Some people see my old logo and immediately rattle off
"See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil." 
I would change evil to fear. 

Not the kind of fear that keeps you from jumping out of an airplane without a parachute.
The other kind of fear 
the one that keeps you safe ...
keeps you comfortable and content ...
never stretching your boundaries and finding out what you can do. 
 
You won't die. 
You might stammer a little, have some heart palpitations 
and then walk out a stronger person. 
If it isn't a raging success, you'll cry in your beer, dust yourself off, and give it another go. 
The next time you'll be smarter and more wily. 

Writing is one of the scariest things we can do. Writing is staring fear in the face. Do I have anything worthy to say? Will what I have to say make any sense? Will I expose too much? Be too personal? Sound stupid? 
Writing is being vulnerable.  
You need a magic shield to keep those arrows of fear going straight to your writing soul causing you to hunker down and quit.
Shields can come from many places, shoring up your confidence by knowing if you wrote- you won already.
It can come from a writing group, a schedule of filling notebooks with freewrites, morning pages a la Julia Cameron, the philosophy of "shitty first drafts" (thank you Anne Lamott).
​It can come from reading books on writing. It can come from a coach, a mentor, a class. 
I can help you develop that shield... so you can write. 
You'll still be afraid. 
​But you'll do it. ​

I was melancholy that the all-on-my-own part of the trip was over, the leg of the journey that had originally scared me to death but to my surprise I'd fallen in love with the freedom to do, be, go, eat, wake, sleep, wander however I wanted.
On the way in to the Cape Disappointment camp store to buy lunch, I saw the mowed path inviting me to dine at a picnic table all on its own above the Columbia River and took advantage of my freedom to eat wherever I wanted.
I was sitting on top of the table to see the river better, had finished eating. I wasn't looking at the river though. Instead, I was messing with my phone as I had service, when a dog came bounding in front of me.
I know this sounds like I don't have a soul, but I've never been much of a dog person. I grew up with a few hyper bird dogs and then married into coonhounds kept in kennels. When I was a teenager, a Saint Bernard wandered up to our farm and I claimed her. She was mine for a few months, until the neighbor shot her. That was the only dog who was mine all of my 56 years. Even now I don't enjoy a dog licking me, jumping on me, or sticking their nose places they shouldn't be. I know that makes me a complete weirdo.
But this doggo seemed so sweet, even when he climbed right on top of the table with me. I was laughing and petting him, wondering where he'd come from when I heard a voice calling him behind me.
She stood alone, feet apart, confident, grounded to Mother Earth. Her hair was natural, long, partially gray. I thought immediately, "This is going to be something special, maybe important." Then just as quickly Ithought maybe not as she had on a KOA campground shirt. I grew up primitive camping in Colorado national forests; every few days we'd go to a state park for a shower but a KOA? Never. They were considered ugly and expensive by my adventurous parents.
I was wrong though. Her shirt said Oklahoma, the letters in a circle. It was difficult to see what it said. For some reason, my brain had isolated the KOA. Although I don't have a conscious connection to it, Oklahoma is my birthplace. I was wrong about her also. She was a true adventurer, driving around in her home with only her dog Annie for company. She'd rescued Annie from being tied up to a fence in an Oklahoma trailer park, paying a couple of hundred to the owners. She talked of burying a beloved cat near Rainier, becoming a fire pit designer, the documentary she was working on.
The meeting was magic in so many ways. She, a veteran of solo woman traveling, with many journeys ahead of her; me a neophyte on my last day. She told me about the Facebook group for Solo Women Van Travelers; I'd thought I was so out of the box doing what I was doing. I wasn't. Right then it clicked. I wanted to keep doing this. I would make camping and road tripping on my own a part of my life now; I had to. She shared a plan she has to start a place in New Hampshire for solo women travelers to come, camp safely and make some new friends around the campfire. I asked to see her camper. We walked together to it, a small RV she'd ripped the carpet out of, taken two captain seats out for more room, and dismantled the refrigerator.
I asked if she'd read Women Who Run with the Wolves, and that's really when it felt magical.
How could it not when she could almost quote it, when we began to talk of women and some of our personal journeys to fierceness and joy.
She told me about the book If Women Rose Rooted, by Sharon Blackie because it made her think of Dr. Pinkola-Estes Women Who Run with the Wolves. I can see why. I need this book in my life right now. Maybe you do too. I started it today, and already know it is going to be an important book.
The subhead of the book is "The Journey to Authenticity and Belonging." Blackie writes of the mythology of Eve we are immersed in, women ruining everything with our dishonesty, curiosity, and general untrustworthiness. She says we need new "old" narratives, Celtic narratives of women who show us what women can be, strong and feminine, wild and fierce, protectors of the planet...