What does it mean to share our true selves?
This week has been wild. My first published blog, an essay about parenting my daughter after she recovered traumatic memories, was pushed out into the world. The response has been beautiful and humbling. So many people reached out to share their reactions – some I’ve known and haven’t talked to in years, others I have yet to meet – all of them heartfelt and generous. I feel like I’m having the experience that Dan Blank, my amazing marketing coach and an artist in his own right, has been pointing to: when what I share intersects with someone else’s personal experience, the work comes to life. The magic of an unforgettable song, an image from a beloved book, or a movie scene we treasure, happens because something is shared soul to soul. I’m hooked. I can’t tell you how many times I have teared up over the last several days hearing how others feel the same insecurities, fears and doubts, the same moments of resonance, presence and victory.
At the same time, I am completely overwhelmed! When I first started writing as a conscious way of processing experiences and feelings, it was an act of desperation. It was at a time where I was completely out of balance – in a bad relationship, single parenting, running my own business, in an undesirable living situation and with not enough support. I was becoming increasingly self-destructive and isolated, ashamed to reach out for help and let people see what was going on in my head and home. When I then recovered my own traumatic memories, it was too much to bear and I had to surrender to a new way of life – a life where I let people see me for who I truly was. A mess. I wrote through all of it and am convinced that the combination of seeing myself on paper, and letting myself be seen, was what saved me and allowed me to emerge as a mother, woman and spiritually-minded human. I slept with a laptop in my bed, and every time I woke up, I would reach over, crack the laptop and write. For months this occurred until I ended up with 600 pages of stories and streams of consciousness.
Today when I write, it’s less of an act of desperation and more of a way to maintain balance and channel the energy that seems to course through me at a pretty high voltage. It allows me to meet my own fundamental need to create. I feel human, alive, like I can take full and complete breaths, because I let my head and heart speak freely. My favorite way to write is to close my eyes and type. I take deep breaths, feel my heartbeat, and trust the process.
In other words, all of my writing has been Self-Centered! And that’s been the point!
But this week I got to feel what it’s like to let all that internal dialog drain onto paper and then stream into other peoples’ hearts and spiral into one big ocean. I see you. You see me. Together, we’re going to make it to the other side. Whatever body of water we are crossing.
I’m excited to cross into this new territory with you. I hope it’s okay that I lean in and keep sharing the greatest truths I can get to, eyes closed, typing away. And I hope you will keep sharing how it affects you, what it triggers and summons and calls to within.
In the words of Siddhartha, when he’s about to cross the river for the second time,
“With a thousand eyes, the river looked at him, with green ones, with white ones, with crystal ones, with sky-blue ones. How did he love this water, how did it delight him, how grateful was he to it! In his heart he heard the voice talking, which was newly awaking, and it told him: Love this water! Stay near it! Learn from it! Oh yes, he wanted to learn from it, he wanted to listen to it. He who would understand this water and its secrets, so it seemed to him, would also understand many other things, many secrets, all secrets.“
