There are three things I can count on in this world:
1) the love and support of my mother, my husband and my friends;
2) my glass is always half-full
and 3) when I ask the Great God of Creative Flow for help, I get it.

Last year, I listened to an interview with one of the judges for the creative non-fiction category of the CBC literary awards (now simply called Canada Writes) and he commented on how many essays were about cancer and Alzheimer's, about disease and death and caregiving. Well, since I'd submitted two essays about Alzheimer's, I knew I was hearing an important message to heed.
Wracking my brain to think of something different to write, I couldn't come up with anything that I could write about with more punch than that. Like a story, any essay needs to have a twist, some kind of tension, a change in the author. It doesn't have to be a shocking rape in the second to last paragraph like last year's winning essay but there has to be something that keeps the reader moving along, wondering what is going to happen. As in, why did this person write this essay?
I wandered through my files to see what I have but I'm also hampered by the fact I'm not a literary writer. Compared to some of the essays that these CBC judges chose, my stuff is like Chicken Soup for the Soul.
But still, with the deadline looming, I just couldn't bring myself to not submit, especially now that one of the few magazines in this country to publish memoir-style essays has folded (argh! I had something on submission that wasn't health/disease-related and figured they'd pick it up). So I sat on my yoga mat with my eyes closed and Stella breathing on me (in ten years, she's learned that when I finally sit in lotus position, she's 15 minutes away from eating breakfast) and I asked for guidance.
Voila!
Checking a artist friend's blog yesterday, she'd posted a poem which goes right along with an essay I'd written for Canadian Geographic two years ago (but they didn't pick up). It was in my mind because I was going to submit it again. When I saw the poem, I knew I could expand the essay with the poem.
Not done yet: when I sat on my yoga mat this morning, I realized I had no tension in that essay, no way of competing with a shocking rape or the f-word. So I waited...and an idea came to me.
It's enough. It may not be good enough to make the short-list but it's enough for me to submit. This is why my glass is always half-full. I never give up because you just never know.

How I Go to the Woods
by Mary Oliver

Ordinarily, I go to the woods alone,
with not a single friend, for they are all
smilers and talkers and therefore unsuitable.

I don’t really want to be witnessed talking to
the catbirds or hugging the old black oak tree.
I have my way of praying, as you no doubt have yours.

Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible.
I can sit on the top of a dune as motionless as an uprise
of weeds, until the foxes run by unconcerned.
I can hear the almost unbearable sound of the roses singing.

If you have ever gone to the woods with me,
I must love you very much.


(To read more of her work, simply Google her name. Lots will come up.)

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