My Wish for You This Year
Well, hello, over there!
A feisty and marvelous New Year to ya!
Around here, we’ve been busy cleaning, sorting, organizing, and separating. I also spent the first 3 days of my vacation watching a bunch of TV and crying a lot.
Partly, it was PMS.
But also, from an emotional hygiene perspective, sometimes a gal just needs to grieve.
I lost my beloved grandma in December. I went to the ER in the middle of the night with my husband twice since Thanksgiving for weird heart stuff. Heart stuff, people. That’s no joke. He’s using it as an excuse to double down on his fitness and health goals, but I’d be lying if I said we weren’t shook. And despite our efforts of trying to get knocked up, we aren’t yet (do send your slutty, fertile thoughts our way).
So it comes as no coincidence that the theme for the first session Writing Your Way Home is ‘Lost & Found.’
Six of us met for the first time before winter break, to talk about keeping up a writing practice, and how our lives resemble the story of a pilgrim on a quest.
This week, we’ll pick up where we left off, and talk about whether writing on paper or on the computer gives us life (one participant already copped to the sheer pleasure of typing on a typewriter, when the mood strikes).
Loss is a part of any life. But we often don’t give ourselves the time and space to actually feel what we had that has left.
A writing practice gives us that time and space.
What’s interesting is that so many people seem to dread loss, or think that something is wrong when they experience it.
Of course, no one wants to lose their wits, car keys, or a meaningful relationship.
But it seems to me that part of the game is learning how to ride those losses and feel them completely. So they don’t come back to haunt us. Or if they do, they are friendly ghosts.
For me, it’s balling my eyes out watching the Great British Baking Show and trusting that there’s nothing wrong with me. Quite the contrary!
There is something very right in feeling all our feelings. Even the dark ones we may not fully understand with our thinking minds.
When I was younger, I didn’t have a lot of role models for this sort of healthy emotional hygiene. People often told me I was wrong for feeling sad, or quiet, or melancholy.
Something deep within me knew this wasn’t true.
That those people were wrong. Not me.
Defiant, I set out to map out my inner emotional landscape in my journal. I figured out how to name my emotions. I told myself long-winded stories that no human has the patience to hear. I hashed and rehashed all the ways I felt misunderstood, overlooked, frustrated.
What I didn’t expect was that this practice would change me.
Nearly twenty years later, it’s made me a person who trusts herself, not the people who tell her she is doing it wrong.
Some people go to church to keep their faith. For me, it’s the practice of writing that gives me faith that life is good, and so am I. All is well and will be well. And that no matter what crosses my path, I got this.
My wish for you this year is that you tell yourself a story about how mighty, wise, healthy, and whole you already are. And if you’d like company as you recover your writing practice, I’ll be there with bells on.
Big love,
