Why health?

I’m grateful that I had the opportunity to write a book that might help others become the most active participant in their own health and well-being. My mother asked me what the book I was writing was about, and not willing yet to tell her it was about astrology, I said, “It’s about taking care of yourself.”

The seed of a lifelong commitment to taking care of myself and the journey of learning about how to do that stems from my father, who struggled all of his life with obesity. He died at age 62 of massive heart disease. From the time I was 9, when he embarked on the Weight Watchers diet, I was getting the lessons of how to learn how to eat right.

So as I watched his struggle, I determined I would not do the same. Even though my assignment was to write a book about astrology and tarot, and health happened to be the subject, I had the opportunity to weave in some of the lessons I have learned about health and well-being. Now I get to tell more than a few people how to have reverence for their bodies, how to develop a positive body image, how to transcend the suffering that illness brings.

How do astrology, tarot, new age health, literary fiction and contemporary women’s journalism all come together?

It’s the mystery of life. That seems to be the thread through all of this as I ask myself why it is that I have this mix of credentials. The overall abiding theme of all of these is that I know I have a gift of language, and this is how I have been led to use it -- through literary fiction that illuminates into the deepest mysteries of the human soul; through straightforward, practical, self-affirming journalism that gives women the encouragement to reach their highest potential; through new age health practices that encourage an open-minded approach to applying the latest medical advances with the oldest traditions of wisdom.

Why astrology and tarot?

Their symbolism provides archetypes and symbols that allow us to reach truths that we may not be able to reach in any other way.

As a writer, I love symbolism, and I am constantly studying personalities. What makes that person tick? I wonder. Astrology provides the archetypes and tries to make some sense of the mysterious energies of the universe. As a writer, I know when it is time for a character to be shaken up, when it is time for an ephiphany, when it is time for resolution. In so many years of studying the arc of story -- both the fictional kind and the truth-is-stranger-than-fiction kind -- I find that the way astrology explains some of the rhythms of the universe is helpful. Sometimes we struggle, sometimes it clicks. Sometimes we have clarity, sometimes the ground is shaking beneath our feet. Astrology maps out all of these rhythms and tries to explain them through the movements of the planets. Whether you believe there is any scientific basis for that or not, and in truth most people I know who tune in to astrology don’t think of it as a science either, you have experienced the feeling of, “to everything there is a season.”

Tarot is about storytelling. The Major Arcana provide the story of the journey of life. A hero’s journey, a spiritual quest -- whatever you see in it is whatever you bring to it.

So its not so much the inherent message of the cards or the stars; it’s a way to unlock the message you already have inside you. That is intuition. It’s the way to know what it is you already know.

Our lives are so busy, busier all the time. We don’t take time to listen to that inner voice. Maybe this is a shortcut.

How can a believer -- meaning someone who believes in God -- turn to astrology and tarot for wisdom?

Spiritually, I do not believe astrology or tarot represent a force in opposition to God. Gone, I think, is the age when these arts were part of the occult and associated with witchcraft. We just didn’t understand, and what we don’t understand, we fear.

Though I worship in a Christian church with my family, my view of God is broader than the boundaries of that denomination. I believe S/He is trying to reach us all the time, in many, many ways, some of which the mortal mind cannot even fathom. S/He loves us THAT much. God is omnipresent and omnipotent, so why would S/He only try once, maybe twice?

If you are seeking God and loving God, then His/Her wisdom can get through to you in many, many ways. If something you heard in a tarot reading resonated with you, if you were directed to have more compassion toward someone who was attacking you, for instance, is there not a greater hand at work here?

The flipside is if you are not believing in God, you aren’t hearing the right messages. And yes, it can steer you the wrong way. In fact, if you are not believing in God, you are shutting out all the messages, and you can only hear the messages that lead to self-destruction, that cause more pain. Through that suffering, though, God is still calling you. There are some who choose to suffer before they will allow themselves to be transformed by God’s love. They fear its magnificence. They feel they don’t deserve it.

A blurb on a book jacket describes a writer as living in some idyllic setting with her family, and immediately you imagine that writer living on some golden pond with endless moments to meander through the woods and contemplate life.

I do live in a village, and I do have a view of the Sandia Mountains. Bunnies hop across the sidewalk that leads to my door, and mama roadrunner comes up the hill every day in search of food for her family.

But is there a lot of time to contemplate life? Not with the high mix of single parenthood, a day job as editor of a women’s magazine, a night job as the writer of nonfiction new age health books and a middle-of-the-night job as a literary fiction writer. And did I mention I have twins?

But for me there is no other way to be. I say the first thing you should do if you want to become a writer, is to try very, very, very hard not to become one. If it is still burning in you that you have some take on life that no one else has, then go ahead and spill it in to your computer. Print it out and tuck it away on the back shelf of your coat closet and try, try, try to forget about it. You’ve said it now.

If it keeps calling your name, call your friends instead. Tell them to meet you at the arty film theater or the techno-pop club downtown. Tell them you want to go on a hike to see the aspen trees or you just have to walk on a beach somewhere. Take your kids ice skating or miniature golfing. Something, anything. Do anything but write.

Then, if you still must write. Then, you are a writer, and you must write.

Some say to write what you know. I say to write about what fascinates you. Take a look, for instance, at what the authors represented in the Best American Short Stories collections say about what inspired their stories. Nancy Reisman, author of “Illumination,” in the 2001 collection, and winner of the Iowa Short Fiction Award, says her story began because knew an eccentric woman from her childhood in Buffalo, and she wanted to explain what made her so eccentric in this city with so many ethnic influences. Another, Barbara Klein Moss, in “The Rug Weaver,” met a Persian man on the bus in San Diego. We write about what we cannot explain right away.

