I Was Terrified to Publish My Memoir
From my chrysalis to yours—announcing Eclosion, and what's emerging alongside it
I have been quiet lately. There has just been so much to process. I've processed while swimming and playing mandolin and sailing. While dancing to live music and reading in the hammock. And all the while, the work has continued.
This isn't new to me, this doing the work behind the scenes without sharing it. Sometimes sharing is just one thing too many. And I've been in such a chrysalis—really, in multiple phases of metamorphosis all at the same time. Crawling low to the ground as a caterpillar. Melting down into imaginal goo in my chrysalis. Soaring from flower to flower in fluttering flight.
There have been hard things and beautiful things. After the loss of a dear friend and mentor of mine, a friend transcribed and gave me a poem by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer called For When People Ask. It opens:
I want a word that means
okay and not okay,
a word that means
devastated and stunned with joy.
I want the word that says
I feel it all all at once.
That capacity—to hold it all at once—is a continual practice.
Last winter, out on a date with my love, Shon, I shared with him how there wasn't really anything in my life that terrified me. For me, fear has always been a measure of what to move towards. And I was doing a lot of new stuff that once would have terrified me—learning to play the mandolin, singing backup in a band, joining an improv class. As I shared with Shon over dinner, I felt a moment of grace, of ease.
Literally two days later I was in my office, looking over a contract with my potential publisher, and seeing everything wrong with it. I had a huge list of reasons why it wasn't a good idea to sign. And then it hit me. Those were all just excuses for what was really going on: I was terrified to publish my memoir. In print. Out in the world with my name on the cover and my words in ink. It felt so vulnerable.
When I really looked at that fear, I saw it for the weathervane it was, pointing me in the direction the wind was blowing. It showed me I need to publish my book. Even though a big part of me really didn't want to.
I've asked myself so many times—Why? Why publish this deeply personal story of my life? The answer I keep coming back to is that I believe deeply in change—but I've set aside my need to tell people what to do, my need to be right and know the answers. And after setting those things aside, what was left was my story. So even though I was terrified, I signed that contract. And bubbling up around the fear was excitement, and almost a sense of awe—Author. That's me. I wrote a book. And I feel it all all at once.
Saying yes turned out to be the easy part. I've been deep inside my own chrysalis ever since—because the next thing that needs to happen is getting the book out into the world. I'm good at getting my public work into the world. But this feels different. My work in the world is all about We. This book is all about Me. But I've heard it said that Me is simply a reflection of We.
ME
WE
Even as I've been melted down in my own chrysalis, the outer work never stopped—a major art installation, workshops, the daily business of Earth Art—and all the while, I've been developing a two-year global participatory art initiative called A Living Chrysalis.
A Living Chrysalis is the outward shape of everything the memoir holds inside. The book is about me. It's my story. But it's also about we—about the trials and tribulations we all move through, one way or another. It holds the roots of my Art in Action methodology, a methodology which is very much in practice today. And even though I'm scared, that doesn't mean I can't still take action. It doesn't mean I can't be brave at the same time.
So this is my note to you, dear reader, to share that this book is making its way into the world, even as A Living Chrysalis becomes manifest. The personal work and the public work, mirroring one another.
The memoir holds the roots.
The work is the forest canopy.
Eclosion: An Artist's Path to Power and Peace is coming this fall.
Simultaneously, A Living Chrysalis takes flight.
And I would love more than anything for you to be a part of it.
We are all connected through the mycelial network—connecting across concrete, across forests, across oceans. Connecting in a way that is beautiful and profound, and sometimes so full of grief.
Thank you for your bravery, even when you're scared. Thank you for helping me to be brave.
I'll be reaching out soon with ways we can connect, collaborate, and come together across space, time, and borders.
Until then, stay curious, creative, and courageous.
~Carrie
For When People Ask
I want a word that means
okay and not okay,
a word that means
devastated and stunned with joy.
I want the word that says
I feel it all all at once.
The heart is not like a songbird
singing only one note at a time,
more like a Tuvan throat singer
able to sing both a drone
and simultaneously
two or three harmonics high above it—
a sound, the Tuvans say,
that gives the impression
of wind swirling among rocks.
The heart understands the swirl,
how the churning of opposite feelings
weaves through us like an insistent breeze
leads us wordlessly deeper into ourselves,
blesses us with paradox
so we might walk more openly
into this world so rife with devastation,
this world so ripe with joy.~ Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
from All the Honey (Samara Press, 2023), used with permission of the author