Daily Nourishment for April 13: A Place to Put Yourself
Daily Nourishment Read Time: 40 seconds
Pause/Prompt/Practice Time: 10-15 minutes
Pause.
Take six deep breaths with a six-count inhale and a six-count exhale.
Prompt.
Read the quote below from an interview with The Paris Review:
INTERVIEWER:
“I know you’ve spoken about this before, but could you talk about how that practice helped you overcome addiction?”
KAVEH AKBAR:
“There were a lot of things that helped me move out of addiction. It wasn’t like I picked up a book of Komunyakaa’s poetry and suddenly I wasn’t addicted. Early in recovery, it was as if I’d wake up and ask, How do I not accidentally kill myself for the next hour? And poetry, more often than not, was the answer to that. I would pick up Neon Vernacular and then I would have a place to be for, like, four hours. If I was writing a poem, that’s two, four, eight hours that just flew by. That was a place to put myself for a big chunk of that time.”
Practice.
Freewrite for 10 minutes about how reading and writing give you places to put yourself.
Why do you need these places?
How do these places help you survive and flourish?
Want More?
Read more from the interview with Kaveh Akbar.
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Today’s Daily Nourishment was provided by Charlotte Donlon.
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