Dena Moes Takes A Life-Changing Journey

Photo by Sharon Demeyer

The Write Way Café welcomes Dena Moes, author, midwife, wife, mom, and a woman who sees a spiritual path in everything she does.


When did you first have the thought you'd like to write a book?
     I have always loved writing. As a child I made several attempts at a girl-and-her-horse novel. I lived in Los Angeles, and had never actually met a horse, so I never got past the first few chapters. As a graduate student in nurse-midwifery I wrote a lengthy, award-winning Master’s Thesis on childbirth as a spiritual event. It was 1996 and I rented a Mac II computer to write it on. For weeks, I was lost in the writing, and I was shocked by how much I enjoyed the process. Later I blogged for years about midwifery and birth. So when my family returned from our year-long journey through India and Nepal at the end of 2014, and I wanted to share our experiences with others, I decided to write a book.

What was your path to getting The Buddha Sat Right Here written and published? What type of research did you do?
     After our year in India, everyone asked “How was the trip?” I could not figure out what to say to provide a reasonable semblance of an answer. “I need to write a book to answer that”, I’d say, and then realized I must do just that. So I started writing it. I joined an online creative nonfiction writing workshop which was a great support to my writing. Then I hired a friend at our local college’s English Department to edit for me. I handed her packets of 30-40 pages at a time, and a week later she gave them back to me, written all over with comments and feedback. Her careful edits allowed me to produce high-quality work that was ready to publish.
     How did I find the time to get it done? That is a big story. I worked as a home birth midwife, and got into an entanglement with the Board of Nursing, which resulted in my home birth service closing. (The details of that drama are woven into the narrative of The Buddha Sat Right Here). I ended up unemployed for about nine months, during which time I worked feverishly on my book – and saw it to completion.
     The road to publication has been circuitous. I landed a top New York agent who loved my book, but she could not sell it to one of the big publishing houses due to my lack of author platform. It took a year before she gave up, and that part of the process was rough, to say the least. I learned to really let go and handle disappointment. But I still believed in my book! So I pitched it to indie presses, and got a few offers to choose from. I selected She Writes Press for the win, and have been very happy with them so far.

Where did the idea for your book come from?
     My book is a memoir of tearing off my Supermom cape, shuttering the house, and taking my children and husband on a life-changing journey through India and Nepal. It is definitely inspired by the travel memoirs of other women such as Elizabeth Gilbert and Cheryl Strayed. But mine includes a whole family, which makes it a unique offering to the genre. There is a dearth of children in travel literature. So many mothers I know feel trapped by the isolation of American family life – over-worked, over-scheduled, and over-committed. I broke out of that life, and wrote this to share what I learned while traveling, and to inspire others to follow their hearts too.

Did you face any blocks while writing the book, and if so, how did you handle them?
     Anais Nin wrote that “ We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.” The writing became a journey of its own – a chance to relive, process, and integrate the extraordinary experiences we had in India. The blocks I encountered had to do with publishing, because I did not have a “platform” that the big houses deemed adequate for memoirists in the current market. I really got to put my Buddhist teachings, of non-attachment and being at peace with what is, to use as I rode the high of landing the agent, and then the low of her not selling it.

What have been surprises you've encountered while writing The Buddha Sat Right Here and after?
     I have surprised myself, by how much sharing my story means to me. I am about to turn 50, my kids are readying to leave the nest, (one just left for college and the baby is in high school!) and here I am overflowing with passion and drive to see my book into the world. Preparing for the book launch, I have felt joy that I had not felt for years - since we were taking off for India, I think. Publishing my book is nourishing my soul and energizing me. There is no age-limit to following your bliss.

What did you learn? For instance, what did you learn about yourself, your process, the writing world; about India and Nepal, traveling, and spiritual journeys?
     I learned so much about myself, my family, and the world, I would have to write a book to answer this question! (Oh, I did….) Traveling through India and Nepal for 8 months with my husband and kids was as intense and intimate as life can get.
     Our experience was incredible – from the connections with people we made, to the spiritual teachings we received, to the level of colorful and profoundly transformative adventure we had. It was a wild whirlwind. India is a kaleidoscope as was our time there. My children developed deep respect for cultures and peoples different from our own. This is vital in these times, when walls are being built to separate us. The only thing that will truly save humanity is working together as a global family.
      On the inside, all people are the same – we all want happiness, and we all contain the basis for love and compassion within. The message of the teachers we met, from H.H. the Dalai Lama, to the Tibetan yogis we met on the street, to Amma the Divine Mother in Kerala, is that love and compassion are at the heart of everything. Money, fancy cars, and possessions are not what lead you there. Your own openness and presence does. How does one become open and present? We have gotten so distracted by the busyness of our material lives, we need help remembering. That is what spiritual teachings and practices are for. That was what I got to learn during my time in India and Nepal.

