The forces in our lives are constantly colliding—sometimes in ways that work out well and sometimes in ways that don’t. This interview series is an exploration of what it can look like to work with the collisions, rather than against them. By digging into how humans and nature interact– from our relationships with other humans, to those with our non-human neighbors, to our relationship with ourselves to our relationship with the landbase–we can uncover how to best step fully into our role in the story of the world.
Welcome to another installment of the Ordinary Collisions Interview Series. Today’s guest is Sarah Ratermann Beahan. She moved into a house in the historic district of the tiny hamlet we both call home a few years ago, and I’m so glad she did. It’s delightful to have a fellow writer living just down the road, especially someone who likes to hike, paddle, and talk about the deep sorts of issues that so often just don’t come up in casual conversation with neighbors.
Sarah is a writer, a creative mystic, and a listener. She thinks anyone who walks the path of creating with their heart first will agree that there is healing intrinsic to the process, and she supports people in walking that byway. Founder of a learning portal called Bewonderment, she’s also a writer and editor. Her first love is fiction writing, and she is in the process of polishing and submitting a first novel as we speak.
Heidi: Sarah, thanks for being here with us today. Before we jump in, let me just say that I’m eagerly awaiting your first novel. Here’s to the polishing, and may it find a good home.
So, as folks who have been reading this interview series for awhile know, I always ask the same questions of my guests, so here’s the first one: What are two forces that are colliding in your life right now (or that have in the not too distant past)?
Sarah: The collision that is most present in my world at the moment is that of grief and creation. My dad has been navigating Stage IV colorectal cancer for the last fifteen years. He was diagnosed in 2008, and after eighteen months of treatments and surgeries, went into remission, though he was forced to retire as a result. He lived a relatively normal life for quite a few years with the specter of recurrence lurking in the wings, but in 2020 the cancer returned and has been spreading and wrecking his body ever since.
At about the same time, I started working on an in-depth exploration of the ways in which creating supports our health and well-being. I dove into all the academic research on creativity: what it is, how our brain works when it’s creating, what enhances and suppresses our creative impulses, how our bodies physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually respond when we are creating. Meanwhile, I was entering into a period of my life that was (and is) riddled with grief. Between navigating the global pandemic, the climate crisis, social uprising and watching my dad’s health decline, I’ve made very good friends with grief.
I’ve learned all sorts of terms for grief: complicated grief, ambiguous loss, cumulative loss, anticipatory grief. There are so many complexities to our human experience of loss that our culture is terrified to talk about. The best we can do is extend condolences and offer a couple of days of bereavement leave after someone dies, but that is just one facet of the real experience of grieving. My family has been grieving my dad’s illness and impending death (whether that’s years or weeks from now) for a very long time, and it’s grueling.
I believe we teach what we most need to learn, and this project was no different. I learned a lot about the science and philosophy around creativity, and I am grateful for all of it. But the universe served up a totally different sort of lesson about creating amidst crisis. I had to totally reevaluate my own creative practices. I’ve been a writer for twenty years and this experience turned my writing inside out. I learned a lot about how embodiment, mindfulness, the interconnection with our environment and all manner of expression is necessary to both my wellness and my writing. I see all of that as a spokes on a wheel of spiritual practice that feeds my writing, which feeds my spiritual practice, that in turn feeds my wellness.
Heidi: You’ve been dealing with a lot for such a long time now. I admire how you’ve been able to use that which has been turned inside out to identify what you truly need to feed your own wellbeing. That’s not an easy road, especially in a dominant culture that often doesn’t fully support doing so. (Not that any road through grief is any easy road if you go down it fully…) How are you navigating the conditions this collision is creating? How does the dissonance created impact your choices?
Sarah: My heart has cracked open in ways I never thought it could. I’m regularly brought to tears by both the raw beauty and utter devastation that our universe provides us, sometimes daily. I’ve been amazed at how my understanding of creation and wellness has opened up. I am still finding ways to articulate this, but I’ve found that creating is a much more spiritual undertaking than I ever truly understood before. Creation is certainly about more than artmaking, or even making anything. It’s about birthing something over and over again, and that is a deeply mystical experience.
