writer's life

I’ve been reading Vinita Hampton Wright’s The Soul Tells a Story for the past few days. Reading this book is seriously like therapy. It’s helped me recognize and channel so many things I feel confused about as an artist.

I’ve been growing so much in the past couple years and honing in on what makes my gift hum. Growing up I focused in so much on writing and consuming books and poetry that I think sometimes I forgot to be a kid. I was always so focused on things that often times I preferred the solitude of my own mind to the social circles around me. I am still very much this way and I forget that not everyone around me understands my need for seasons of quiet.

Much of my truly inspired writing comes from pain, or grief, something that stirs up an emotion I may not be ready to deal with yet. And when I have no conscious way of processing what I am going through, I write. And to write, I need solitude.

As I get older and grow outside of myself I am learning how to listen to what my soul is telling me. And as much as people around me love me, I know the way my mind and my heart work are not always easy for them to understand. So this brings me to my point…I’m lonely. Now let me say, I have a wonderful family, a genuinely amazing boyfriend, and ever-supportive friends. But there’s no community. No like-minded writers to remind me that publisher rejections are normal, that the erratic emotions I feel are part of the writer’s life and connecting with my characters or even my readers. That I’m normal. I’ve spent so long in solitude that I don’t think I realized how much I needed other people in this area of my life.

Granted, this is not to say I am some depressed being thinking I am alone in the world. Every area of my life is filled with support, be it from friends or family. But this part of me, the part of me that spurs my existence, my purpose, longs for people to share my gift with.

Seasons of life come and go. Sometimes on repeat, and I am okay with that, because I know that the Muse will come and go as she pleases. And I know to take advantage of the seasons when I don’t feel like I write enough. But now I realize that the seasons when I have had enough are important too. I have to listen to my heart, my soul, know that it’s okay to rest.

I’m not sure what’s next. I know there is a community waiting for me somewhere and it will come when it’s meant to. And I am that much better for having shared this with all of you, like a load has been lifted off my shoulders. For now I wait, and I write.

Blessings to you all.

MO. 

Eighty-four.

My grandmother would have been eighty-four today...

There haven’t been many days that pass that I don’t think about her. She was so much in my life, and yet I still feel like so much of her was foreign to me. We had an unexplainable bond, one that always made me feel safe with her. She made me laugh, and took care of me when I was sick. She told me of a time past, and she gave a piece of herself to me in every story. She was beautiful, inside and out.

I miss her. More than any words could say. I miss what she could have been to me in this place in life. What guidance she could have given to the woman I’ve become. But more than anything, I miss what she was to my family. She was our matriarch, our foundation, our center. And as we struggle toward life without her I am grateful most for them. For our continued perseverance and our willingness to be there for each other, because she would have wanted it.

It’s at the end of this day that I’m most solemn for her. But I remember a dream I had the day she died, and I’m renewed by that lovely image of my beautiful grandmother and that glorious red hair.

I love you, Grandma…and Happy Birthday.

transcendence

I'm literally sitting alone in the parking lot of an old church. It's empty, it's late afternoon (my most inspired hour). I'm sitting here trying to evaluate how my life now has morphed from my life on a pedestal. Oh, how the mighty fall. I often wonder if there really were people anxious to see me fail. I imagine there must have been, there always are.

But alas, I'm this shell of who I once was. Struggling to re-identify my existence with the person I'm striving toward. The more I breathe in this quiet faith, the more I think it suits me. Christianity isn't meant to create harm, or pain, and least of all judgement. Christ meant for us to be healed, to be encouraged, and to have new life breathed into us.

I've been rescued from a false life and I should be grateful for what I've been spared. I'm humbled, I've been shown mercy, and I've been justified in my faith.

I'm at a quiet place in the road. One that's not for anyone else to understand. A simple quiet place that's calling to me deep inside, urging me to make a choice. And I only have two: remain in anger and shame, or embrace who I have become in the wake of judgement and transcend that mercy. I'm not the only forgotten one. And I'm certainly not the worst off. There are plenty who can benefit from my love, and my passion.

It's to those I focus now, and I take a step toward my future at this fork in the road. I'm ready for a new dawn. I've been saved by grace and I shall live my life accordingly.

Do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly.