The scariest thing about this is…
It’s been phenomenal. Surreal. People around the country are sending me photos of their beautiful hands holding the beautiful cover of my new baby book. It’s here. It’s born. It’s alive!
Humbled
Some friends and I were joking recently about how overused the word ‘humbled’ is on the socials when someone announces an achievement. Joke’s on me, though, because I cannot think of a more apt word. I am moved to tears by the generosity and talent of the people who helped me do this. I’m in breathless awe of the life that has led me here, and of the great writers I’ve met who count me among them—and I don’t mean famous authors, I mean you writers: the ones who come to the workshops and blow me away with your talent.
I’m humbled (see?) by how many folks seem curious about what I have to say—or, more accurately, had to say, as the bulk of the thing was written almost two years ago. The process of publication, even in the best circumstances and most efficient of hands (both of which I had), takes for-ev-er. It was a lonnnnng road, but now here I sit at the end of it, on a rock in the sun. Task completed. Time to enjoy. Right?
Hahahaha. Ohhhh, Joysie.
Friends, I cannot begin to describe the funk I was in for a while. It was like I short-circuited. Putting loads of extra effort to show up in spaces I’d previously occupied effortlessly. Empty attempts at comfort: more sugar, more sleep, more shopping, more scrolling. So many projects (not writing ones, noooonono). Solving things that didn’t need solving. The voice of the inner critic turned up to eleventeen decibels; those massive, noise-canceling headphones clamped over my ears so all I could hear was its droning. Arriving in therapy sessions like a drowning person climbing into a lifeboat, soaked and gasping.
So far this might sound like I’m discouraging you from doing anything so insane as write a book, or write publicly at all. I am not, darlings, I am not. Quite the opposite in fact. I’m able to write about this all now because, though it was a doozy for a good few weeks, that tide is ebbing at last, and what I’m starting to see is pretty incredible.
Vulnerability hangover?
Hilariously, what seemed to be happening is literally a paragraph in the book. Ooh, I can quote this stuff now! Hang on, let me find the manuscript. OK, here it is ….
….every single time I set a piece of my own writing loose into the wild I have a few minutes or hours of this angsty cyclone. Like, if I don’t hear back immediately from someone with a bit of reassuring feedback, I assume I’ve said too much and it’s all over. Whatever ‘said too much’ even means, and whatever ‘it’ is—something with an expiration date, evidently. I haven’t quite sorted what my brain is talking about. It’s just running a script. I know it’s a script because it uses the exact same words every time. Still, it’s one that feels very true and linked to survival. And I’ve been writing publicly for years. This just happens. I’ve learned not to fight it.
Mhm. The rubber has met the road, peops. “I’ve said too much and it’s all over” has been printed on towering billboards in my mind; running like ticker-tape across my vision; is the tune DJ Superego is blasting through those headphones. That angsty cyclone has lasted for weeks and, despite that last line there, it turns out I still have a little fight left in me.
This, coupled with the sheer exhaustion of this process—one that has held a constant iota of my attention these past two years, like a background app draining an iPhone battery—has made it tougher than usual to conjure anything worth sharing, and that has felt like a big problem.
Whether or not it is a big problem is a different story—which is exactly where I’ve started to find ground again.
Solid ground
When I brought all this to the aforementioned therapist—acknowledging it for the absurdly gold-plated problem it indeed is—I framed it as an inability on my part to “walk the talk.” Meaning that I wrote a book encouraging people to write, and then I straight-up stopped.
“But … isn’t walking the talk letting go?” he countered.
Goooooddddaaamnnniiiit.
Sigh.
Yes.
The scariest thing about this (the first! Prompt! In the book!) is having my work, my words, my life, my honesty, in the hands of more people than ever before, and entirely out of mine. But it is done, and I have to let it go. Let go of concern over how my work is received. Let go, really, of any remaining attachments I have to this creation. It’s free of me now, and I of it. Snip the umbilical cord. Untether us both.
And while I’m at it, I might as well surrender this identity to which I’ve been clinging: as someone who writes about writing (which, importantly, does not mean giving up the work of it). Because as I scoot, hour by hour, back onto terra firma, I’m realizing something else: there’s a lot more to me than this. And I actually don’t know that I would have seen that if I hadn’t written the book.
Unintended outcomes
Here’s more from the book (seriously, this is such a trip, and as good a reason as any to write a book—when you’re not feeling especially inventive you can just repeat yourself):
Your rational, thinking mind may not know what karmic loops need to be closed to unburden your soul, your body. But your soul knows. Your body knows. Listen to them. And in the process, boom, look at that, you’ve made something.
What my rational, thinking mind didn’t see when I was writing that was just how deep the unburdening is. How powerful it can be when the loops are closed. How great the potential is of things changing.
I am glad, soooo glad, the book is in the world. I sincerely hope it is helpful to even one person. And it seems to have blooped me into a new phase of existence: one that is still pretty blurry, but has something to do with the fact that I’m not the stuff I write. That the writing is actually helping me let go and live into some greater purpose that I can sense, if not yet see.
It’s … well … it’s humbling.
My writing, I’m coming to see, isn’t necessarily a hologram of my entire self projected into the world, but rather a byproduct of what I’ve already lived, a great shedding that leaves space in me to live more, live bigger, live in greater service to Life.
In the moments I can grasp this, I feel less scared, less attached, and more willing. What better reason to keep at it?
Who knows how much sense any of this makes. Like any growth spurt, the transition is painful and awkward, and sort of impossible to articulate. Still, it feels right to at least make an attempt so that you know—as I am finding out—that there’s actually more to this thing we do than even I imagined.
As you begin, or continue, or deepen your writing practice, what are you finding out about letting go?
Our community is always here to support you.
Check out the new online book group on Discord: a community for folks working through the prompts in Soul Writing: Connecting to Essence.