🍁 How are you doing? The temperature here has plummeted and it’s been very rainy and cool. 🍁
This is my last email before I go on hiatus!
It feels bittersweet because I love writing these emails and connecting with you,
but I’m also looking forward to some time to detach from my usual schedule after a stressful summer.
Why stressful?
To be honest with you, things that have been going on for quite some time that I have not gone into detail about.
It has not felt safe to share.
As a writer, this is always a weird place for me to be in–
to have something sit on my heart but not be able to express it outside of my private journal.
There are many reasons for this–
and, of course, it is totally ok to not talk about things publically sometimes–
but at the core of who I am:
I am a person who talks about things.
I am a writer and, overall, I am pretty transparent.
Even if I choose not to talk about something, I intentionally live a life that I can stand being publically exposed.
I chose this as a college student when I was contemplating a life in politics and its turnoffs.
I wanted to be a diplomat, travel, and create world peace but…
I never wanted to be afraid of damaging news “coming out” about me.
There are people out there living double lives that would destroy everything if it came out.
They build a fragile house of cards and it all comes toppling down.
I didn’t want that but I also wanted to LIVE.
I didn’t want to avoid having adventures and mistakes out of fear of life- or career-ending judgment.
For many reasons, I decided to not go into politics.
A perk was that I didn’t have to worry about making scandalous headlines with my crazy, young-person antics.
Now I live a life where no one cares.
But I also decided to look deep within myself about my fears.
Part of this wasn’t about anyone else judging me. It was about me judging me.
I decided to work on accepting myself in all my forms, even if it is
- inconvenient or
- messy or
- emotional or
- full of mistakes.
I want to process anything that ever “comes out of me” with grace and integrity.
Day to day I try to live my life with grace, integrity and thoughtfulness, but I know I will make mistakes.
I know I will never please everyone or even fully meet my own high expectations.
All in all:
I really have very little to hide.
And I love sharing.
I can keep a secret to the grave, but that’s much easier if that secret belongs to someone else!
But this is a huge change from where I was as a teenager and parts of my 20s.
Through my 10+ years of emotional abuse, I didn’t talk a whole lot about it because it wasn’t validated.
I was constantly gaslighted.
However, I found an outlet in writing about my experience on a semi-private blog for safe readers.
I barely ever expressed it otherwise, but that one space did so much.
I didn’t share everything but I shared a little bit.
I didn’t share it with everyone but I shared it with the people I could trust.
Over time I realized that holding everything inside is very painful,
and sometimes the only way for me to heal is to uncork, and stop holding back.
And it allows me to connect to people who want to help.
Which is why now-a-days as a writer,
so many years and hours of therapy later,
I generally do that,
maybe not in the exact moment of a breakdown, but after its over, okay sure.
Sometimes sharing has been messy or embarrassing or cringeworthy,
but often it has resulted in connection, catharsis, and relief from anxiety or pain.
But for what I am grappling with and thinking about right now…
Today isn’t the day that I am going to open the floodgates.
LOL
Not all the way.
Although, here I am today just opening it a tiny crack…
to let you know that there is more to this story for another day.
Certain things are too complicated,
they involve other people,
or are disenfranchised and misunderstood types of experiences that need to be shared carefully, if at all.
As I said in a recent article for On Purpose Woman Magazine, “some stories need time to tell.”
You can read the article here (page 118) It’s called Overcoming Instant Gratification to Write Better Stories.
Today I want to share with you this video interview we did as a followup on the topic of releasing instant gratification in storytelling.
In this interview, I share more about
- taking time to tell stories and living life more slowly,
- how I learned to do this while living in Japan for over a year, and
- how that affects my writing, social media and online publishing these days.
I hope it encourages you to live life at your own pace,
and give yourself the space you need
for whatever stories need to breathe before they are ready to be told.
