“Nature is not the number-one mystery, I’ve learned. It’s the heart that takes top honors.” – Beth Kephart, “Undercover”
Bill Sutphin, award-winning photographer, and clay artist, with his wife, Beth Kephart, award-winning author and teacher at the University of Pennsylvania, held a five-day writer’s workshop in Cape May. Nine of us signed on to plumb the depths of our capacity to write so that readers can benefit from our careers and our lives. Five of us, including me, loved the time so much we returned this year.
Kephart is the extraordinary award-winning author of 21 books. I use her work, “Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir,” and attend juncture workshops, which she co-leads with Sutphin.
Sutphin manages the site, the meals, the photography expertise, and generally keeps all in order. His work is currently on display at Show of Hands in Philadelphia.
The couple is extraordinary in their ability to put us all at ease and push us to our best work. We manage to laugh at the same time. The joyful days pass quickly for me.
I am taking this workshop to increase expertise in writing true stories of psychotherapy based on real clients who have grown from their therapy. A dynamic team of editors and coaches is helping: Betsy Rapaport, freelance editor, Michele Wolf, poetess and editor, Marion Roach Smith, author and memoir expert, and Kephart and Sutphin.
This team helps me to grow from an academic author of four books and 40 journal articles to a teller of stories of psychotherapy. The growth process is both challenging and deeply rewarding.
To introduce ourselves to our workshop team, Kephart asked each of us to write about an experience where time either sped up or stood still. I became interested in which human emotions create situations where time seems to stand still and found psychological research on this topic. I wrote about the evening I met husband John.
On the evening we met, I sat under Tinkerbell lights in a garden restaurant near Rittenhouse Square and assessed the handsome stranger who invited me to celebrate his 50th birthday. Friends suggested we meet. As eligible as a bachelor gets, he was renowned for developing Pub Med, the world’s largest medical database.
Immaculate in a pale grey business suit, jaw firmly set, cow-brown eyes searched mine. John captured every nuance of each syllable I do, and do not, utter. His communication skills, an area of expertise in my career, were superb. I divined correctly that there was not a topic we could not talk through.
For the first time since my first husband had died 963 days before, I felt completely normal dining with this man named John. Pitch perfect, he asked about my life and told me his career necessitated world travel, a passion of mine.
He softened as he shared how much he missed his adolescent daughters centered in California. Transfixed by interpersonal chemistry, John and I created our universe. I knew time was passing but had lost all way to gauge it without looking at a watch.
Walking me the five blocks home, John regaled me with the story of Sugarbun, the dog, who chewed up his mother’s false teeth the night before his sister’s wedding. I howled in delight as I began the slippery slide into cherishing the man who is John Edward Anderson. Now, 23 years later, I know I was correct in trusting the night that time stood still.
What do we know about awe? Science has connected the feeling of awe with a healthier immune system, a reduction in stress and a boost in creativity and overall satisfaction.
Awe can give us hope and help us to appreciate the bigger picture of life. Humanistic psychologist Kirk Schneider calls awe “existential therapy,” I practice existential therapy with clients.
Dr. Abraham Maslow wrote that “peak” experiences of awe can be life-changing and come from the simplest moments of daily life. They create the need to update the way we think about or understand the world.
On the night I met John, I no longer believed that I could never meet the right man twice in my life, but I did.
To consider: What creates awe for you? Have you ever asked yourself if time stands still, and if so, when? Do you experience and acknowledge when extraordinary life moments occur? How might life be richer if you did?
To explore: Psychology Today. Kirk J. Schneider Ph.D. Awakening to Awe. An Ode to Awe. Nov 28, 2013
Find Dr. Judith Coche writing about barrier island life and seeing clients in Stone Harbor. Reach her at The Coche Center, LLC, a practice in Clinical Psychology at Rittenhouse Square and Stone Harbor, www.cochecenter.com.
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