On Writing: Having the Outgoing Guts to Do It

Have you ever finished reading a book and wanted more? Is there ever a moment you finish reading even an email or a text message and respond just to get another message in return? Do you find yourself so connected to the writing of the message you don't want to put it, whatever it is, down? Some readers find themselves feeling with the writer or the narrator, dreaming with him or her, and wake up maybe realizing what they really want is "that" moment, "that" person, "that" experience that some writer has put out into the world for people, or in some cases one person, to know about.

I know what it's like. I do. Unfortunately, sometimes I'm the one doing the writing and staring at a blank space wanting to put my own words down in addition to reading or hoping for someone else's words to read.

Writer's crisis averted -

My loving mother came up with a beautiful idea for me to start writing once again in a space beyond the pages of an online blog, journal, or rapid-fire text messages. More on that to come.

I now find myself mentally thumbing through the moments that are writable. Everything is writable if you have the outgoing guts to do it. The very act of writing, whether it's a novel or a letter in the mail, heck a text message, is such an act of vulnerability we open ourselves up to letting people see how we see and experience the world.

Writers have an intimate relationship with words. I certainly cannot just choose a word to fill a space without understanding my full intention with the sentence it is within. I think I now understand the verbosity of my father's emails and earlier, his cards and letters, and the time in which it took for him to express those heartfelt words.

I pause and think about how brave some writers must be, how lonely and maybe afraid they may have been at times to put out into the world that which was brewing within them. On the flip side, I know there's a light bursting energy of joy when this process occurs. The hope is somehow, at least for me, to conjure some emotion or feeling that perhaps the reader didn't know they could feel or has been feeling, but didn't quite know how to identify it. The hope is somehow maybe someone feels a little less alone, a little less lonely, incredibly brave and fully alive from age five to age 75.

Reflections on Ordinary Loss, Ordinary Grace

I like this quote. 

I feel it within my soul. It is truth.
It is a simple truth as this memory involving someone for whom I still mourn pops up.

"Each individual mourns differently,  but I have now witnessed how many people suppress their grief for fear of upsetting others." ~ Cora Neumann ~

I believe we must let go of the stigma of sadness because it is only through these passages of time we may arrive at great joy. If we don't allow ourselves to feel the "missing" of even the most mundane losses, we won't reap the benefits of experience.
It's hard to explain to a child why she must leave the safe and familiar place of an elementary school to endure the challenges of junior high. The transition, recognition and acceptance of change is an enriching experience which will make her a more resilient teen.
When I moved from the Tri-Cities in Washington at the ripe young age of 7, I did not know I would never return to my childhood neighborhood. I did not know my experience as a child as I knew it would become a distant memory. It may have been one of my earliest experiences with loss. I remember hoping for my friends to “reveal themselves” to me in my new classroom at my new school in my new town. I believed my new friends were just my friends with masks on. Yes, I had and still have an active imagination. At any rate, it is these ordinary losses that become the very experiences that shaped who I am today. They, and all others like them, are the graces I may have not wanted but God knew I would need.
The gradual experience of mourning, the mourning of any passing person or experience in life prepares us all for the next great adventure.

Even the leaves turn to brown in the Fall only to drop and fade into the ground so that the tree from which it fell may rise even taller and prepare to display beautiful new growth in the Spring.