We were at the lagoon: the one that is known for its magical healing properties--the one spelled with a capital L--the one that is Negra because of the dark water that represents the Void where all answers and solutions reside.
I almost didn't make it to the mid-line of the mountain where Laguna Negra makes her home, grounded between two large stone formations looking like the face of the Incan ancestors from whom the legends about her were passed on from generation-to-generation.
Anemia choked my chest, and the breath became strange and stranger to me as we made the climb to reach her sacred space of tears that flowed from the heavens down the mountain into her liquid womb to fill her up: the largest cup for the seeker.
I was so breathless that the best I could do was to lay down my burdened body over a flat rock and lean my face in as close as I could, darkness regarding darkness.
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You can also LISTEN to the reading of the story (1:18 minutes)
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Note: Leaning In was written while participating in a writer's group with about 11 participants in Northern, NJ. A number of writing prompts were provided, "leaning in" was one of them, and we all had fifteen minutes to write a story using that prompt.
Creative writing, storytelling has been (and continues to be) an extremely strong healing channel for me (journaling, short stories, flash fiction, poetry, songwriting, blog writing, and now, moving into screenwriting). There's nothing I can't touch, explore, release, imagine through writing.
Check out Elizabeth Levine's "The Writer's Rant" online publication. She describes it as . . . For all aspiring writers, follow the journey of memoir writing and the therapeutic process of writing to heal. Elizabeth Levine, M.F.A. Candidate in Creative Writing documents her process of writing What Remains, a memoir addressing issues of bereavement, loss, PTSD, AIDS and substance abuse and the redemptive process of documenting both her own story and that of the AIDS community.
