I grew up adhering to the messages that were spoken to me. The messages of keeping your private life, private. About not ‘airing’ your dirty laundry in public. That, there are certain things we just don’t talk about. You know, the messages that keep the real world around us held as ‘private’ so it remains confined, controlled and seems powerless to change.
I grew up constantly filtering what was ‘safe’ to say and what was NOT. The thread of ‘secrecy’ was strong and like in most households, it is what kept us ‘in check’. The threat of WHAT other’s may think felt constant and real in my world. I grew up feeling a constant need to defend and protect my truth, feeling like I was on trial and being judge by those devoted to not seeing their own truth. The space to share my true feelings grew smaller as I grew older and somewhere in between I remained hidden.
What I now know is the COST of ignoring myself and my truth IN fear of what ‘others’ may think is ALWAYS to me. Maintaining any illusions of myself so that someone may ‘like’ me or buy into a perception of me simply feels horrible. And there really is no poetic way to say it..that feeling horrible is SHIT. And from this horrible place I had often found myself NEEDING to do, buy or give myself something to feel GOOD again. And from there, the vicious cycle propels itself….filling or feeding that ‘horrible place’ inside OR even worse, isolating myself from people so I don’t have to show up at all. Until one day you wake up and you have a trunk full of journals that you have written for over thirty years…the things you felt you could not say out loud. One day, you wake up and feel the intensity of JUST how much you have hidden and buried inside. It’s like walking around with a deeply profound and a deeply caring world inside of you and then the tables turn so that keeping yourself hidden is NOW what feels like shit.
I have come to see that what other’s may think about me and my truth will no longer be the cage that keeps my expression contained. My world is large enough for many truths to coexist at the same time and that real growth can only take place where separation and isolation no longer exist. I have come to see that I have been growing and discovering in isolation and it has been essential up until this point of my journey. I am discovering that as odd and vulnerable as it feels inside right now to share myself and my writing THAT somehow and for some unknown reason THIS is an essential part of my journey. And to just leave it at that for now….that I do not need the answers, I do not have a plan or great agenda. I simply have come to a place where I am no longer willing to remain hidden in my truth and what I deeply care about. For me this journey begins with my written word as it has been my portal to expressing my deepest truth. And, it just so happens that I whole heartedly believe that ONCE our truth is discovered from within that there is an undeniable freedom that awakens and our world mirrors this back to us!
I can look back and see the many times I did not reach out for help when I needed it. I can look back and SEE the constant filtering of my life choices, weighing them upon of ‘what other’s may think’. Eventually the scales tipped and were not in my favor, I cared more about the opinions of others OVER my own…more times than I care to count. It was like a slow and gradual drift away from my authentic voice that eventually only became VISIBLE to myself through my writing. For me, there was safety that lived within my written word and a freedom that I fell in love with time and time again. What began as a ‘dear diary’ 30 years ago to sort through the bullshit and to have a place to express what seemingly no one wanted to hear IS now my art. The hesitation and dance I have done with calling my writing ‘art’ is new and still exists as an old internal dialogue that echoes from time to time.
To me, art is different, it is unexpected and makes us stop to consider something important in an entirely different way. My writing is my place where I have escaped my limited and structured world and dove inwards to discover a freedom of expression that goes beyond my ordinary experience to transform into something that has not yet been on this earth. It represents everything I deeply care about and reveals a journey along the way. It is my vibration fully expressed as my fingerprint of existence in this world. It is where I come alive in the most exhilarating and life changing way!
