Revelations in Writing

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I was a shy little girl.  Very shy.  I had a small tribe of friends in the neighborhood but mostly, I found companionship in coloring books, paperbacks and journals.  My mother, seeing this, encouraged me to join organized programs for kids to build my social skills, and through girl scouts and dance lessons and drama classes, I began to nourish the extrovert that many people see in me today.  But make no mistake, my closest friends still have pages.

What I realized at a young age was that on the page, you could be whoever you wanted to be and say whatever you needed to say.  It was safe.  It was expressive.  It gave me permission to vocalize the things that I was too scared to say out loud.  I wrote silly short stories as a pre-teen creating adventures I knew I was not brave enough to take off the page.  I wrote about love and boys and feelings when those emotions and temptations became a reality in middle school.  I journaled philosophically, testing and questioning the bounds of reality in my college years.  And then, as an adult, my journal became my safe space to emote immensely on the complexities of what it meant to be human in a world with so many expectations we had created for ourselves. 

Now, as I’ve entered the second half of the century of my life, I find writing to be therapeutic.  Enlightening.  Creative.  Revolutionary.  Writing is my preferred form of meditation and mindfulness.  It allows my mind to ramble, to process without forcing it to move in a particular direction.  Writing in this way helps me uncover things that I needed to uncover and sometimes even uncover things I didn’t know were hidden.  Writing allows me to find the language, to stumble through the words, to express the deep sadness and deep fear I can’t seem to speak.  When I’m angry, I write, and I watch my anger turn into purposeful action on the page.  When I’m filled with love and appreciation, I write, and I watch that gratitude grow and expand, filling my heart even more through further reflection.  I contemplate new systems, new structures, new ideas through my writing.  I question the old ways, the “that’s how we’ve always done it” thinking, and envision the experiments and creativity that is possible when we let all of that go.  I write my intentions and reread them often, manifesting them into existence through the pen, through the page.  I find writing to be the place where I am most honest, most vulnerable, a place where I can speak to myself about things I can’t bear to discuss.  Writing allows me to be bold, to speak up, to speak out, and to call out the injustice and insanity that I see and feel without being confrontational, without being dismissive, without being defensive or judgmental.  Writing allows me to simply and bravely share my point of view.  Writing can be an intimate conversation with myself or it can be a tool to reconnect, to confront, to address, to invite, to challenge, to ask, to dream.

Writing has provided a stage for my inner storyteller to stand.  A place to project my voice, to face and embrace my shadows, to talk about the things I’ve never shared with anyone.  Things I’ve never even talked about with myself.  Writing is allowing me to question the things I don’t understand and make connections between this unknowing and the very real experiences and knowledge I have gained in over fifty years of living.  Writing allows me to paint a picture of possibility and perspective that could easily be overlooked.  An important observation to make.  A beautiful endeavor to pursue.

I’ve had the great fortune to participate and apply and be accepted into circles where writing is our form of communication.  Writing is our medium for truth.  And every time, without fail, something new is unveiled to me.  Something I didn’t know gets pushed out through the pen and now can never be unseen again.  These writing workshop experiences have been transformative to me.  I can honestly say I wouldn’t be the person I am today without them.

So now it’s my turn.  To create the space, to share the prompts, to invite the people to gather with me, pen and paper in hand, to express their truths.  To be honest.  To be vulnerable.  To question and listen and reflect and envision.  To find themselves.  For the first time ever, I’m stepping forward to offer a workshop on intentional writing in hopes that I can give back some of the love and opportunity and revelatory findings through writing that were offered to me.  It is time for me to share my truth and invite others to do the same. Want to join me?