One Year of Internal Alchemy
And many, many thanks
This newsletter marks my 52nd Internal Alchemy post. After a full year of writing and sharing with you all, I thought I’d go through and flag some highlights, the big points of the year.
First, some numbers, because my Bachelor’s in Science is not for nothing. I love data.
Internal Alchemy is read across 29 US states and 18 countries, amounting to almost 13,000 views in one year of writing. Of these views, around 60% come from my direct subscribers.
I’ve written about travel, meditation, family, spirituality, death, nature, and love. My writing spanned two countries, four seasons, and four meditation retreats (see “Yellow teachers,” “Nocturnal devotions,” “Guilt and graciousness,” and last week’s “Bright Panic”).
I’ve grown a community of readers, but also a community of fellow writers. I am so happy to read and exchange words with Elizabeth Wellver Hennigan’s delicate Poem Land and Danny Cassesse’s colorful Studio Synthesis. I’ve gotten delightful gardening tips from The Gardening Mind and monthly insight from Jessica Dore’s monthly Offerings.
The most-liked and most-shared writing was my inaugural post for Internal Alchemy, “Living a Dream.”
At first, I wanted to face the losses I face as closely as possible. Nose to nose, cheek to cheek, I wanted to embrace the hurt and hold it as it held me. I entered a valley full of Quentin’s echoes and memories. In the wake of losing my mom, I signed myself up for weeks of workshops on death and dying in different sects of Buddhism. I started reading a life’s worth of journals, all in my mother’s hand.
Outside of that inaugural post (bringing in 47 new subscriptions) the next-largest subscriber influx came from the post, “Bardos and Bodies.”
Death propels people into faith. My losses have moved me in different patterns than I would’ve anticipated. But for it, I’m grateful. I’m grateful for the beingness of it all. And though it still stings with heartache, I’m often grateful for the non-beingness, too. I’m excited now, to sit with that sting.
Over the course of the year, the blog that received the most views on the day it was released was “Psychology and Spirituality”
Being in this room has a twinge of melancholy that I wouldn’t find anywhere overseas. Because here, in this room, it feels like my mother could walk in at any moment. And it hurts to know she never will. She’ll no longer stride in with an iced tea and pluck a book off a shelf, fold herself into her father’s armchair and begin to read.
This practice has kept me dedicated. Through the accountability of your readership, I’ve been able to dedicate myself more deeply to this craft.
In writing these essays, I’m forcing myself to practice creative nonattachment. I may think I know what I’ll say, but once words begin to flow, I’m carried off and away into a different corner of my mind or the world than I’d ever expected.
I’m on a journey that I don’t know the destination to. Perfection is not my aim. But I do hope for diligence, exploration, and joy in the process.
My aim is to write a book about suicide. After experiencing the unique loves, lives, and deaths of my brother, Quentin, and my mother, Bennett, I have to imagine that I have been tempered for something.
In part because of all of you, I’ve accepted an invitation to become a resident at Southern Dharma Retreat Center for six to eight weeks this fall. There, my intentions are to deepen my practice, expand my capacity for forgiveness, and write with more dedicated focus in the remote mountains of North Carolina.
It’s a rare opportunity, to surround myself with teachers and learn from their practices. I’ll immerse myself in a community of practitioners who have chosen to build their lives in tucked-away hills. I’ll live in a small one-room shed without power or water, but a small front porch and a creek running past. (My version of Walden Pond, perhaps?) I’ll meditate, work for the center, and write each day.
My writing and my meditation practice are entwined. I’ll never be able to hold all the threads of light and dark, pain and joy, morality and corruption that reside within each of us as human beings, without meditation. Holding all of that at once with love, I know that what I write will be more true, heartfelt, and impactful than I’d otherwise ever be able to manage.
Because, as I wrote in Internal Alchemy’s inaugural newsletter, “This book can’t originate from the mind alone.”
It’s my story as well as theirs. It’s my heart that breaks and heals in silent cycles. After over a year and a half of clinging to the mind, I’ve returned to my heart. However murky, it’s these dark waters that I’ll wade through. Casting nets and dredging up what may get caught, I’ll drag things ashore and be able to discern and sift through what is mine and what may not be.
So thank you. Thank you for reading my writing. Thank you for allowing me to honor Quentin and Bennett, and for letting me show how loss has shaped me. It shapes us all. In such a hectic world, the fact that you all take time out of your week to read these words fills me with gratitude and inspiration.
Thank you for commenting and messaging and emailing me your feedback. Reading your responses fills my heart. It moves me to see how connected we all are by universal experiences of life: love and loss.
For my paid subscribers, thank you for making it possible for me to focus more energy and time on my writing. Your support empowers me to focus on what’s most important, to cut through the noise.
If you’ve enjoyed following along this year, if anything I’ve shared has provoked thought or change or rung resonant in your life, the greatest gift you can give me is to share my writing. To see this digital community of readers and writers grow has been one of my greatest joys this past year. Thank you for telling your friends and families about Internal Alchemy.
Thank you for your presence, and for moving with me as we pass through different crucibles of change in our lives. Thank you for accompanying me in this ever-evolving process of Internal Alchemy.
It is a gift to learn and wander and be with you on this journey, Vanessa. Thrilled about your upcoming residency in the mountains 💜