Page 56

Jill Badonsky's The Awe-Manac: A Daily Dose of Wonder arrived in the mail last week. I'm such a sucker for books that are handwritten or have hand-drawn graphics, and also liked the idea of a page of creative prompts for every day of the year.

To be honest, I'm not sure that the cheesy puns are quite my thing, though I'm not complaining: the title was a pretty good indication of what was to come! But there are lots of little gems worth trawling through 1kg of sweet-smelling glossy paper for. Like reframing your attitude towards a given day so that instead of thinking, "Today I have to..." you say to yourself, "Today I get to...!".

In the quest for a little more levity in my life, I decided to give Badonsky's January recommendation for Geminis a go: Open any book in a bookstore and find a message for you on page 56. It's there.

Seeing as I have enough books on my bedside table alone to open a bookstore, I thought I'd start there. So here is the collected wisdom of page 56:

Lisa Garrigues Writing Motherhood "With young children [...] we are rarely alone, yet we feel so lonely."

Anne Morrow Lindenbergh Gift from the Sea "Nothing is demanded of you in payment, no social rite expected, no tie established. It was a gift, freely offered, freely taken, in mutual trust."

Karen Maezen Miller Momma Zen "I hired a part-time nanny. I felt good and I also felt guilty, and I legitimized both feelings by using the liberation to work, writing for others and for myself. Was I free? No, not often."

Julia Cameron The Sound of Paper "List ten activities that you would enjoy but tell yourself you have no time for. Don't these neglected possibilities sound self-nurturing?"

May Sarton Journal of a Solitude "Wholeness does not, of course, necessarily mean being right in a deduction or an action. It does mean not being divided in spirit by conscience, by doubt, by fear."

Natalie Goldberg Writing Down the Bones "And what great writers pass on is not so much their words, but they hand on their breath at their moments of inspiration."

Anne Lamott Bird by Bird "A movie begins to play in my head, with emotion pulsing underneath it, and I stare at it in a trancelike state, until words bounce around together and form a sentence. Then I do the menial work of getting it down on paper, because I'm the designated typist [...]."

I am marinating in these heartening, grounding, exhilarating words. And a little tug reminds me of my undergraduate studies, of learning that "enthusiasmos" in Ancient Greek meant something to the effect of "having the god breathe through you".

I am opening up to the wisdom of page 56.