s just say, it was a gamechanger.

I won’t get into my hesitations for years about the potential diagnosis, the biases, the apprehensions about medicating myself with something else that could just drown out real stuff so I could pretend to be ok. But I will say, whatever it is doing, I wish it had been doing it for most of my life.

So, there’s that. Suddenly, I am regulating emotions like a grown up. I am getting things done without also getting 10,000 other things done at the same time, but not really ever getting anything done. I close cabinet doors. I put the lids back on things properly. I don’t think Matt’s covered himself in pickle juice due to my negligence in weeks. That’s a pretty big win, right there.

Most significantly, I am not walking around in this world anymore with this constant feeling of angst that I need to attend to everything all the time. That, in some way, I am always dropping the ball and just don’t know it yet. I’m not moving with a constant compulsion to move faster to nowhere, to fix things I can’t see, to carry the weight of things I don’t know about or understand.

Before the pills, though, I snapped.

“When the kids are at camp, I’m going on a sabbatical, and I don’t know if I’ll come home.”

“You mean when, right?”

“I don’t know what I mean, but I know I have to go. Alone.”

There might have been fear in my husband’s eyes, but I didn’t catch it. Mostly it was support. Love. Gratitude that I was finally, after all of these years, admitting to the one thing I needed most. Autonomy. Space to be.

“Go. I think it would be good for you. I’m proud of you for doing that for yourself.”

It was a clear, pure, real statement. Sometimes I just don’t give him enough credit. Most of the time, really.

But where to go? What to do?

I spent almost five years of my life “wandering”. Not exactly, of course. I had places to be and things to do. I had some plans, and some places where I more or less lived during that time. Two and a half years in Korea. Six months in Australia. A few months in Indonesia, and the States, and the Amazon, and the Galapagos. But I was…free. I was the Dictator of my destiny, or at least my next destination. I didn’t really have to ask anyone’s permission for anything. Not really.

Building a family is the single most rewarding, important, cherished thing I have done and will do in my life. But it has come with its challenges, and for me, losing that autonomy was a tough one. Maybe not for everyone, or maybe in varying degrees. But I suffered, a lot, and I admit that. And my sweet husband has wracked his brain for years trying to figure out how to feed that part of me in a healthy way.

“I’ll go write this book,” I told him.

“Don’t put that kind of pressure on yourself, babe. Just go. Just start with that and see what happens.” He got it. I needed to just go.

Camping? Maybe, but I have a tendency to overestimate my wilderness skills and put myself into precarious predicaments. I didn’t want to just sit in a busy campground with screaming kids. That seemed a bit counterproductive. And, alone, backcountry camping was (sigh) out.

Hotel? Cha-ching…? Nope – that didn’t ring out in a comfortable way (the price tag, not the soaker tub).

Cancer Camp was in Maple Ridge, so if I dropped them off, there was always Vancouver. And the Island…..the island…..Lisa! My bestie!

But alas, she was swamped.

I have no idea how, but likely the hands of the universe guided me on my keyboard the way your older sibling guides your hands on a Ouija board and I found myself emailing Rivendell Retreat. Their premise? A sacred space for those in need of renewal, respite and growth.

And that, in every way, is what I have experienced here.

They had room for me for three days, so for the first two of the girls’ camp week I went to first visit my brother and sister-in-law (and furry nephew, Bean), and the next, my dear friend in Squamish. She took me to yoga class and for flights of craft beer, and then welcomed me into her family dinner where I was greeted with so much warmth and delicious food. In the morning we went for life-changing coffee at her dad’s and then a morning stand-up paddle at Brohm Lake before I drove the epic Sea to Sky highway to the ferry.

Is there anything more freeing than a solo road trip, by the way? Even if I don’t smoke any more (it is the one place I find myself missing it most, if I ever do, which is unfortunately an occasional truth that will follow me for the rest of time).

And then I arrived at this perfect little lodge at the top of the hill on Bowen, where a wonderful woman named Lorraine greeted me and another guest and showed us the ropes. My companion had been here previously, and I got the feeling that most guests were alumni. This was not a one-stop type of place. No turning back – I could feel it.

