So far, I am hundreds of words ahead of my goal for the month. And that feels really good. Saturday I went hiking at one of my favorite locations in Oregon. I wore a mask the whole time because the state park was predictably crowded on what will likely be one of the last really beautiful days of the year. I took many, many photos. I had a beautiful moment with a chipmunk that I almost caught on camera, but he was scared away by other hikers. I saw many birds and squirrels and other chipmunks. The weather was glorious; the sun was shining in a bright, autumn sky, clear of clouds; the leaves were changing color, and the air smelled of fresh river water.

I want to use these memories of this hike for some of my poetry. Nature writing is one of my favorites and I want to get better at it. Being in nature allows me to disconnect from the things that weight me down and reconnect to the things that energize and fuel my mind and body. Being in nature inspires me. Being in nature relaxes me. Being in nature is one way I successfully reconnect with my body. Writing is another way I successfully reconnect with my body. Writing about nature, though, has always been an area where I struggle. I feel so much of the nature around me, it’s hard to focus on any one piece and transpose it onto the page.

I think of the phenomenal poet, Mary Oliver. Her writing about nature is the kind of nature poetry I aspire to create. She has this incredible ability to take something small, a moment with a heron or walk by a lake in the afternoon, and she uses them to make such lovely poems that not only capture the natural world of the speaker, but also points inward to her humanity and connects that humanity to the natural world. (I’m thinking it might be time for me to reread some of Mary Oliver’s poetry…)

I’ve been focusing on my body a lot in my poetry lately. I have some ideas for how to continue this examination, and one of the things I’d love to do is to write trauma out of my body and write nature into it. I want nature to fill those spaces. I’ve been carrying too much trauma in my body for too long. I want to put it down. I really do subscribe to the ideology that the best revenge is to move on and be successful in spite of those who do their best to weigh you down. I won’t be weighed down. I’m going to write these traumas out of my body. I’m going to write nature into my body. I’m going to rewrite my mind and my body. And I’m going to rise above and find success. Well, find more success. I’m already a published author, essayist, and poet. I’ve been incredibly successful as a student throughout my college education, and this graduate program is no exception. I’ve already succeeded at surpassing two of my poetry writing goals (150 poems for the year and 20,000 words of poetry in July). And I’m well on my way to accomplishing even more writing goals.

I’ve been through a hell of a lot since last year. And there were things that happened that made me wonder if I would even make it through. But in the words of Julia Wicker from The Magicians, “I can’t look back now and think it was anything but fate.” My marriage and divorce shattered me, and this M.F.A. started the process of piecing me back together. Dating was fucking rough, but I learned some incredibly important lessons along the way. A pretty huge event happened in Spring of this year that I thought would completely ruin the rest of my educational and creative writing endeavors, and instead I used that pain, that anger, that disbelief, that trauma, and I poured it into my poetry. I took one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to face and instead of letting it crumble me (as it was intended to), I used it to electrify me. I used it to fan the flames of my writing.

Because here’s the thing I’ve come to learn: life is pain. (Thank you, Westley from Princess Bride.) But it doesn’t have to only be pain. I get to choose what I invest my energy into, what I do with the pains I suffer. And I struggle with this at times, but I have also grown and moved into a place of embracing the pain when it comes instead of resisting it. Because there is power in facing a wrong committed against you and deciding that you won’t let it define you, you won’t let it break you. I didn’t let my marriage break me. Not completely. I didn’t let my divorce break me, though I thought it would. I didn’t let my miscarriages break me, although that was the closest to broken I’ve ever been.

I get to choose what I do with the experience I face. I get to look for the beauty, even when things are dark and bleak. And while I may not be able to control every aspect of my life, I am in complete control of how I use those experiences. Everything is fuel for my writing. There are some circumstances I haven’t yet worked out how to write about them, but I have ideas. I’ve written about them a little in my poetry, but I don’t think poetry is quite the form for the gritty details. Regardless, I get to choose. There’s another quote from The Magicians that continues to inspire me: “Magic comes from pain.” That’s not the same as saying that pain is magical. This isn’t meant to romanticize trauma. But it is meant to reveal the impact that pain has on us as people. Sometimes people take pain and use it as justification to hurt others. Sometimes people take pain and use it as a justification to continue hurting themselves. And sometimes people take pain and use it to build compassion, forgiveness, understanding.

In the first residency of my M.F.A., one of our guest writers, Reema Zaman, was talking about how we find our reason for writing. “What makes you angry?” she asked, “Your reason for writing is behind your anger.” I loved this. Because I have been angry for a long time and for many different reasons. But anger on its own isn’t what I want my writing to manifest. I want to dig through my anger to find what lies behind and beneath and inside of it. I want to get at that pulsing heart and write about that. Because that is how I write trauma out of my body. Writing about the impact of trauma is a step, but it should only be the first of many. Writing about trauma has never helped me. Writing through trauma to get at something more than trauma, however, is how I’ve used writing to help heal my body, my heart, my soul, my mind.

Today, I will be writing at least 323 words of new poetry. If I can capture even one more iota of what lies inside of my trauma, then I will be satisfied. And even if I don’t, the more I write around my trauma, the more access points I will find to lead me inside of it. This is the process of my writing. This is where I want to invest my energy.