There is no such thing as a natural writer. Writing takes practice. I am fond of saying that you have to write a lot of bad words to write a lot of good words. Very few writers give birth to a story whole. It comes out in bits and pieces -- ugly little mismatched pieces that don’t fit. It’s the writer’s challenge to find the pattern. So you must like revising, if you are to become a writer. For more on this, look up Lorrie Moore’s short story, “How to Become a Writer”, from her short story collection, “Self-Help”.

I have had a writing practice group for about seven years now. I practice writing the way an athlete does drills. I train individual muscles -- the plot muscle, the dialogue muscle, the character development muscle, the use of language muscle, etc. The writing practice group is modeled on Natalie Goldberg’s workshops from her book, “Writing Down the Bones.”

Some members of this group have formed a work-in-progress feedback group that serves the purpose of workshopping stories, scripts and memoirs. While our primary purpose is helping each other make the leap faster from draft to published work, the group also serves a more vital purpose. We encourage each other. We believe in each other. We are vision-keepers for one another. When one member loses sight of what she was striving for or why she was doing that, the others can remind her.

We also are consummate networkers. We exchange contact info for literary agents, film makers, writers, editors, journalists, publicists, etc. Each of us is connected into different segments of the writer/film maker world.

For more about how you can start a group, please email me at carolyn@carolynflynn.com.

For more about a writing workshop in the beautiful village of Corrales, New Mexico, please email me at carolyn@carolynflynn.com.

I don’t believe in nagging. But this is a little like the dieter who is trying to lose a lot of weight saying she doesn’t believe in chocolate.

I get a lot of practice at nagging every day. If nagging were a competitive sport, I would be standing before a bank of flashing cameras with a silver bowl over my head.

Getting something to happen, such as the putting on of shoes so we can attend preschool, is a process. There must be some rule that children learn, which must run through their sweet heads something like this, “Mommy doesn’t really mean it when she says it’s time to go. She doesn’t really need for me to put my shoes on, even when she uses the word NOW in all caps. The decibel level isn’t high enough, and she’s too calm.”

Perhaps resistance is their competitive sport, and they score points for making you screech. I can hear the sportscaster now, whispering close to the microphone as one would for golf, because of course, mothering and resisting mothering are sports requiring the same intensity of concentration that directing a small white ball to a little hole in the ground requires. “OK, now I think he’s really done it,” the announcer says. “You’ve really got to admire the way he’s strung this one out. Oh yes, you can see it, she’s about to ... AMAZING! He threw the shoes in the trash can! Right in front of her! Omigod, I’ve never seen the likes of this. This victory has to go down in the annals of history. Yes, she’s screeching now. Absolutely screeching. He’s done it! He’s done it! What an amazing triumph! Ab-so-LUTE-ly brilliant!”

In truth, nagging does not work. Shoes would get put on, hair would get combed. They would eventually go to bed. Take me out of the equation, and they would probably eat when they’re hungry and eventually they would bathe. Silence me for a week, and no fingers would get cut with knives, no one would fall down the stairs and no one would crack their heads open.

My grandmother used to tell us we would crack our heads open if we were playing too rough or too high off the ground. I imagined my sister (it could only happen to her, not me, because I was the oldest and I knew better, right?) with her head cracked in two like an egg, and her brain spilling out in a yellow yolky blob.

This is the part where I admit that I sound like my mother. Actually, more like my father than my mother, because I can never remember a harsh word coming out of my mother. I know I must have done all the same things my children do, and yet I never remember her losing her patience with us. I can only hope this is evidence of some mother-love gene that is built in to the species, some gene that wipes out all memory of any frustration our mothers must have expressed when we were exhibiting the kind of behavior that prompted one sister to describe preschoolers as, “Very annoying people.” Annoying, yes, but also the most exuberant, cheerful, charming people you’ll ever meet.

Yes, if anything, I am echoing the words of my father. Words such as, “Cease and desist,” and “there’s more where that came from.” I do not say but I now totally understand why he said, “Crying won’t do any good.” When I was a child, and my father stifled my tears, it was devastating to me. It’s part of being a kid to express absolute, utter grief at the “owies” of life. It’s an injustice that must be set aright. In my short story, “Self-Help,” Veronica tells the father who would squelch her tears, “Crying is cathartic.” Of course, the other day, my own son admonished a girl we saw crying in the restroom not to cry. Why? “Oh you better watch out, you better not cry ...”

What we need all remember as parents is that our children need more empathy than nagging. When they cry, we don’t have to fix it, we just have to listen. When they burst into tears because two parents with busy schedules can’t seem to negotiate a play date for them, they express the frustration and sorrow that we as adults set aside in the name of maturity. We must remember that when they say, “My stomach hurts,” over and over and over, for two days, but only on the way to school, and when they are not throwing up, running a fever or slowing down in their play activities in the least, that they are really trying to say, “Something’s not right. I don’t have the words for it, but I want you to know what I’m feeling.”

If you want to know what your spiritual blocks are, become a parent. Your children will be the greatest spiritual teachers you have ever had. I wanted to become a parent because I believe I have had the privilege of experiencing many other kinds of love, I had not experienced this deeper kind of love. I knew the complete love of God, the love of my father and mother, the love of a romantic partner, the love of my sisters and my friends, but I had not known the deep love that comes with the sacrifices you make as a parent.