by Heather Plett | Sep 13, 2011 | Community, journey
These are my heros. All three of us. Cath Duncan, Christina Greenway, and myself.
We did it. We walked 100 kilometres in three days.
This picture was taken at the end of the second day – the 38 kilometre day that we thought we couldn’t survive. The last 8 kilometres or so of that day were some of the most painful moments of my life.
I survived them (and every other painful kilometre) mostly because these other two amazing women were at my side. We held each other up, we laughed together (rather hysterically sometimes) when laughter was the only thing keeping us from tears, we hooted at shirtless cowboys together, we applied moleskin to blisters together, we tried to write a marching song to help us take those next few steps that felt like the hardest thing we’d ever done in our lives, and we crossed the finish line arm in arm.
These women are the REAL THING. They are pure gold. They are the kind of people you want by your side when it feels like the next step is too painful to take alone.
Two days later, I am still processing the big-ness of this accomplishment. It’s the kind of experience that I know will grow in meaning as time passes. In the middle of the experience, your primary thought is “I just have to live through the pain of this next step. And then the one after that. And the one after that.” You don’t have a lot of head space for big thoughts or meaning-finding.
But then the next day, the immensity of it begins to sink in. And the biggest thought that sticks with me right now is this…
If you’re going on a journey that will involve many painful steps, find good people who will walk the journey with you.
Community. That is the biggest lesson I will take away from this journey.
I found community in the hearts of these two women.
Even though I’d never met them in person before, I was confident enough that I could trust them with my painful journey, and that trust was not misplaced.
Find good people. And be that good person to other people who need you. And when you find each other, and you hold each other up along the sometimes painful and sometimes glorious journey, do not take each other for granted.
Cath and Christina, thank you for being my two good people on this journey. Your account at the Bank of Heather is full to the brim.
by Heather Plett | Sep 8, 2011 | journey
I’m in Calgary. Yesterday I drove for 13 hours to get here, and tomorrow I’ll be awake very early in the morning to start the three day walk.
This commitment is not for the faint-of-heart. Right from the moment I said to Cath “I want to walk with you,” I’ve know that it would require a lot of me. First I had to take the risk to say to someone (whom I’d never met in person), “your story – the loss of baby Juggernaut – has touched a vulnerable place in me and the only way I know how to respond is to drive half-way across the country to walk 100 kilometres with you.”
Then I had to commit the time to drive across the country, the time to train for all this walking, the agony of a dozen or more blisters on my feet, the cost of driving here, the time to fundraise and promote the Kidney Raffle, the cost of new shoes, socks, and blister-prevention aids, and, last but not least, the emotional energy to care about and offer compassion into other people’s stories.
No, it’s not for the faint-of-heart.
Lest you think me an altruistic do-gooder, though, let me admit… there’s a part of me that is doing this for entirely selfish reasons. For one thing, for an adventure-loving wanderer like me, it doesn’t take much to convince me to travel anywhere. Driving 13 hours across the prairies all by myself? Delightful. What’s not to like? Especially when I get to stop at dusk for photos like this one:
But there are other, deeper reasons.
Reasons like these:
– It’s a pilgrimage. Walking for hours and hours feels holy to me. It’s sacred time, when I find those “thin places” that the Celts talk about, where the veil between God and me gets thinner than usual.
– It’s a time to connect deeply with beautiful people whose stories already have special niches in the corners of my heart. We will have deep and honest conversations and we will change each other.
– It’s a vision quest. I know that the deep meditation of putting one foot in front of another for three days in a row will bring clarity and revelation to me that will surprise and challenge me. It will be yet another journey that will help reveal to me my unique medicine in the world.
– It’s part of my personal search for beauty in the world. We will walk in some of the most beautiful surroundings in the world, with the Rocky Mountains always at the edge of our vision. Beauty opens me – it cleans me.
– It will challenge me – push me to the edge of my endurance. I honestly don’t know if I can finish 100 km. After walking 32 in training, my feet felt like they were ready to give up on life. I am interested in seeing how I will handle this challenge, and I know that if I conquer it, I will feel invincible.
– The connection with Cath and her story will re-connect me with my own story of personal transformation through baby-loss. For three days, I will be remembering Matthew, whose 11th birthday/death-day is coming up on September 27th, and little Juggernaut, whose 1st birthday/death-day is only a few weeks later.
And so you see, the commitment is worth it. Yes, there will be moments of pure pain and exhaustion, but I know the experience will change me and I’m ready to be changed.
by Heather Plett | Sep 5, 2011 | journey
Perhaps it’s the change of seasons.
Perhaps it’s the shift that occurs at this time of year when we move from the ease of summer to the routine and purpose of Fall.
Perhaps it’s because I’ve spent too much time staring at and evaluating the functional-but-not-creative writing of the students in my Effective Written Communication course this season.
Perhaps it’s because I’m dreaming of (and looking forward to) teaching the kind of writing I REALLY want to teach.
Perhaps it’s just the pause that comes before a major journey – a journey that will see me cross two provinces, meet a soul-sister-because-of-babies-lost, and then push myself to the limit when I walk 100 kilometres at her side.
It may be all of those reasons, or it may be none of them.
