The Writing/life Connection (aka The Writing Life Connection)

I was asked recently why I hadn’t put up a New Year’s post yet. It’s the one time of year I seem to feel motivated to post on the blog, and apparently, some people actually notice.I’ve been thinking of resolutions and goal-setting. I’m reading Tolle and Brown and Gilbert. I'm reading lots of writing craft books.It is becoming clearer every day that my self and my writing are entwined in ways I never realized.In terms of recognition, my writing year was great: I won the Jon Whyte Memorial Essay award for the second year in a row for my essay on the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, and I was a National Magazine Award finalist for last year’s Jon Whyte winner about my postpartum depression.However, I did not write. I taught. I read. I revised. I thought of a lot of opening lines.I finished nothing. The last week of December was spent polishing two old pieces for a contest, and that’s it.*It may seem obvious that my connection to writing is tied to my sense of self. It wasn’t evident to me, until both slipped away. I took both for granted. As I mentioned in my previous post, I put myself in a situation where I allowed my voice to be silenced. I know what it means to bite my tongue to keep the peace. I know how it feels to be afraid for my physical and emotional well-being. I know the frustrations of having my words and thoughts turned against me.Not a lot made sense, in the real world.And the harder and scarier it got, the more these things were reflected in the writing. Not in the stories themselves – there were none of those.Not a lot made sense, on the page.*I am a fixer. A listener. A helper. A teacher. A thinker. These things have always allowed me a connection to that subterranean hum of what a writer needs.Empathy. Compassion. Understanding. Openness.Vulnerability.This past year, I was called a victim. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to hear. After learning details of what I’d been dealing with, a good friend said it, and then later, through work with a counsellor, a professional said it.That underlying vibration of the things that make me me, that make me a writer, were drowned out by fear.Confusion. Self-blame. Anger.Self-protection.*I stopped taking risks. I had gone out of my way to connect with someone I felt I could help. Someone I thought had a depth that others missed. I’d made myself vulnerable.I made a mistake.All advice – from my husband, sister, friends, professionals – was to take care of myself first. To not be so hard on myself. To realize the good things I’d done. In working through the gaslighting I'd been subjected to, my counsellor had me break down my reactions in minute detail. How did I feel? What did it make me think of? What did I do? And did it work?Stop being so hard on yourself, my counsellor said. (from www.baggagereclaim.com)*Brene Brown, in her online course on courage, talks about the importance of boundaries. She says when putting them back up after being hurt, we have a tendency to push back hard, and become like brick walls.I am safer for having done so – physically, emotionally, mentally.But all that brick is blocking a lot of good, too.It’s time to let the writing heal the abuses of the past, one story at a time. And the stories are starting to come to me, through the mortar and stone.I’m working on it. I wrote this blog. I am getting closer to saying what needs to be said.My sister, a fan of Eckhart Tolle, talks about being aware of this moment, this now. And so I am trying to let go of the past, and not worry about the future.I showed up, in this moment, to write.Today I am going to finish a story.That’s my goal. My one resolution.