Who are we without the stories we carry?

On Writing: Resistance, the invitation, and remembering who you are

I’m in a writing group called The Practice run by an author-friend who inspires me to no end. Every week, she holds a generative writing session where you can just write for an hour. She holds the space, and all you have to do is use it. The session opens with a prompt, which she calls an invitation. I love this so much. An invitation to writing—given that I’ve barely written anything since April, I clearly needed, but didn’t know I needed. The invitation she offers is always accessible, gentle, an outstretched hand that has brought me back into the sacred space of believing I can still do this. I can be a writer. I mean, I am a writer. But more than that, I CAN write. I can and must make time for this thing that blooms inside me, forever asking to be watered.

There are a million reasons why I mostly stopped writing in April, and by that, I mean I stopped working on my novel and abandoned the idea of ever finishing another book or becoming a published author. I won’t bore you with all the reasons, though some are valid and I understand why I arrived at such overwhelming places that led me to give up. However, none of them matter in the grand scheme of doing what I love. I’m going to write despite all the reasons that make me believe I shouldn’t or can’t, the ones that make it feel damn near impossible.

I’m going to write anyway and see what happens because, quite honestly, I don’t know who I am if I’m not a writer. When I tried to figure it out, I felt like something was missing. I spent the summer searching for whatever that thing was—searching for purpose—but it turns out, it was writing. No matter how hard I tried to resist or deny it because I didn’t have the time or the space or the money or the energy, it wouldn’t go away. Now, I think about how much more I would’ve written—and what—had I not tried so hard not to write, but alas, we can’t go backward, can we?

I’m going to start from here. Start over. Only it’s not really starting over because the truth is I never stopped being a writer, never stopped reading, learning, absorbing the world, the language, and the craft. So, maybe I am exactly where I’m supposed to be anyway. At least that’s what I tell myself so the time passed doesn’t feel like time lost.

In the last generative writing session, the invitation was to write an After poem from “The Pond” by Mary Oliver, beginning with “August of another summer...”

I shifted it to September, and this is what came out in the session. It’s startling what writing can reveal about one’s own heart. I don’t consider myself a poet, but I am a writer, and this felt good to write. It felt good to tell the truth, to free it from my body, and to see it on the page.

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Another Summer’s End
(after Mary Oliver)

September of another summer’s end, and here I am, once again grieving. The field that was, not that long ago, full of sparks from the fireflies and all their lingering conversations is now dark and empty. The dandelions are asleep and dreaming and the trees are fading from green to gold. Things are thinning out. Withering. Shedding their bounty, their fury.

I grieve the sun that falls below the ridge line and I’m left standing on the porch in the air that holds blue until morning. Sometimes, most times, I feel like I should be grateful for this quickening quiet, the opening up of the sky as the leaves turn and fall, but every bare branch feels like a loss, a reminder that the world is always moving on without me.

I’ve looked out the window above my writing desk at the same black walnut tree for the last seven years. It holds me and mocks me, showing me all the ways in which its change and growth come with an ease and deep inner knowing that it will bud again.

Again, It will flourish.

All my life I have been trying to shed all the selves that keep me stuck in the same stories that were never supposed to be mine to begin with. I have been looking for somewhere to put it all down, and every September, the world sheds and opens and says, lay it here. Here’s a patch of soft grass under the hemlocks. Lay it down.

I back away and tighten my grip. My heart is a fist. The letting go feels like a loss. Who am I without all the stories I carry? Who am I without the fury?

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A question to consider: Who are you without the stories you carry? Without your sadness, your anger, your fury? In the spirit of autumn, what is one thing you're carrying that you can release, put down, let go of?

I am releasing the limiting belief that I don't belong here—among writers and artists, among those who deserve to do what they love, even if it doesn't make money. And with that, I'm also letting go of the notion that I can't make a living doing what I love.

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Thanks to Erin Rose Belair and The Practice for shaking this out of me—not just the poem, but the purpose, the belief, the vocation, the practice. You’re a gift.

If you’re looking to reconnect to your writing, there’s still space in The Practice. You can learn more here. Come write with me.