I am letting you into the secret world of Write or Die here. This is my cave, my favorite place, the place, to be honest, that I usually charge people to enter. But here you go. Here are the first three exercises I do in Write or Die and the reasons why. And here, thanks to Oleg’s courage and generosity and trust, are Oleg’s responses.

I developed an exercise in my Write or Die classes where you imagine you have five minutes left to live and you have the sweetest presence by you—I picture it as an ear—something that can’t talk; something that just listens. It’s that voice, the voice I use to talk to that ear that is the voice of my soul, the voice of my spine, the voice of me. I have nothing left to lose when I use that voice. I am not speaking to win love. I am speaking to leave a handprint on the wall of the cave before I leave this mortal coil.

I listened to Ram Dass talk to Oprah today on her podcast, and so I have also been thinking about acceptance and love.

What if our hearts are peonies? What if life is not about changing or growing so much as about blooming? What if our hearts all bloomed fully when we looked into the eyes of our beloveds, or into the eyes of ourselves?

What then?

Most editors or coaches or fellow writers will basically try to tell you what your own story is--rather than be a partner in helping you figure it out. I had a therapist tell me all her clients know their answers. It's just the therapist's job to pull them out. Anne's not a therapist. She's better. She costs less! She takes more time. And she's a helluva lot more committed. 

My friends thought I was moody. I thought I was moody. And I was, but it was because I was also getting beaten up from the inside by thoughts that had nothing to do with present reality. Old trauma was trying to find its way out, but since no one in my world knew about the effects on the brain when a child is separated from her mother, I had no one to help me create a pathway for these feelings to escape my body

It’s like I’m part magnet and my skin is working to pull to it what it needs to feel complete and at rest. This takes energy, and so while other people may be running errands or making lists or running a company, I’m busy being a bag of skin that has a job it can’t articulate or accomplish. This means I spend a lot of time what to others might look like spinning my wheels but to me feels like trying to be whole.

Rick wrote this in response to my post How to Love an Adopted Women. It's a wonderful look at what one adopted man, and, I'm guessing, many, many others want and need in a romantic partner. 

Obviously, I am not speaking for every adopted woman. That would be like trying to eat the ocean. But I did have fun writing this. 

Last night when I was falling asleep I realized something: my stomach didn’t hurt. It was the strangest feeling, like when your ears ring after a concert and then, suddenly, you realize that annoying buzzing has stopped. My body felt quiet. Peaceful.

I wish my parents had had Astrid on their speed dial when I was a child. I wish they had gone to her workshops for adoptive parents and I wish they had sent me to her workshops for adopted kids. I wish they had watched her DVD on how best to communicate with your adopted child.

There are so many reasons not to write. Harvey Weinstein. Food stamps. Constipation. Fear. But here is the truth, at the end of the day, you have a choice. You can pick up your pen, you can sit at your computer, and you can write.

Or you can just live your life.

It’s a win win. Living a life is a pretty wonderful thing, unless, of course, you feel you carry a story inside that you want or need to tell.

Then you better get to work. Make your space holy: honor your body, its needs. Listen to it. Live in it. Write down your life just because you can.

I had one of those realizations yesterday that left me standing by the road, stopped, not breathing, silenced by truth.