Lately, I’ve lapsed.

I’ve let weeks pass without posting on my blog when, for a few years, I’ve managed to keep up the routine of a pretty regular Thursday post.

But I hope you’ll forgive me. Life has been so crazy lately – with my brother’s death and my mother’s recent serious surgery (I’m in Ontario with her now, and she is home from the hospital and doing fairly well, although tired and, you know…).

It isn’t that I haven’t been writing though. I have been. Slowly, steadily, I’ve been moving through a rewrite of a new novel.

And I’ve been remembering how writing gets me through, how it is so much more than just ‘a job’. How it is sometimes the ground under my feet. A spiritual practice that helps me make meaning of my internal experience and connect it with something outer, something bigger, something universal.

So there may be more lapses here.

There may be more weeks with no Thursday post so that I can turn more of my attention over to my work.

I’m not yet sure how this will unfold but these days, this is part of the struggle of being an artist, isn’t it? Balancing an active online presence and connecting with all of you (who mean a lot to me) with the need to sink more steadily into the quiet space of creating.

For now, just three months since I had my heart ripped out of my chest, this is what I need. To quietly walk the writing path, to go deeper and deeper into those woods.