A Hut in My Heart

This has been an over-the-top year!  Work is magnified by a commute, a huge need for written curriculum and generous consulting opportunities.  I have had major family loss and multiple family illnesses that at times have left me gasping for air.  Through this I began to have a reoccurring dream…

In the dream I am in a hut by the ocean, sitting on the porch, overlooking the expanse of sea and listening to the lap, lap, lap of waves.  I sit in a beach chair, deeply breathing in salt air, feeling the heat of the sun as I rest in the shade, staring out at the expanse and listening to the repetitive silence of water meeting land.  Alone. 

I have shared this dream with friends and it has become a conversation piece of sorts.  My Cincinnati friend sends me photos of huts and asks me if she can live a couple of huts down from me and be my cabana girl. At a recent gathering another friend decided he wanted to build a hut for me in my home, complete with sand, a beach umbrella, clouds and blue, beach chairs and the sound of waves to lull me into peacefulness.  (I like this vision, but I don’t think I am going to kick my son out to realize itJ).  Another friend sent me a sign-up for luxurious vacations that features a hut on an exotic foreign island.

The hut continues to call me throughout this year.  As I volleyed words for my word of the year, which landed on “spaciousness”, the journey for a word quite honestly began with “hut”.  (I see the relation between both words.  Even though a hut is small and contained, it is surrounded by open space that is void of clutter.)  I was on retreat and built a vision board and smack-dab in the middle of the board I placed my hut.  

And the dream reoccurs.  

I think I will find a hut sometime this year.  A vacation place where I will tune out and tune into my heart that is calling me to this space in the first place.   The heart can’t live on vacations alone, though.  Until then, I am creating a mini hut-space every day.  For at least five minutes I travel through imagination and mindful meditation to that space of salt breezes, indigo skies and rippling waters.  There, in my heart hut, I rejuvenate, honoring the dream and my desire for spaciousness in a small and contained space.  Alone but not alone at all.

 Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for dedicating space and time for teachers and teachers of literacy to come together to share ideas, practice and life experience.