Live Virtual Group Session: 12PM EST December 15th 2023

15 Comments

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem “Orlando” by Megan Fernandes, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write about a road not taken.”

More details will be posted on this session, so check back again!

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

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Please join us for our next session Monday December 18th at 6pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

"Orlando" by Megan Fernandes

The few weeks I was pregnant, whenever people asked
how are you, meg? I’d answer, oh ya know… with child
which I thought was dead funny. I don’t think about it now
except sometimes in a fitness class surrounded by women
trying to shed baby weight and I make the calculations,
(he’d be about fourteen by now) and then I look at myself
in the class mirror while women squat and lift their legs
and think, wow!, I look so good for having a fourteen
year old and then I’d think again, how if he was a reality,
I’d say it all the time and embarrass him in front of his
school friends and for some reason, I think he’d be
a drummer and wear green. I have no regrets,
but I wonder if he’s waiting in the sky somewhere
or doing blow in another dimension where he’s a rocker
and very much flesh. I don’t believe in kin by blood,
but I believe poems can give form to the formless,
that one can resurrect roads not taken in a line
and give it a name. It’s a novel by Virginia Woolf, I’d say
and rattle on and he’d wave me off but maybe read it
one day in college and think about his young mother
who wanted to be a writer and what she might have had
to give up in order to raise him at twenty-three.
He’d write me a song. He’d title it with my name.

Credit: Megan Fernandes. The Nation

15 thoughts on “Live Virtual Group Session: 12PM EST December 15th 2023”

  1. michele348's avatar michele348

    About a road not taken~~~

    Life…existence… what lies before me
    The clutter of decisions, of directions to be taken, of paths leading into uncharted territory.
    Doubt clouds the choice… determining if the road not taken is the better alternative.
    Life is often choosing one over another,
    but the reality is, life can not be divided up that way…
    into nice neat choices.

    How can one know the “right” choice is being made,
    a choice that will affect one’s existence?

    And so I wonder, even after decades of life,
    did I take the right road
    or should it have been the detour off to the side?

    I guess I’ll never know with certainty,
    but I have an inkling.

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    • Elizabeth's avatar Elizabeth

      Michele, Still questioning things after decades is so normal for most of us. Your ending entices us with wanting to know—what is your inkling.(I hope it’s that you took the right road.)

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
    • al3793's avatar al3793

      Michele, while your speaker articulates doubts, I still sense an inner peace that permits the detours and side alleys of life while providing the resilience to find one’s way back to the intended, desired path. There is a maturity in the voice that absorbs the bumps in the own road. Andre

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
  2. rehavia6's avatar rehavia6

    If my life had taken a different path
    I would not be me.
    Each turn I have made has led me to
    The next bend in the road and
    That decision guided me to the
    Following fork in the route
    That has brought me to who I am today.

    Like

    Reply
    • michele348's avatar michele348

      Very true… we are the composite of all our life experiences and the interactions with all who enter or leave our lives. Sort of like the ingredient list for a recipe… each contributes and is necessary for the formulation of the final product.

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    • al3793's avatar al3793

      I hear a wise voice that accepts the reality of life, whether an adventure, or an exhortation, or a celebration. All these add up to the one that we are intended to be.

      Like

      Reply
  3. Elizabeth's avatar Elizabeth

    Do we run to the dangerous place
    Or
    Play it safe and stay?
    It becomes almost a no-brainer
    When a loved one is there.
    We give up our security,
    To be together.
    It is not only for his sake-
    We leave our peaceful place
    For our own peace of mind.

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    Reply
    • michele348's avatar michele348

      Elizabeth, I’ve been in that situation you describe more than once. Maybe our security is relinquished but knowing that we did the right thing brings peace to our mind and heart.

      Like

      Reply
      • Elizabeth's avatar Elizabeth

        Yes. and sometimes it’s not the right thing necessarily, but it’s the right thing for us emotionally even though logically it doesn’t always make total sense.

        Liked by 1 person

    • al3793's avatar al3793

      Elizabeth,

      The seriousness of the question your speaker poses prompts some tension in me. But the presence of mind to recognize the no-brainer answer settles me.
      When our loved one is present we are in a safe place to expose our vulnerabilities at least we feel safe enough to take the risk. There we find the dividends of love but the market can crash. None the less for our own peace of mind we must pursue certain roads in life.

      Thank you.
      Andre

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      Reply
      • Elizabeth's avatar Elizabeth

        Andre—danger does promote extreme tension —even if the decision is a no-brainer——we can sit with both the feelings of tension from danger and security of being with a loved one. It’s the acknowledgment and acceptance and yes to both feelings at once that I wanted to share.

        Like

  4. al3793's avatar al3793

    Write about the road not taken…

    I’ve often said I should have become a National Park ranger. I picked a vocation that cooped me inside 80 hours a week when I love to be outside, basking in nature, savoring the aroma of fresh air…earth’s sweat, standing in the middle of stream as cold water runs around and between my legs while waving a stick. Yet I am convinced that had I pursued that road, I would have been assigned an administrative desk job, just as confined as the days of a doctor.

    Had I not taken the road I chose, was called to, I would have missed the many opportunities to be at the service of others in the midst of great crises, great joys, some of the most important moments in the lives of others, plying skills and charisms that make a great difference in peoples’ lives. While both occupations involve service, there is something compelling about the self donation of a doctor, whose purpose is to desire and promote the good of an other. Being welcomed to this intimate ring side seat of the human condition is privilege and it humbles. An occupation, no, a vocation that is predicated on embracing of the common humanity that presents to us each day is to be reverenced. For isn’t willing what is best for one’s patient a way of loving an other?

    Like

    Reply
    • Elizabeth's avatar Elizabeth

      Beautiful, Andre. I want you to know that I also wanted to be a park ranger when I was younger for similar reasons! I also went into a helping profession. Kindred spirits!

      Like

      Reply
  5. michele348's avatar michele348

    I am so glad you chose medicine over being a park ranger. What is a loss to park visitors became a godsend to the patients you have cared for. It was the path that you were called upon to walk and you did it with much love and compassion!

    Like

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