The Writer in Me

Somedays I wonder where my voice went. Did I say everything that there was to say?

Words used to bubble onto the paper as if my soul could not contain them any longer. My fingers danced across the keyboard with fluidity, dancing to the melody of the prose begging to hit air. I was diligent with my writing for a handful of years, submitting them to different places to share my prosaic tidbits and tangents. I hustled for a sliver of a portfolio, I carved out a blog, I hopped on some podcasts. I even wrote a children’s book.

So where did that linguistic melody run off to?

A reoccurring theme within the eclectic walls of my therapy room comes and goes with the seasons. It’s that dance of ‘Oh I finally made it to that destination I’ve been hyper-focused on!” to the “Now whats?” and the “What ifs?”

It’s humorously frustrating when I am just as human as the clients that share this office with me. Somehow, life did a lot of living and I stumbled and tripped on a handful of “now whats?” and “what ifs?”. Homebuying, tumultuous pregnancies, thrusts into first time parenthood, and all the twists and turns in between can do that do a girl I suppose.

Phew.

The chaos feels like a fever dream some days. The memories of my once late preemie squishy baby are challenged by this curly-haired ray of two-year-old sassy sunshine looking up at me with wonder spilling from them. The once new home now has twinges of longing for revamped newness. Careers are resettled. My once insecure identity as a parent is cemented into my soul by tight toddler hugs and rapidly growing vocabularies.

Now I just feel caked in a thick layer of dust. Coughing from the impact of the landing from the chaos to my new normal.

I don’t think I wrote for a year.
A whole year my soul lay stagnant grasping at survival straws, leaving the pen and paper firmly behind.

I felt as if I had to shed my old self to step into my new, more parentified, hardened by trauma, but resilient because of it self. Yet, though quiet perspective, I am learning that there is no such thing as a new and old self. There’s just the self that has evolved. A narrative that has shifted. Just because we’re in a new chapter does not mean that previous ones have been lost.  
I know this because I did a pretty decent job at outrunning the writer in me. I boxed her up with the rest of me that I thought I had to pack away for the sake of becoming a good parent, a responsible adult, a dutiful wife, and a working mom. I hid that box in the back with the rest of what I perceived as selfish joy.

Come to find out, that’s the opposite of the thing I was wanting to accomplish.

You see, my little girl watches EVERYTHING we do. She listens to the ways we speak about our experiences, ourselves, and our wants and needs. Packing up the essence of me was robbing her of witnessing a mother who saw and valued her own worth, celebrated her own humanness, and modeled permission to be responsible and pursue her happy.

Plus, the writer in me was peeking through every time I came to work. Cultivating safe spaces requires me to allow the prosaic melody to flow through relatable metaphors, compassionate validations, and humanizing normalizations.

I am still working on the layer of dust that’s formed.

But
I am making an effort at pursuing my happy. I am dusting off my once hidden away boxes of me, and I am leaning into the spaces that help me feel free.
​
That’s just the writer in me.