The moments that shaped us
One story my teacher Nancy Aronie often tells in her workshops is about making a birthday card for her mom as a kindergartener. Part of her brilliant little-kid process was to include an imaginary sibling called Tom, so that the poem she’d written would work (“Tom” rhymes with “Mom,” duh). When Nancy explained this, her mother’s response was, “Ohhhhh!” like it was the most obvious concept in the world, she just hadn’t seen it. Duh.
“Thank god!” Nancy says now, relaying the tale. Because her mother could just as easily have lectured her on how you can’t just make up people who don’t exist, or that’s not how you write poems, or simply rolled her eyes, or any number of ways that adults ‘helpfully’ inform children about how the Real World™ works, systematically cutting off our access to the unseen. She could have nipped the baby writer right in the bud.
But (thank god) she did the opposite. And so writer Nancy bloomed and blossomed throughout those precarious years of adolescence and young adulthood. In fact she didn’t get shut down for any significant length of time until middle age, when she was taken apart by an awful, critical writers’ group. It was an experience that led, ultimately, to her doing the heart-led, healing work she does now: work that has revived and rescued thousands of writers, keeping their pens moving when they otherwise would run dry or stop.
Many of us vividly remember the teacher, the parent, the critic, and the exact moment(s) we were bumped off the path we were walking—or encouraged to stay on in it, keep going. For others of us it’s a bit more blurry. In part I’m telling Nancy’s stories because my own such moments are not so neatly defined, and I’m curious about what my version of this is—what all of ours are. I wonder how these moments, no matter how they felt at the time, shaped our expression today. I wonder what healing or possibilities might be hanging out in those sealed boxes of memory—and what might be liberated.
Whatever this looks and feels like for you, part of what we’ll do in the Write Again series is explore our relationship to our creative selves at different stages in our lives, revisiting what it felt like to be in flow. We’ll track the moments that flow was supported or interrupted, bringing healing and forgiveness where it’s warranted, and re-discovering what jazzes us and makes us want to keep going.
What about you?
What’s your recollection about how you were supported in your own expression… or not so much? It is always so normalizing and healing to hear how others’ experiences were shaped. If you are moved to, please share yours in the comments. Thank you.
