It has been a very long 17 months since my last update. Instead of a video, I thought I would write my best attempt at a summary of how my Healing Hermitage continued and concluded. I did continue several of the planned healing activities including an amazing mother-daughter trip to Japan in June of 2024 and a retreat for Black West Point Women in September which I conceptualized and planned. When I returned home from Japan, I noticed that what started as jet lag turned into something else entirely. Looking back, it was the start of an energy depletion that would be complicated by perimenopause (which I refer to as “adult puberty”). As a result, I was taken completely offline in some areas of my life and entered into a minimum movement season. Cloistered and content with my solitary sanctuary at home, I went deep into my hermitage.
There were a lot of naps involved. I was gentle with myself during this time as even my physical body started to go into hibernation. My mood was fine and I wasn’t depressed, but I wasn’t my normal self either. I only left the house if I really had to. I felt a pull to withdraw inward like a turtle retreating into its shell. Sadly, I had to cancel several events and activities that I was looking forward to as they required more social interactions than I was up for. But it’s not like I did absolutely nothing. I still worked, raised my kids, even went to several really cool concerts. I saw Usher, Justin Timberlake, Janet Jackson, and even saw the Queen Beyonce in concert! To accommodate my extremely low tolerance for “doing”, I learned to modify my activities to be easy and passive wherever possible. I rested, and I rested, and I rested. I slept, but I woke up exhausted. Maybe it was a lifetime of overwork demanding one more season of payback. I haven’t yet fully come to understand it all. But I am now entering a new season that was created from sheer grit and hundreds of micro-movements to counter the inertia of my hermitage.
In a way, I think my Healing Hermitage was successful. It wasn’t what I planned, and lasted longer than I wanted, but emerging from my shell I found my friends to be right there where I needed them. I found that I could show up to work, do only what needed to be done, and no one would pressure me to do more. I found that the clothes in my closet literally collected dust and I could totally survive on 10-15 rotating fits. I found that my family was gracious and loving to me whether I could do all the things, or only a few things. I found that God was still on the throne of my heart and had carried me every single day that I could barely stay awake more than a few hours at a time. I found healing in a very unexpected way.
So here I am at the start of a new season of life. I have finally birthed my first book after 17 years of gestation! Wedding planning might seem like an unusual genre of writing, but it comes from a deeply personal experience that led me to wonder how I could help couples center their wedding day on their relationship & values in a way they would not regret decades later. It’s a guidebook for couples to create a vision for their nuptials and use that as a True North to inform all their decisions. Now that I’ve created my first book baby, I have two other books that I have been writing on my private social media pages and a few others that are just waiting to be released from ideation eggs to fertilized embryo book proposals. Hopefully organizing my writing and leveraging my networks will lead to securing a literary agent to help bring all of these works to life. I’m excited about the future and sharing the journey with you.
Glenda Wrenn Gordon, MD, MSHP 