One of the hallmarks of grief is that it is a very lonely place to be. Perhaps that’s because of our culture’s clumsy way of dealing with it, but I think even if we were more emotionally intelligent about our grieving community members, it’s still a lonesome experience because every grief is unique. No one can truly be with you in your experience.
I love thinking about the dissonance, Heidi. It’s such a fascinating question. Because I’ve made good friends with grief, I’ve also made good friends with lonesomeness. Creating, then, has become a deeply personal experience.
I studied community development in my graduate program, and I’ve worked in community organizations my whole adult life. I’ve been trained to think about groups; looking at the whole system as opposed to one part. This dissonance, this collision between grief and creating has forced me to look at the world through a different lens. I’m seeing the world through a very individual viewfinder.
Heidi: I am reminded of something I wrote in Collisions of Earth and Sky, “If the world were a house, there would be rooms for gratitude and joy and celebration, but there would also be a room that can only be filled with grief. The house will feel empty until the grief is acknowledged, and the door into hope will be stuck.” It’s so interesting to think about how that dissonance exists and it just always will—it’s not one of those things we can tweak to make it feel better or harmonize. Instead, we need to make room for it to be there, and as you’re doing, befriend it.
What has this collision taught you about yourself? The world?
Sarah: I think I could write a book about this. I’ve learned about my own capacity for dis-ease. I’ve been amazed at the depth of feeling I’m capable of—that’s the thing about grief, it is a reflection of our capacity for love. I never fancied myself a particularly black-and-white thinker, but I’ve been taught over and over in the last handful of years that, as Walt Whitman reminds me on the daily, we contain multitudes. You can be deliriously happy and miserably sad at the same time, you can give and accept, be broken and strong, create and destroy simultaneously.
On a less positive note, I suppose, I’ve also learned about the cavernous gaps in our healthcare system. I’ve become so aware of how capitalism doesn’t leave a lot of room for us to be human beings. Capitalism loves us to be doing, producing, moving, and to honor the most tender places in our life cycle, sometimes we need stillness.
Heidi: I like to think of grief as the wildest kind of love. It can’t be contained, but perhaps it can be companioned. (I think you should write a book on this, too.)
Okay shifting gears a bit, I’d love to hear about a collision you explore in your latest work.
Sarah: I have two projects in the works right now. One is called Creatology: Living a Creative Life, a self-study course for supporting our wellness through creating. It is the culmination of the research and learning I’ve undertaken in the last couple of years.
I’m co-hosting a writing retreat called The Rebel Writer’s Retreat. I’ve been part of writing workshops since I was a teenager, both as a student and a teacher. I’ve grown tired of the patriarchal way in which writing is approached in these settings, so much so that I haven’t taught in a couple years. At the prompting of one of my students, we designed a writing retreat that invites us to write from our intuition, to throw out all the rules and write outside the lines. We’ll convene for the weekend of December 8-10, 2023 at the ARC Retreat Center in central Minnesota. Registration is $795, inclusive of accommodations and five meals, and will go live in early September.
I’ll be sharing more about that in my newsletter in the coming weeks.
Heidi: I love the sound of that retreat! The best writing course I ever took was one where the facilitator (Bayo Akomolafe) basically started the course by saying he wasn’t going to teach us a thing about the ‘craft’ of writing, rather we were going to wade deeply into the unknown and find our way back, learning along the way what it means for us to dance with mountains and monsters and beauty at the pace that allows us to move slow enough through that which is urgent. The Rebel’s Writing Retreat sounds like a way to do just that.
Anything else you’d like to share about your current projects?
Sarah: For those who can’t get away for a weekend retreat, but who are interested in connecting with this intuitive style of writing, I’ll be launching a self-study writing course called The Raconteurs: An Anti-writing Workshop this fall (stay tuned to my newsletter for details).
I also work with folks one-to-one as a writing coach. I tongue in cheek call myself a story midwife, as the way I approach writing coaching is to help writers of all stripes birth the stories they need to tell in a safe, supported, therapeutic way. I take on a limited number of clients so I can devote the necessary time and energy to each and I have room on my docket for the fall! You can learn more at bewonderment.com or by emailing me at sarah@sarahratermannbeahan.com.
Have a collision you’d like to explore in this space? Send me an email at heidi@heidibarr.com.