Laura Grace Weldon works as an editor and leads workshops on memoir, poetry, and creative thinking. She’s the author of four books. The poetry collections Portals (Middle Creek, 2021), Blackbird (Grayson Books, 2019), and Tending (Aldrich, 2013), along with a handbook of natural education titled Free Range Learning (Hohm Press, 2010). Laura was the 2019 Ohio Poet of the Year. One of her favorite current gigs is serving as editor of Braided Way magazine. Laura’s background includes teaching nonviolence, writing collaborative poetry with nursing home residents, facilitating support groups for abuse survivors, and writing sardonic greeting cards. She lives on a small Ohio homestead where she and her husband host the occasional house concert. Connect with her at lauragraceweldon.com 

 

 

Random Self-Revelatory Notes

My children are, as I’ve always suspected, the Hope of the World.  Everyone else’s are too.

The boy I started dating when I was 14 is the man I married at 18. We’re still together refuting all those naysayers.

I’m a library addict.

I can tell you, in all honesty, I was saved by a book. 

I may have been a nonviolence trainer and peace advocate, but I can still rant.

I’m pretty sure gentle nurturance, deeper connection with the natural world, and more time for creativity, on top of dismantling systemic injustice, would cure nearly every problem plaguing the modern human.  No, I’m not ranting.

I live on a small homestead in Ohio. Pastoral peace and joys like a lovestruck goose make up for some of our bizarre experiences after moving here, like receiving death threats.

I’m an expert level procrastinator. Here’s one example. I have a nearly-completed, twenty-year-old manuscript called Subversive Cooking: Overthrowing the Dominant Food Paradigm One Bite at a Time. Did I finish it and send it out for publication? No, I never quite got around to the final edits due to raising four kids, keeping up with writing gigs, and indulging in the blissful distraction of library books. Imagine my dismay when Michael Pollen published a very similar but less jocular bestseller, The Omnivore’s Dilemma. What do I have left to show for it other than two boxes of research materials? A very silly Facebook page in the name of my long-abandoned book. 

I recognize my fashion choices are questionable because my offspring say, “You aren’t going out in that are you?” Also because people regularly offer me hand-me-downs, which I gladly accept. That’s why some days I may be wearing a 80-year-old lady’s hand-me-down skirt and a teenager’s hand-me-up sweater.

Research fascinates me. I dig into a topic sideways and every which way. That gets me started on several other topics.  No wonder it’s hard to get an article done on deadline.

I was interviewed several times as a radical homemaker, but never again. Why, you ask? The article appearing in Ladies Home Journal was was promoted this way: “A small but passionate group of women across America have embraced the kind of back-to-basics homemaking our grandmothers did-from scratch, by hand, grown in the backyard. And they’ve never been happier.” The piece was titled “Extreme Housewives.”

I’m a crafts idler. I fantasize about projects far more often than I actually do them.  

I’m chronically awkward. Despite efforts to be polite I tend to snort at the wrong time (is there a right time?), spew food during serious discussions, and fall even on level ground. 

I used to get together with nursing home residents to write poetry. After a year of these gatherings their work was compiled into a small book., Gathering Our Thoughts. The experience itself felt like a living poem. 

As a child I wrote a letter to God and buried it, figuring that’s how my grandparents got to Him.

I can find common ground with just about anyone, but cannot understand those who show no empathy.

I know for sure that greater awareness and compassion are evolving on this planet. I see evidence everywhere.

Dreams, visions, even the promptings of my body have given me guidance. I’m not always wise enough to follow this guidance.

There are random body parts around my house. Two mannequin torsos in my office, doll’s legs in potted plants, a large hand on a bookcase, a head wearing a Viking helmet in the living room, a nose my brother carved hangs in the kitchen, and what others might consider too many head pots. (It’s not possible to have too many head pots.)

I think each moment is a form of prayer.

Since my earliest memory, I have felt personally responsible for world peace and environmental harmony. That particular burden probably explains my bad posture.

I’ve been waiting a long time, trusting what I’d been told as a child—- “You’ll understand when you’re older.” Well, damn it, I am older. I still don’t understand.