You Are a Writer. So, Write. Deeply.
Dear Writer,
Yes, that’s what you are.
I know that’s not how you may think of yourself — at least not yet, or not all of the time. Maybe only in the quietest recesses of your imagination, the palest corners of your most innocent self. You may think you are a business-owner, or a healer, or a teacher, or a parent.
You may think you are a healer, a chef, a lost wandering soul seeking the path to meaning and purpose, or even salvation.
You are these things, too. But you are also a writer, and if not that, then a storyteller. Writing and storytelling is our birthright, as people, as culture-makers, as spiritual beings.
Your story may be caught in the brambles of your throat, or your hand, like a mewling kitten or a little marsh wren, cooing invisibly.
She dreams of you, your story — she dreams of the sweet caress of your fingers on the pen that leaves the page tingling with black ink, the taste of your parted lips; the soft pink folds within that vibrate and come alive as you find your voice, and your strength, and push forward.
This is what I want for you: to find that voice, that strength, and bring your message out into the world that is in a constant din of babble yet also too tragically silent when it comes to meaning, to healing, to transformation, to revolutionary ideas and action.
I want you to bring that message out into the world so that it shatters the glass prisons that many of our comrades find themselves in, every day.
I want our words to bring down the Hall of Mirrors that distorts the beauty of our true natures and that reflects back to us only our wounds, yours and mine and theirs.
I want us to be abundant, yes, but not so much so that we lose that fiery spark that pushes us towards evolution.
I want us to be joyful and patient, and yet not so much so that we forget the hard-earned lessons of our heartbreak, our grief, and those that still dwell in those sad places, crying out for justice, remembrance, and kinship.
I want for us to have our writing process be as sweet and fulfilling as melting into a warm bath, and also, for the craft to remain mysterious and elusive enough so we always remember that what brought us here was being blessed and cursed with the unquenchable heart of the seeker.
We can share with one another the codes, the tricks and techniques that allow us to turn down the volume of our perfectionist, insatiable egos and their petty manipulations.
We can be cartographers for one another, and map out those dusty paths that lead nowhere — like the scathing self-doubt that warns us that what we have to say has already been said, so who are you to try? — as well as those that lead to the promised land of creative expression and fulfillment.
Along the way, we can sing roadsongs and pick up companions whose paths are entwined with our own, like the red and gold silken fibers of a tapestry.
This is what I have for you — nothing more, nothing less. It could be a balm for the rough, raw edges of your wounded poet’s soul. The same healing waters from the fountain that I myself yearn for, and call home.
Write from your heart — from your fear, your dreams, your yearning, your love and your pain — and I will do the same. Sometimes we will fail; other times, for one reason or another, our words will hit just the right frequency in the cultural mythos and spark wildfires of change and inspiration.
We can never truly know, beforehand, which it’s going to be. All we can do is to open our minds, our bodies, our souls, and write.
*****