kaleidoscope

Isn’t it funny to arrive somewhere, like the age of 50, straining toward your life’s purpose, only to discover that you’ve been living it all along.

Kaleidoscope.

This is how I describe these moments.

The same material, re-arranged, in new perspectives, lending radical appreciation and awe–of what was always there–but never noticed or forgotten or not quite recognized in the same way before.

It was that way when I first relocated to Vermont, and it’s that way now, as I enter the harvest season of my life.

There is much work to be done, and I am ready.

Sometimes the harvest is elusive, like this past winter, when I wrote through an entire draft of a memoir, only to discover that it wasn’t ripe.

Or this past spring when I created a series of mini-retreats, each of which was cancelled due to lack of enrollment.

Other times the harvest just falls into place, like this summer, when I used the vacant space left open by the cancelled retreats to create an online writing journey–which filled almost effortlessly–and not only bore sweet fruit, but also pointed me to that which I have always been pointed (without fully realizing it): Voice.

Expressing mine, enjoying others, supporting you with yours.

Kaleidoscope.

When I look onto my life and its jumble of colors and choices, I only have to turn my attention a bit this way (on the inside) and a bit that way  (on the outside) to find this pattern of voice.

This tumbling led me to fashion a longer, deeper writing journey for women so that others might delight in the discovery of voice too.

From this vantage point, I don’t know if the new endeavor will bear fruit, I only know that my job is to twist and to turn and to appreciate and to “ooh” and to “ahh…,” And then to shake it up again, and start all over…

Kelly Salasin, October 2013