What enticed you to become a student of Buddhism?
     I was raised Reform Jewish, in a rather secular household. As a young adult I became something of a seeker, practicing hatha yoga and studying various spiritual traditions. I first laid eyes on my husband Adam while he was meditating at a wilderness camp-out called a Rainbow Gathering. Adam had just gotten back from a year in India, where he spent time with Tibetan Buddhist masters, and became a practitioner of Tibetan, or Vajrayana, Buddhism. I found him sitting under a tree deep in meditation and I couldn’t take my eyes off him. I thought, “Whatever it is he is doing, I probably should be doing that too.” I sat down beside him, and we gazed into each other’s eyes for ten minutes without speaking. We have been together ever since, going on twenty-three years. As I learned about Buddhism that summer we fell in love, I felt I had found a path that deeply connected to my heart. There is an impressive tradition of Jewish Buddhists in American literature and music. Allen Ginsberg, Leonard Cohen, Phillip Glass, Natalie Goldberg, and Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys are all notable examples of JuBus.

You’re also a midwife. How does that tie in?
     I see the book as woven, like a rug, or a shawl. Threads seeking enlightenment, thread of a midwife, a marriage, a mother. This makes my book hard to categorize. Foreword reviews called it “...a vibrant travelogue, a heartwarming family tale, a spiritual study, and a comedy sketch” and I think they got that right. It is a travelogue, a feminist rant, a love letter to India, a study on love and compassion, and the Buddhist path. My work as a midwife, supporting women, and seeing them through the powerful rite of passage that is childbirth, is a huge facet of my being. It cannot be teased out from the rest of me. The Buddha Sat Right Here includes some amazing birth stories!

What was the most difficult part of writing a memoir?
     The most difficult part was being honest about the tensions in my marriage, which ultimately have been healed through ongoing work between Adam and I. While we were in India, our problems bubbled to the surface, and there was a major reckoning near the end of our trip. I thought I would leave that out of the book, because it was too raw and vulnerable to expose. Then as the writing progressed, I saw those parts as essential, and important to include, however hard it was to bring them to the light like this. The fact that we were not some “perfect” family having this amazing adventure makes our story more real and relatable, and gives others permission to make mistakes, be totally flawed, and STILL do incredible, life-changing things.

What aspect of writing gives you the most trouble?
     The hardest thing for me is being interrupted when I am deep in the flow of my creative work. It is like I am deep underwater, and an interruption is like being roughly dragged to the surface. But that is unavoidable in a busy family home, so I just deal with it.

What are you working on now?
     I have been writing personal essays over the last two months, which will be published during the first two months of my book release. Look for my work in The Daily Beast, Ravishly, and The Mindful Word, among others.

Would you like to try your hand at writing a different genre? Which one and why?
     I would love to write fiction, and am working up to that.

What are some of your favorite books and why?
     My favorite fiction authors are Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Barbara Kingsolver, and Isabel Allende. Some favorite memoirists are Cheryl Strayed, Mary Karr, Annie Dillard and Joan Didion.

Tell us about your writing space and how or why it works for you.
     I use the little home office that used to be where I did prenatal exams for my home birth midwifery service. It is a warm pink color and filled with art and photos. There is a huge window next to my desk, with a view past my lavender bushes and cherry tree to the park across the street. I call my office the Womb Room.

If you were not a writer, what would your dream job be?
     Being a home birth midwife was a dream job – it was incredible to be invited into the life of a woman and her family, during such an intimate and powerful event. I felt completely blessed to have that work, although I also feel blessed to be taking a break from it now. The all-nighters were getting harder to recover from as I got older. Being a writer is a new dream job for me. I am hooked, and can’t wait to start my next book – a memoir all about my career as a midwife, tentatively titled Rebel Midwife.

Dena was a busy midwife trapped on the hamster wheel of working motherhood. Adam was an eccentric Buddhist yogi passing as a hard-working dad. Bella was fourteen and wanted to be normal. Sophia was up for anything that involved skipping school. Together, they shouldered backpacks, walked away from their California life of all-night births, carpool schedules, and Cal Skate, and criss-crossed India and Nepal for eight months―a journey that led them to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the tree where the Buddha sat, and the arms of Amma the Divine Mother. From the banks of the Ganges to the Himalayan roof of the world, this enthralling memoir is an unforgettable odyssey, a moving meditation on modern family life, and a spiritual quest, written with humor and honesty―and filled with love and awe.

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DENA MOES is a Hollywood born, Yale educated midwife with a BA in literature and an MS in Nursing. Dena and her family live in Chico, California but leave town each summer to attend Rainbow Gatherings and Burning Man, and to tour the West Coast festival circuit as the Moes Family Band. They always come home in time for school to start - except in 2014, when they set off for India and Nepal. Dena is a songwriter, storyteller, and essayist whose work has been published in Midwifery Today, Shasta Parent, Minerva Rising and the Demeter Press book Travellin’ Mama. The Buddha Sat Right Here is Dena's first book. As a nurse-midwife, Dena has provided compassionate healthcare to women, mothers, and babies for twenty years.

Learn more at www.denamoes.com

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