I'm aware, of late, that I have been avoiding writing blog posts. I went through a period of feeling emotionally unsettled, and vulnerable, and didn't feel like baring my soul in public. But what I regret, what didn't occur to me, was to write for myself, in private, where no eyes but mine see the words.
I'm in a better place now, and forever grateful for this gift of emotional resilience I seem to possess. I am writing for myself again. And maybe someday it will be public. But that's not the point. We write for so many different reasons.
Like me, you may find commonality in your reasons to write in this hauntingly real poem by Meredith Heller:
I write to hear my voice,
because there are places of honesty
and beauty that I go in my writing that
I can't always go in my life, and I must.
When I write, I let the parts of me that hold
my breath, breathe. I write to let light into my
being and let darkness out, to own myself, capturing
the rhythms of my cycles; journeys into the abyss,
travels through glory. I write to allow myself to feel,
climb inside my emotions and explore their reaches and
textures, summon my tears, let them wash me hot and
clean then drain me empty and free. I write myself alive and
reborn, whole and holy to experience myself transformed. I
write because I hurt and because I love, and so I won't lose
anything. And because I am lonely, sensual, and spiritual,
and I need to make contact with the divine, and writing
for me is like touching: it is rubbing and rolling my
body against the divine until my boundaries dissolve
and I no longer know where I start and where I stop:
I become part of the universal hum. I write to make
myself external, leave a piece of me stained into the
ethers. I write because I believe Goddess listens
for the places where we love and own ourselves.
I write to keep myself company, keep
myself honest, keep from watching TV.
I write to keep my Muse intrigued.
I write because I can't draw.
- Meredith Heller 2003
Why do you write?
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