“Have you ever been apple picking?” my friend Leila asked.
“I’ve always wanted to go.” I kept my eyes on the road for our exit.
“I’ll tell you the trick,” said Leila. “You have to twist the apple. If it’s ready, the stem breaks right off. But when the fruit isn’t ripe, it simply won’t come off. You can keep twisting and twisting, and it still won’t come. Or you could force it off, but then it won’t taste good. You can’t tell just by looking.”
”So You don’t know until you try,” I said.
During a goal setting session with a friend, I shared self-disappointment.
“I love Brave Tutu so much and with everything going on, I regret that I haven’t written a piece in so long. I just don’t know where to begin.”
“Why don’t you start there?” she said.
“Start with my disappointment and sadness?”
“Yeah, and how you’re not sure where to kick it off,” my friend encouraged. “If nothing else, it will be a good free write.”
Oh Claire Campbell, you are so wise.
Brave Tutu’s essence is to shine the light on small moments of significance—to uncover their rawness, wonder, beauty and even grief. However, for months I’ve felt stalled out. With added pressure, I wanted the January piece to serve as a mighty capstone of the last year and offer solid hope moving forward. But after a mind mushed from 2020 and the deadly insurrection at the Capitol, picking up the pen to dive into this space felt like writing on college-ruled paper with a magic marker. Impossible.
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