Memoir Meets Meditation

I knew I needed meditation to become a better memoirist, and eureka, my years of study have served their purpose.

Here we go.

My name is Kelli Hess and I have longed to be a writer since at least the second grade.

My greatest dream was always to be an author, to write books that spoke to the soul of society and helped shape it for the better.

I hoped I would make creative work and it would matter to someone, give their life more meaning, hope, or purpose.

I hoped to say: hey, I've been through some tough times too, and I am here and doing my best. Don't give up.

If you are hurting or feeling alone or isolated in the world, I am here in spirit.

I am another spirit alive or once living (depending upon what era this is received).

But the point is that once there was life inside me to express.

Most of my greatest muses and mentors have never been alive in my lifetime. Walt Whitman, Virginia Woolf, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., Gloria Anzalduá.

Of that same staying power, the only person I have ever met, or at least stood a few feet away from and had them look directly in my eyes was Thich Nhat Hanh.

It was an experience that shook to my core, that seemed so surreal to begin with, me, alone, twenty-two on a mountaintop in silence with hundreds of strangers in Escondido learning about mindfulness and meditation, standing with a man who looked into my eyes—the same man who had looked into the living eyes of one of my greatest heroes, Martin Luther King Jr. and been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize by him.

Their legacy left behind was so powerful, so potent, so prevalent that still we read their words and revel over their remarks, inventions, and perspectives.

It was that eternal wisdom, that staying power, that legendary importance I have been seeking since I was a little girl.

Somewhere deep down, a teensy tiny voice piped up as far back as the first grade when I was placed in gifted math and reading programs, when I stood on a stage and spelled "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" to hundreds of people in pigtails thought I had what it took to be really and truly great, a legacy like my greatest heroes. They did it. What was stopping me from doing the same in my own way?

Becoming a yoga teacher in a time where yoga is quite saturated and up and coming in the West has been an experience.

I came for the mindfulness and meditation, and found myself in intensive trainings with the true blue best of the best in this industry.

What was I doing there with anatomy experts and surgeons with their anatomical knowledge, Ashtangis with rich lineages and daily practices rooting back to India, with alignment-based hatha yogis discussing the subtleties of physical minutia.

At times there was a great sense of competition, of needing to know as much as the next person.

It took me a second to remember to be what I already was: a percussionist aligned with a sense of rhythm, a writer with a sense of urgency and plethora of new analogies, understanding of sequencing, and certifications and experience of accessing the various and deeper sheaths of meditation and being: emotional, mental, etc.

I had an inner locus of control and more techniques to peacefully confront the volatile emotions that inevitably would surface when I'd try to write pieces of a memoir about my best friend's suicide, or the self-mutilation of family members I grew up afraid of.

I could take on the most traumatic instances of my life with much more bravery, courage, and patience.

In short, I could much better write my stories with a cleared mind and more open emotional framework.

What's up? At last, I'm a writer.

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