Whatever it is, I seem to be out of words.
Try as I might, I can’t write a coherent blog post. I can’t excavate the story that wants to be told about what it’s like to prepare for a three day walk that I know will be a combination of exhilaration, tedium, and pain. I can’t seem to dig deeply enough to tell the story that’s burning the edges of my heart about how I feel when I have to mark students’ papers, knowing that my judgement could be hindering their writing journey instead of helping it. I can’t capture the essence of the things I dream of when I consider what I want to teach in the future. I can’t find any words to define the shifts that have happened – seasonal and otherwise. I can’t even tell you with any degree of creativity how warm and safe it felt to be in the bosom of my beloved family this past weekend.
I can’t find the words, and so I look through photos to at least dig up some image that will show you where I’ve been, what I’ve been captivated by, who I’ve been with, or how the light is shifting in my part of the world.
I can’t find the pictures either. My camera is sitting idle next to my paint brushes and pencils.
I’m dry. Quiet. A little bit empty.
Shifting. Waiting. Stretching.
Something will come. When it’s ready.
Maybe I have to walk 100 km. to find it.
by Heather Plett | Aug 29, 2011 | Beauty, childhood, Passion, personality
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I like to explore green spaces.
See those little pockets of green all over my neighbourhood? I’m attracted to them like a magnet to steel.
Since this has been my summer of wandering (and the summer of beautiful weather), and training for my upcoming 100 km walk, I’ve had a chance to explore a lot of green spaces. It’s become a habit of mine – scan a Google map, find a patch of green I haven’t explored yet, and go.
Sometimes I find lovely parks I didn’t know existed, with manicured paths, and child-filled play structures.
Often though, I walk past the manicured parks to the next green space.
My favourite discoveries are not the parks. My favourites are the untamed, unruly, un-manicured spaces that scream out to my inner child “EXPLORE ME!”
And explore them I do, these little pockets of wildness. I climb over underbrush, hop over puddles, shimmy under fallen trees, and push through thick branches, until I am so deep inside the green box on the map that the city just outside the boundary ceases to exist.
Inside the green I find hidden streams, magical trees, colourful mushrooms, raucous wildflowers, and – when I’m lucky – deer.
What I find most of all, though, in those untamed green spaces, is my own wild heart.
I remember what it means to be wild and unruly. I remember what it feels like to be free of the tidy little boxes I let society place me in. I feel the lilt come back to my step that tells me I am following my heart and not the expectations of others.
From the moment I step off the well-traveled path and into the green square on the map, I am transported back to my childhood, when I used to roam the woods on our farmland, imagining myself a gypsy or an explorer.
The child in me revived, I revel in each discovery. I stare in awe at the leaves quivering in the breeze and twinkling in the sunlight. I marvel at the patterns in the bark of trees. I giggle at the bare patches where it looks like fairies have danced. I look deeply into the magical eyes of deer.
It doesn’t take much to give my wild nature space to breath. Just a little green shape on a map.
Go… find one of your own.
And if you want a companion, take me along.
by Heather Plett | Aug 26, 2011 | Joy
1. This magical summer. Beautiful weather and a lack of bugs – almost more goodness than a “proud-to-be-hardy” Winnipeger can handle!
2. My feet. Oh my – they have carried me so far this summer! Walking, walking, and more walking. Yesterday – 18 km. The day before – 14 km. I love my feet.
3. Discovery. Wandering around my city on foot makes for a lot of interesting discoveries – things I’d never seen in a car.
4. Work. More of it than I anticipated. So much that my calendar looks full from now until April.
5. Teaching. Oh how I enjoy being in a classroom and teaching and inspiring and helping people remember their own sense of wonder and delight!
6. Confidence. A sense of self-assuredness that my intuitive path is a better one for me to follow than the well-trodden path others are following (especially when it comes to teaching).
7. Support circles. People who show up when you want them to. People who let you cry when you need to. People who celebrate with you when that’s what you need.
8. Movies in the park. Popcorn, cold drinks, lawnchairs, a little Indiana Jones, and people I like to hang out with.
9. Iced tea. Especially the glass my husband brought me an hour ago.
10. An upcoming adventure. A road trip, a three day walk with interesting people, and some time to connect with my favourite people in 2 different cities.
11. Kites and swings and suction cup arrows. Or more specifically, the two evenings this week Maddy & I have hung out in the park making each other laugh, trying to fly kites with little wind and shooting each other with suction cup arrows.
12. Anticipation. The really cool & diverse people who’ve already signed up for my creative writing class and the fun things I’ve got in mind to do with them.
13. Wanderers, edge-walkers, fringe-livers, freaks, misfits – and all of those lovely souls who are wandering with me on the path.
14. Cheerfulness. More specifically, a shift in tone in my mom’s voice after the ravages of surgery and chemo have subsided somewhat.
15. A shift. More hopefulness in our family, even though not all of the hard things in life have been resolved (ie. the fact that Marcel’s job offer turned out to be a dud that he turned down).
16. Notes on the whiteboard in front of me, from sneaky visitors to my office. “Julie is boss. Nikki is gorgeous. Maddy is awesome. Dad is silly. Nikki rocks. Julie is a beautiful girl.”