They gave me a modest little room on the top floor with a tiny kitchen across the hall to put my food and cook anything if needed. Downstairs there was a bigger set up, but conversation was encouraged more in the bigger, lower-level spaces, so I stuck to my floor for most of the time, hiding away and pounding on the keyboard.

It was perfect. I settled in, laid on the bed, and passed out cold for two hours. It was a revelation. Upon waking, I managed to get a few entire chapters out of me, went for a walk, and returned to bed to read. No pressure. Nowhere to be. No expectations.

The next day, after a few hours of writing again, I decided if I was going to stay on one of my favourite islands ever, I needed to at least get out there for an exploration. Good thing I brought the SUP at the last minute. It proved to be a valuable tool on this trip. I drove myself over to Tunstall Beach where visitors and locals alike go to watch the sunset on the southwest side of the island. I flung my SUP bag on my back and headed to the barnacle-covered rocks where I crunched over mussel shells and found a spot by the water to inflate the board and enter safely.

There are whales in these here waters. Right around the corner there is a Whale Trail point where they have designated the spot conducive to whale sightings. With only Lucy’s tiny life jacket placed over my shoulders (it’s the law), I headed out into open water at dusk. Alone, floating above glistening waves of gold as the sun slowly turned the clouds pink, I rested my paddle against my lap and watched.

I didn’t see any whales. But a playful sea lion found me (maybe two) and danced around as I bobbed, poking his head out in front of me, then behind, then to the side, staring at me with big cow eyes before ducking back down for another round. I drifted closer to shore, and as I got about a meter away, enough to drag my fin against the rocks below, a baby deer wandered out of the bush to drink at the water’s edge. She stayed, for a long time, and we enjoyed the lapping of the waves and the setting sun together.

At 5:00pm yesterday, I finally decided to join the service that they hold at eight and five each day. Although I had the best of intentions to make that part of my rhythm here, I found myself wrapped in writing each time the bell rang. This was my last chance to catch the “contemplative” one where, as I was told, it is an opportunity to go within and reflect among others with the same intention.

It was so beautiful, and although I had a sign draped on my neck that read “In Silence”, I was offered the chance to share who I was, what I was grateful for, and to reflect on a poem read that said, “put down your hammer, the world will go on building without you,” or something to that effect.

I shared, I cried, I felt safe and cleansed. I also felt like I wanted to tell them all I drink too much, but I guess that’s for another meeting.

Today, I will clean up and pick up my kids and go cuddle my husband and walk my dogs and put the liquor away for a while. And I will go knowing that this was all perfect, almost orchestrated, almost pre-ordained, like it all just flowed naturally, exactly how I would have intended it. How I did intend it.

Halfway. Violet and I have already been to Sechelt for Girl Guide camp. Matt’s brother and sister-in-law and niece already came from England for an epic visit. And on Thursday, we depart again, this time for Tofino and a camping spot beside the beach. The girls will swim in actual ocean waves, and watch the whales (they aren’t evading me this time). And, in the final weeks of summer, we will venture to Wells Gray and Jasper and Banff. No sleep for the wicked. No time but the present.

There has been a lot of pain and sorrow in my network of warrior moms and cancer fighters, and it is the backdrop to my life that continues to keep things in perspective, offering me enough contrast to keep the colors brighter – keep me paying attention. Life is all just a big bonus. Every second. I tell myself that all the time – “today I’m alive. Make something of it.” But I don’t feel the pressure I used to – the pressure I’ve felt my whole life – to make it into something specific. Anything will do in any given moment, as long as I’m paying attention. As long as I’m appreciating it. This life is just so damn short and fragile and unpredictable. But we can settle in. We can ride the waves. We can wait for the moments that remind us everything will be ok. That things come and go, like the tide. That one moment we can be in agony, and another not so far down the road, bliss. And it feels impossible to consider the other when it’s absent. But we are where we are, able to be in the moment, and that’s really all we’ve got.

I can’t wait to see my kids.