Let Your Life Speak interview: Losing and Finding Myself

A conversation with Sarah E Webb--writer and yoga teacher

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Oct 06, 2023

Welcome to Let Your Life Speak! When I first started this newsletter years ago I conducted a host of interviews with subscribers. I’ve always wanted this to be a conversation, not a monologue, and I knew enough about some of my subscribers to know we needed them in this conversation. If you’re interested in reading some of those early interviews, my favorites can be found here, here, and here.

It’s been a long while since I offered an interview to you all, but my friend Sarah is the perfect person to revive this feature for. Sarah and I met at a writing retreat in 2022 at Kripalu led by Cheryl Strayed. Over the course of the weekend, we discovered we had much more in common than our mutual love of language: we both live in Western New York, are divorced mothers of transgender children, are well-versed in the school of addiction and recovery, think about religion a lot, and write newsletters on Substack.

This interview, therefore, offers a special opportunity to cross-post our respective answers to the same questions, thus introducing our readers to each other. Please go over to Sarah’s newsletter, Narrative Threads: From Breath to Pen, check out my interview, and subscribe. Sarah is offering a special discount for my subscribers, which I hope you’ll use in order to support her excellent work.

Sarah E Webb is a teaching artist, Narrative Medicine practitioner, and yoga instructor. Always interested in the story under the story, she works between the artist and the yoga studio, considering how both are creative sites of corporeal process and practice. Sarah is a contributing writer, curator and editor for Instruments of Memory: Conversations with Women in the Arts. She facilitates writing and meditation retreats on Monhegan Island, ME, and teaches yoga in Rochester, NY. Her recent project, unspoken: a collection of abortion stories, explores the connection between narrative, healing, and how writing can be integrated into the visual arts. For more information check out her website or follow her on IG.

What are your five favorite books or movies?

Five feels so finite, but if I must, and in no particular order here are those I return to for their mastery of craft, richness of detail and simplicity of story: The Chronology of Water, Lidia Yuknavitch; The Faraway Nearby, Rebecca Solnit; Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion; The Edible Woman, Margaret Atwood; and always When Women Were Birds, Terry Tempest Williams.

What role does religion play in, or how does religion inform, your current life? Either the religion of your upbringing or one you acquired along the way.

For years, I confused spirituality with religion, thinking I needed a specific denomination to be a part of something greater than myself. While I was confirmed in the United Church of Christ, I explored many different teachings: Quaker, Mormon, Buddhist–I know, one of these things is not like the others. I converted to Judaism when I married, which was its own complicated journey, especially after divorce. Was I still Jewish or only Jew-ish?

If I found my religion anywhere, it was in the temples of South India, studying the philosophy of Tantra with my teacher, Vishali Varga. The practice of darshan was revelatory. Often defined as an exchange of glances, darshan is the invitation to see the Gods and for them to see you. It doesn’t transform you into a God but acknowledges their existence is one of interdependence. To gaze upon the deity becomes an act of offering. The deity welcomes the divine within you through their presence. One need not go to a temple to have this experience. Darshan can occur anywhere as an exchange of glances between two beings who merely want to be known by the other. It’s become my spiritual practice to be in the world with anything and anyone—to honor their divine.

Cats or dogs?

Dogs. Definitely dogs, and preferably large. Nothing beats snuggling with a 100-pound creature convinced it belongs in your lap. I'm not categorically opposed to felines, although I had a terrible experience with a Siamese cat when I was five. However, I'm also highly allergic so really, we're just not a good match.

What is something someone wouldn’t expect about you?

I'm embarrassed to say I'm terrible at remembering birthdays. They sneak up on me or sneak past me more than I'd care to admit, which doesn't mean I'm not also known for mailing a handwritten note (or a thoughtful gift) to someone for no reason at all, but I recognize the two aren't exactly the same. I may also be the only yoga teacher on the planet without a single tattoo.

If money weren’t an issue, what would your life look like?

It’s my dream of being a year-round resident on Monhegan, where I currently spend my summers. However, to live on any island, especially a remote Maine island with a winter population of under 50 people and only two boats running a week, would be a challenge, and it would come at a significant cost! To qualify the current state of my cottage as seasonal is an understatement—it didn’t even have electricity until 2020. Still, if money wasn’t an issue, I would winterize my home and experience the magic of Monhegan in every season.

