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10 Truths & a Lie

by Nancy Gertz

Liv Fun: Vol 8 – Issue 1

I learned to play “Ten Truths and a Lie” at a writing retreat. I had flown from the East Coast to San Francisco, then wove my way north on the switchbacks to Bolinas, a small community — a relic of the ’60s — known for its residents’ practice of removing town signs so nobody can find the place. I had no idea where I was headed or if I was going to get there anytime soon. It was an apropos metaphor for this daring journey I had embarked upon.

I followed the scanty GPS commands until, finally, I drove down a long, narrow path through wide cow pastures on either side. There it was, Commonweal, a retreat center perched like a pelican high up on the cliffs above the crashing waves of the Pacific. This peaceful cloister of a few buildings and many dusty paths is sheltered by a canopy of aged towering pines.

This is where people come to unveil and declutter some of the emotional and spiritual messes lurking in their hearts and minds. I was terribly nervous about the bold decision I had made to come to this remote place with a bunch of strangers to do deeply personal and probably painful work of the soul.

The retreat topic was “Grief, Loss, Uncertainty and Change.” I had signed up months before, when the realness of it was far off in the future. As the travel date loomed closer, I thought perhaps I didn’t really “need” to go anymore …

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Liv Fun

by Leisure Care
Spring 2019
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10 Truths & a Lie
by Nancy Gertz

I learned to play “Ten Truths and a Lie” at a writing retreat. We went around the room, each person slowly reading. Everyone voting. It was nearly impossible to separate the lie from the truths in all the lists. There were stories from the mountaintops of nirvana and horrible retellings from the pits of hell on earth.

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The Unreliable Narrator
by Pam Mandel

I have spent the past year working on a memoir about some travel I did in the early ’80s. I have very little to go on. It’s like my memory has redrawn the story so it fits what I see now … I’m not lying, not in the literal sense of the word anyway.

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Into the Great Unknown
by Dave Cuzzolina

If you are like many retirees, your decision to retire took considerable soul-searching and rigorous number-crunching. It was likely one of the hardest decisions of your life. Besides ensuring your emotional readiness, you needed to know you were ready financially.

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