A Retreat to Aldermarsh

When a friend in North Carolina sent me the link to the PeerSpirit website a few months ago, sharing information about a 6-day writers’ retreat on Whidbey Island, less than three hours from my Washington State home, I didn’t even consider that I could go. Too expensive, and too big a time commitment away from my mother and diabetic cat. I did attend a one-day retreat with the same leader that was wonderfully enriching and relaxing. Perhaps next year, I thought, I could attend the long one.

Good ideas like hardy perennials take time to germinate in the garden. I bought Christina’s book, Storycatcher, at that retreat. I had a lot of reading material in the queue, it took me a while to get to it. By page 10, I knew I had to figure out a way to get to The Self as the Source of the Story retreat. I’m writing a memoir; writing is part of the reason I moved; it was a no-brainer. And God knows I deserved a break, didn’t I?

My sisters encouraged me, though neither of them really offered any ideas of how to replace my presence with Mama. Just that Magical Thinking: we’ll figure it out. And then there was the expense. I have no income. But sometimes, I have learned, you really do just have to leap and trust that the details will work themselves out, magical thinking or not. I signed up. Before I could get the deposit made, Mama took her own break from home to the ER, followed by three days in the hospital and several more days to recover from the three days in the hospital. No way could I go away, knowing it could happen again. I withdrew my registration.

Things got back to normal at home, though, and I finished reading the book. I had to go. Then Mama strained her back and it took both me and Rebecca to get her through the next several days. The second crisis knocked us to our knees. Sometimes that’s what it takes to let go of the fairy tale that a 96 year old is going to live in status quo forever. We lucked into and hired an in-home caregiver and insisted against resistance from Mama that she have a regular schedule, to augment the other caregiver that comes by invitation only. I signed up for real.

So now I am here: Aldermarsh Retreat Center. And it has been among the best experiences of my life. My early arrival netted me the tiny Spirit House cottage and blessed solitude.


I have learned much about the craft of writing memoir from Christina Baldwin－who is a truly gifted teacher－and about my own project. I have spent hours and hours with nine other women participants with fascinating life stories. I have wandered the grounds of the center’s marsh, tall trees, meadow, and vegetable garden; treated myself to a fabulous massage and eaten amazing food that someone else cooked－not a morsel that my housemate could eat and therefore I would not prepare.

I have bathed in a soaking tub in a Zen bathroom and peed in a bucket in my bathroom-free cottage where I have been all alone for the past five nights. The rain has pounded on the roof and the wind and the coyotes have howled. And I lived into my first ever Silent Day in the presence of other people. From Friday evening until Sunday morning, I did not speak and no one spoke to me. Eleven women ate dinner together in a communion of silence. I wrote, I read, I wrote. I did yoga by myself for 45 minutes overlooking the misty meadow. I wrote, I took pictures, I wrote, I read, I slept, I wrote. As I pen this I have opened the small windows where I sit on my bed to better hear the bullfrog croaking in the teeming marsh.

There is no AT&T cell service here and I can only get internet in the main house. I have not looked at Facebook all week. I have no idea what is happening in the world. I am off the grid. I am breathing. I am listening to the story that is inside of me. I am letting the story onto the page.

Sometimes magical thinking becomes simply Magical.