–Doris von Tettenborn
Creating Love The One You’re With, one whisper at a time
Origin Story
Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, August 2023, in a land far, far away, in Banff, Alberta was a village of kind people, strangers brought together by a love of spinning tales. I crashed their party, their writer’s retreat. I wasn’t a writer. I just wanted to see if I had the courage to fly to Germany alone to visit my son, Cory.
Google pointed to the Banff retreat as the closest, least expensive place to land. These people all welcomed me, even as it became clear I was an imposter.
I said, “I don’t write.”
The village said, “Write anyway.”
So I did. The next month I sent an essay off. And I flew to Germany alone. That essay won and woke something up.
Austin Kleon wrote a book “Show Your Work” that accidentally crossed my path in November 2023. By now, I know that was no more an accident than was me crashing the retreat in Banff.
I recommend every artist, writer, creative person buy this book. He tells us “Do it, show it, be messy, make mistakes, scratch out, start again. And share with others what you are doing. They will learn and so will you.”
After writing 5 seemingly unrelated essays, I woke up at 5:00 am June 11, 2025 and started a writing project, “Love the One You’re With”. I didn’t know it then. I guess that’s how art works?
It’s August 2, 2025 and now I know it (kinda, sorta, don’t look down) so I’m ready to share it, in the spirit of Kleon’s Show Your Work manifesto.
Comments are welcome. I would love to build a community where we learn from each other, a kind of “Choose Your Own Story” dynamic. I only ask you to keep in mind the Golden Rule, which has been around a long, long time ago, in many lands far, far away. And they all lived happily ever after.
🌿
Origin Story, Part 2
Or – What Did Happen at 5:00 am June 11, 2025
The first morning, I feel compelled, somewhere in my chest, to go to my desktop and write. And write, for something like 3 hours. Compelled by universe, goddess, Betty White? I don’t know
Now I often wake up at 5:00am to catch what she whispers and write furiously until she releases me.
Some days she pokes me in the shower, I tell her I only have soap and shampoo, not paper, pen, keyboard.
She whispers, listen. She tells me her name is Grace.
In the middle of the night, I lie in bed trying to sleep, to avoid writing down what she whispers. She reminds me to grab my pen, I am only able to remember 3 things at a time. Maybe not even all 3. I groan, it’s 1:30 in the morning.
She shushes me gently, we have no time to waste.
I will be sharing what life has become with a muse who is gentle but insistent. She waited for so long, through decades of my silence and denial, until I was finally still enough to hear her.
She whispers – sends words in the dark, stories in the shower, memories through the cracks, sometimes for hours.
Then, she retreats for a time, letting me rest, maybe even sleep in.
It sounds like Grace, my muse, is some kind of divine being, downloading the novel fully formed – channeling archetypes, fairy tales, trauma healing and lyrical sweet prose all in one.
Maybe she is.
But with me as the receiver, with limited bandwidth and often low battery, I catch a mashup of whispers, scribbles, doodles of a treasury map missing the X, memories and made up shit.
All of it feels like it matters, but damned if I know how it all fits together.
Yet.
©.Doris von Tettenborn. 2025. All rights reserved