Pick Up the Gifts

In the end of May, I returned to the Oregon Coast to continue my research on Bayocean—a once-glamorous resort town that was swallowed by the Pacific. If I could have read this last sentence a year ago, I would have been befuddled. I’m not a historian. Why on earth am I researching some no-longer-existent town 2500 hundred miles from where I live? The pull to write historical fiction caught me completely by surprise.

Last August, on a family trip to the Oregon Coast, we happened to visit the Bayocean Peninsula and learn the story of the town that had been there. It was captivating, but I had no inkling that it would change the trajectory of my life until the next day, when I went for a walk alone on the beach. I was feeling a bit out of sorts—sleep deprived, POTSy, and irritable. As I walked, I opened my palms to face forward, relaxed my shoulders and jaw, and imagined all of me softening, all of me opening. “What do I need to know right now?” I asked the wind or the waves or some wiser part of myself. I thought the answer would have something to do with acceptance or mindfulness or love. I expected some balm to soothe my petty irritations.

Instead, I was filled immediately with the knowing that I needed to write a novel set in Bayocean. This knowing didn’t arrive in words. It came like a wave washing over me, like stories rising up from the sand, asking to be told. There was no talking myself out of this knowing. Being pulled by something, rather than pushed, is a gift—a thing to lean into.

I’ve been leaning in since that day last August, and instead of falling over, I’ve fallen into gift after gift after gift. A grant to fund my travel. A benevolent Bayocean historian, willing to share his knowledge. Person after person after person, opening up and sharing their stories or their parents’ stories with me. And then there’s the place itself—the windswept dunes, the towering sitka spruce, the beach where you can walk for miles, encountering more eagles than humans. The whole of the experience seems to echo the same injunction: go where you feel pulled. Follow your curiosity. Follow you joy. Do the things that make you ache with aliveness.   

I am not saying that life is easy or that towns do not get swallowed by the sea. But in my experience, if you soften to life and lean into what it asks of you—if you allow yourself to be pulled by whatever is deepest or most divine within you, even though you don’t quite know where it will lead—magic happens. Beauty appears around you and bubbles up from within you. Connection finds you and fills you.

On my recent trip back to the coast, I returned to the same stretch of beach that I walked when the story that I’m working on first poured into me. Again, I opened my palms and softened my body and asked of whatever it is that holds us all together in this interconnected web, “What do I need to know right now?” And within seconds of my asking the question, something washed up at my feet. Many somethings. Little cuts of wood, painted with geometric designs. There must have been two dozen of them, suddenly strewn about my feet. These words seemed to be carried in on the same wave: “Pick up the gifts.” And so that is the knowing that I’m leaning into right now: that my life is strewn with gifts, many of them unnoticed and unexamined. I’m trying to watch for them, to notice them, and to allow myself the pleasure of gratitude.

One of these painted circles of live-edge wood now hangs from my bedroom window. Each morning when I open my curtains, I see it and am reminded to spend my day noticing the abundance of gifts. To pick them up, appreciate them, and find ways to share them. The gifts now that I’m home in Kentucky with my kids out of school are quite different than the gifts of my solitary weeks on the Oregon Coast! I’ve traded beach walks for farm walks and quiet mornings of writing for rowdy mornings of flipping pancakes while refereeing my boys’ wrestling matches. There is no shortage of laughter or snuggles in my life, but at present, it’s hard to find the time or physical energy to lean into the pull of creativity. I’ve had to remind myself more than once that this, too, is a gift. That even when we feel pulled toward something, ebb and flow are a part of the journey.

Sometimes an ebb can feel like a hard stop. I remember that feeling well from the months when brain fog shelved the first novel I was writing. But my book didn’t gather dust in that time so much as it gathered depth. I grew, and as a result, my characters grew, too. A week or a month or a year seemingly lost is only lost if we don’t take the time to discover its gifts. I’m trusting that this is true of my current, kids-out-of-school slowdown, too.

What’s pulling you right now? What gifts lie strewn at your feet? In what ways is your life flowing, and in what ways do you find yourself in an ebb? As always, I’d love to hear from you!

P.S. I’m toying with the idea of releasing my first novel, “All is Well,” a few chapters at a time here on Substack. My hope is to build a small but mighty community of readers, embark on the reading journey together, dialogue about the story and themes and characters, and learn from this community how I can make the novel better. I’m imagining releasing the chapters relatively quickly so that the whole book can be read within about 2 months. If you think you might be interested, let me know, and stay tuned for future updates here.