My Journey
I can’t say that I’ve written all my life, but I can say that I’ve felt a need to write all my life. I was blessed to have two middle school teachers with wonderful writing programs. The first had us writing each day to develop our fluency. She also insisted upon an outline for each piece, and while I rarely used outlines after that, I have to admit this did teach me to organize. The next year I had a teacher who taught us about creativity. Each week he showed us a picture from the back of “Look” magazine and asked us to create a story around the scene in the picture. The photos were always quirky and amazing and defied reasonable explanations, leaving only room for imagination to take hold.
I don’t remember much about writing in high school except that I constantly wrote for myself. As a teenager, I wrote to quiet the chaotic mind and to make sense of the world. Writing made me feel better. After writing my mind could rest…for a while. Of course, writing was part of my life as a student during two years of junior college and then fifteen years later when I returned to school to complete my BA and get my teaching credential. It would be decades, however, before I truly came home to writing again.
Unfortunately the impetus to write once again was prompted by tragedy. With the death of my husband, I gave in to keeping a journal, only because so many said it would help. I doubted it. If I hadn’t kept a journal, however, I would never have been able to write my book about my journey from darkness to discovery. It was through writing that I was able to see the joy in the world again.
A few years later, inspired by my daughter’s vision for Joyful Life Tools, I once again had a reason to write. It has been like rediscovering myself and who I truly am. I’d lost that part of me, and it has now been returned.
Writing As a Spiritual Practice
For many, even those writers whose names we know well, fear seems to be part of the creative process of writing. I was surprised and thrilled to find this out. I was normal! It was okay. I could keep writing and so I did. In time the fear of writing was drowned out by the joy of it. I have learned to write without fear, without worrying about what happens or what the piece may or may not become. Maybe it will be a “finished” piece or perhaps it will simply be a window into a moment of my life and thinking. Writing has become part of my spiritual practice.
It is vital that we become aware of our own stories and give voice to them. By telling our stories and forming them into something tangible, we gain insights that otherwise may have eluded us. We connect with joyful times we may have forgotten, and, yes, sometimes we may be confronted by the pain in our lives. By doing this, however, we give light and reverence to that which hurts us and causes us pain. Shedding light upon this pain can set it free to be what it is…a moment in time from which we learn and can move on. We can gain forgiveness when needed and understanding when necessary. We can bring out the shadows and shed light and healing upon them.
Writing is about giving voice to who we are. It need not be for others, unless you want it to be. For me writing has become an active form of meditation when discoveries are made. What I have found is that when I sit down to write, gems of insight occur when I least expect them. Facets of my unconscious come shining through like sunshine through a crystal in a window, the window to my soul.