Writing for My Life

The account of how words saved me

“Such a dramatic!”

“The tales you tell.”

“Where do you even come up with this stuff?”

Words, and more importantly storytelling, have been a part of who I am for as long as I’ve been aware that I am.

While I have spent countless years studying the craft of writing, my gift was innate. Bold statement perhaps, however I can tell you without a doubt that the majority of my troubles as a child were in direct connection to the stories I told. They got me in trouble, were a nuisance to my elders. It was mainly inconvenient to those around me because I was a detail gathering storyteller and my stories always held within them truth. The kind of truth that made adults take pause. The kind of truth only kids would share.

Being a creative individual can be a pleasure, it is a talent that should be honed. I believe this because it’s true and I need to say it as much as you need to hear it for yourself. Here’s why, because we are all creative by nature. It’s just breed out of us as small tikes drawing outside the lines and talking to lizards in the empty backyard.

My gift, to bring words to life, to touch a soul with my details of truth, it was quietly set aside for the convenience of others. Without a proper outlet for the stories, I simply found myself into too much trouble and so I held the stories in, sealed up the shiny parts that loved to listen to all the stories that wanted to be told, and then I slowly died.

Again, dramatic.

Here’s the thing, it’s not far from the truth. By the time I was 19, I was drinking myself to sleep. I was consuming alcohol to help battle the depression and stop the stories from overtaking my life. I didn’t believe these stories were a gift, every time I tried to let them out I was shut out or shut down.

I married too young to someone that agreed my stories were wrong, he also supported my drinking habit. The funny thing about being born a true blue creative is that it seeps out even when your not looking. I took on painting, created gardens, fell in love with music (never could play a note) which led to creative dancing. I finally became brave enough to let books back into my life. They would wash over me like a Christening that I could never fully achieve.

By 27, drinking wasn’t stopping the flow of stories much anymore and my life had become one big story of self destruction.

Here is where I tell you that I had a spiritual experience, saved my own life with the help of some divine guidance and grace, then moved out on my own and started listening to the voices within that told the stories. The guidance I was given led me to get a divorce, to quit my high paying non-creative job, move away from the place I had loved, and start a new life.

What started as a reclaiming of my life at 28 turned into a snowball effect of becoming myself over and over again. I had to unwind all the layers of floss and superglue I used to keep the creative storyteller locked away. I have met myself in all angles as I have listened to the real stories salvaged from the damaged and broken pieces of me. Finally at the bottom, I was able to heal a lifetime of trauma over a six year span. In the summer of 2020, I gathered words that became a book. Finally, in 2021 the echo of a truth I had known all along came in a vision- my Wild Devotion to the Great Creative Spirit and the honoring of the creative spirit in each of us was my way forward, my quest, my thing to do with life.

I write today because it is my life.

I write today because if I don’t, I feel like I’m drowning.

I write today because sometimes when I’m feeling weighted down by the world and the change happening all around I hold back the words as a form of punishment for not writing more earlier. This pill of awareness is a hard one to swallow- and why you have this story today.

In 2022, I am committed to more words and more stories.

I will be leading a homeschool group of kids in creative writing. I will work on the next draft of my book and complete it, again. I will find the words when they don’t want to be seen, because sometime they still hide when it doesn’t feel safe.

I’m learning. I’m allowing.

I’m letting the words caress the edges of my heart space and become the light within the shadows. Brave enough to see that I was born exactly as I should, doing exactly what I was meant to do.

This is my story. May it bless the hard work of finding the stories worth telling.