What I'm Exploring Here

“…Eventually, I fall into and embrace life as it is. I stop pushing my precious life away, even when it’s full of suffering…This is who I am. This is who I’ve become on this journey. And always, always, as I embrace what is, small and large miracles of help and perspective eventually come.”

– From Riding Grace

A friend who had been facing an extended period of challenges once asked me, “What else does life want from me?”

“Everything,” I answered, without hesitation.

I answered because that’s what I’ve experienced. Since the moment I committed to writing Riding Grace: A Triumph of the Soul, at 2 a.m., June 14, 1998, life asked me to give everything to it, from the full radiant glory to the face-down-smashed-in-the-mud messiness of my being.

It first asked me to give everything when I could only concentrate 15 minutes at a time because of a debilitating illness, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Life asked even though this creative act would also mean delving into the childhood sexual, physical and emotional abuse at the root of the illness.

But my choice to give life everything, to say yes to all of it, has, oddly enough, given me everything—starting 12 hours after I made the decision to share my story, to embrace and accept it, no matter what trials it presented.

At that time, in a workshop led by two healers, I experienced a complete spontaneous healing of the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome that had been my companion for 12 years and a deep healing of the abuse issues. I’ve been healthy ever since.

Riding Grace: A Triumph of the Soul is the memoir of what I experienced and learned on the journey, my own gift of everything. Writing it was its own journey of healing and transformation. This blog is a further extension of the journey begun in the memoir. It is about the healing and transformative power of writing and creating from the "yes" of my being--and exploring it in the work and process of other creative people, too. It's about what didn't end up in Riding Grace--the additional learning and growth--but has value to a healing journey. And it's about the healing and transformative process of bringing a deeply personal and transformational memoir out into the world. Thank you for taking the time to explore with me. Alissa Lukara