Writing My Way Back To Me

“The resting place of the mind is the heart. The only thing the mind hears all day is clanging bells and noise and argument, and all it wants is quietude. The only place the mind will ever find peace is inside the silence of the heart. That's where you need to go.” - ELIZABETH GILBERT -

It’s been a long time since I’ve written about what I’m feeling in this space. Actually, it’s been a long time since I’ve been honest enough with myself to write anywhere. I’ve missed it. I’ve missed this bare-my-soul, discover-what’s-in-my-heart type of writing that once helped me get through some of the toughest times in my life.

For over five years, I wrote consistently on my former blog, sharing my innermost thoughts as I struggled to understand the world and my place in it. These thoughts — these musings about who I am and where I belong — haven’t gone away. They’re still a part of me, but instead, they’ve been buried beneath the everyday hustle and bustle of life and with it, I’ve hidden away that part of myself.

I have so much I need to share — so many thoughts swim in this sea of emotions that I feel like I’m drowning when I don’t express them. Except, I’ve lost the words. I feel like I’ve censored myself — been away from my true self for too long — and now I don’t know how to find my way back to who I am.

I’ve spent the past year bombarded with events and changes and feelings, and I haven’t known how to put any of it into words. So I haven’t. Instead of writing through and healing from it, I’ve bottled it all up so that on the outside, I’m happy, but on the inside, I’m still searching for the kind of peace that, for me, at least, comes with reflection, self-awareness, and understanding.

The thing is, I want to talk about everything that’s changed this past year. I want to share the joy of my brother’s wedding and the birth of a dear friend’s daughter. I want to write through the mixed emotions I’ve been feeling since April, when I unexpectedly lost my beloved cat, Mikey, how blessed I am to have adopted a puppy into my home who just exudes pure love, and how she’s made my family feel whole again.

I want to express the highs in my professional career and figure out how to make peace with the lows. I want to write about how happy I am to have finally launched my business and what it means to be pursuing a passion in guiding writers as they, in turn, pursue their own dreams of sharing their stories. I want to work through the frustration I’m feeling that I’m still at the very beginning of things — how I have big plans and dreams for my future and my career and the steps I’m taking to get there, but that I’m still struggling to reaffirm my purpose when I know there’s so much more that I’m meant to be doing — that I want to be doing. I just don’t know what that is yet. I want to write my way to an understanding that deep down, I know I’m doing just fine and that I’m exactly where I need to be as I figure that out, except I lack for patience — I lack for words — and I don’t know how.

I want to talk about these events and changes that have kept me too busy to blog or journal and explain that this is why I’ve stopped writing — because it’s been too much, too fast, and I’m so tired and unsatisfied even still. But in the end, that’s just one more excuse.

The honest answer is a lot simpler:

I’ve been afraid.

I’d say that I don’t even know what it is I’m actually afraid of, except I think that’s part of the problem — instead of taking the time to figure it out and explore those thoughts through my writing, I’ve spent the past year ignoring it. It’s easier to pretend everything is fine than to face yourself. It’s easier to keep moving forward in the hopes that whatever is going on will resolve itself than to pause for a little bit of reflection.

But I don’t work that way. I never have.

I’ve always been the type of person who feels everything so deeply; I’ve always had this acute sense of awareness as I’ve observed the world around me with fascination and curiosity. Being in-tune with myself has made me feel connected to the world, and my writing has always been an extension of that. I write as a way to express myself, as a way to process what I’ve seen and reflect on what I’ve felt amid the chaos of the world — trying to make sense of a world that doesn’t seem to make sense at all.

This is why I write. Because I have to.

But somewhere in this past year, I lost that part of myself, buried it deep below the surface so that I started to become…someone decidedly not me.

I let myself get so caught up in the everyday intricacies of living that I lost track of what it meant to be alive — that inner knowing of some deeper meaning and personal purpose was being silenced. I didn’t know how to process all of it, so I didn’t bother with any of it. And it continued on for so long, that I feared I wouldn’t know how to begin again.

I let others influence me to the point where I’d forgotten who I am and how I am and ended up suppressing my own spirit instead. I’d forgotten that we each have our own path, and I grew afraid that I wouldn’t know how to find my way back to mine.

I kept myself in overdrive, running on adrenaline and this innate persistence to keep moving forward, so that the more time that passed, the more exhausted I became. The more exhausted I became, the less I wanted to pause and reflect on how far I’d come.

I was too afraid of what I might find once I did.

I don’t want to be afraid anymore. Fear is a crippling, worthless emotion that discourages and transforms you into a lesser version of yourself, and it has no place in the life I want for myself. I want a life full of love, meaning, and expression — a life where I'm unafraid of showing the world who I am, what I dream, and how I feel.

So here I am, baring my soul and sharing what’s in my heart, writing my way through my life again...

one word at a time.