In addition to continuing my writing and teaching practice, I would establish an artist’s residency for others—a space for creatives to immerse themselves and a place where I could continue to host writing and meditation retreats.

And when I tire of Monhegan? Well, there are many other islands I long to explore, such as Fogo and Sicily, and a few archipelagos: the Aegean, Azores, and Orkney Islands.

What have you learned about being a mother that surprises you?

Motherhood is an extraordinary creative collaboration. It's the process of being and becoming yourself in relationship to another. It's as empowering as it is humbling, and while the song may say "teach your children," it has been my experience that my children have been my wise sages. I'm grateful for their patience when I've stumbled and for the ways we both catch one another.

Their father and I divorced when Evan and Noah were 20 and 16, respectively. My fear of how the dissolution of the marriage would affect their lives may have kept me in the relationship longer than I would have otherwise. The last thing I wanted to do was cause them harm, but it's hard to be fully present for your children when you can't even be present for yourself.

I remember telling Evan that their father and I were going to separate. I was almost six years sober at the time. They didn't even flinch. "Oh, I figured you would wait until Noah graduated high school." Then they looked me straight in the eye, "But I was afraid you might start drinking again if you did."

Oof.

Sometimes, our children dare to speak the words we are too afraid to give voice to ourselves.

What creative pursuits do you have other than writing?

Since childhood, I’ve constructed still-life tableaux and miniature dioramas–tiny worlds within worlds. It’s a practice I continue, although it might technically fall under another name today. My home altars and arrangements bear witness to moments and memories of time. Sometimes I’ll stack a series of books by color, stringing their titles together as a cento, or fill a hand-carved wooden bowl with hundreds of broken eggshells, all (obsessively) cleaned by hand. I’m a consummate curator/complicated minimalist of everything, including the inside of my pantry, which brings me to probably my favorite creative practice: cooking. You can often find me in the kitchen, lost in the richness of recipes and ingredients as meditative and mouth-watering acts of making.

What is your relationship to solitude and silence?

It should come as no surprise that someone who wants to live on an island is okay with solitude. Truthfully, I've often felt that my time alone in the middle of the ocean affords me the clarity to see myself, then take the wisdom I find on Monhegan and carry it with me inshore. It's not that I don't desire the company of others, and I wouldn’t categorize myself as an introvert, yet stillness and being alone is vital to my creativity. Long walks. Reading and writing in complete silence. Morning pages as meditation. I can't imagine another way to be.

What is your biggest distraction or guilty secret?

Puzzle games such as Tetris, Sudoku, and currently Tiles. No doubt there is a connection between my compulsion to curate and have “everything in its proper place.” It begins as a zen distraction until it becomes an obsessive addiction. Then, I find myself regularly taking the apps off (and on and off) my phone. Also, soap operas, preferably with a large cast of teens. One Tree Hill. 90210. The OC. Outer Banks. Guilty as charged.

Why writing?

Sometimes, being a writer feels like a never ending homework assignment, but I can't imagine living my life without paper and pen. The blank page is bound yet holds the space for infinite creative possibility.

I've lost and found myself between the pages of my journal. The process often begins as an offering into the dark. Sometimes, the ink is illegible, other times indelible, yet through the act of review, I physically see the visceral experience of my voice coming into focus, and I become a better reader of myself. I've been lost and found through story, sometimes even writing the same line repeatedly until I am ready to do something different and reframe my refrain.

Writing can be daunting, but it is my practice, and I will always return to the words I wrote, often amazed by what I found, the connections I made–receiving the balance between work and wonder in the discovery of, "I wrote this?"

Thank you for reading Let Your Life Speak. This post is public so feel free to share it.

What newsletters do you read and love?

Far too many! But if I had to name a few:

Cook and Tell by

Amie McGraham

;

Maggie Smith

‘s masterful For Dear Life with Maggie Smith; Tarantula: Authors and Art by

Maja Milanovic

; Beyond by

Jane Ratcliffe

; What Do We Do Now that We’re Here? by

Rosie Spinks

; Ordinary Plots: Meditations on Poem + Verse by

Devin Kelly

; and of course yours—each in their own way offer a twist to something I thought I already knew. Grateful to the writers, to the writing, and to Substack!

Let Your Life Speak