“Stress is basically a disconnection from the earth, a forgetting of the breath. Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency. Nothing is that important. Just lie down.”
–Natalie Goldberg
Writing Retreats
Whether you are a beginner, an established writer, a published author, or are looking for a creative vacation with your spouse…I have a retreat for you.
One time, I left art school.
Hi Ian. that seems like a really big step you took. Can you tell us more?
From the time I was a freshman in high school I had an off and on again romance. Neither of our mothers approved of our being together, although they liked each of us well enough. He was an alter boy in the Catholic church: his mother was a devote cradle Catholic. My mother was a Methodist minister’s wife. Mixed marriages were very much frowned upon in the fifties and the pairing of the alter boy and the minister’s daughter was the talk of our small town.,
For two years we were in the same school and then my father was transferred to another church After we graduated from high school he went to the Naval Academy and I went to Syracuse University. For eight years we “went together” long distance and broke up often, mainly because of the pressure we got from our mothers. We told each other we didn’t love each other anymore, but we did. Our separations were followed by tearful and passionate making up. I needed to know that, if I married him, it was because I truly loved him and wasn’t rebelling against my mother.
Finally I decided that we needed to experience each other in a more normal lifestyle. In the last semester of my senior year at SU, I got a job and an apartment in Annapolis.
My potential Father -in -law was cautiously supportive and made me promise him that I wouldn’t go this far in college and not finish. I took that promise seriously. It wasn’t easy getting the credits I needed to graduate from UCLA. That promise gave me what I needed to get through those last classes.
After he graduated we married. He was stationed on a destroyer in Long Beach and we lived with my aunt and uncle in West Los Angeles so I could finish my degree at UCLA. That one semester missed at Syracuse became two and a summer session. By the end of summer I was pregnant with the first of our seven children, but I finished.
It was scary making such a big decision. I missed graduating with my Syracuse friends, In fact I didn’t attend my graduation at UCLA, But I firmly believe it was important for me to make the decision and act on it.