Returning to Writing in a Difficult Season
Reflections from a Roman hospital courtyard
In September my husband had a medical emergency that landed him in the ICU. He almost didn’t make it and was hospitalized for several weeks. When he walked out – which already was a miracle – he did so with one less organ and a cancer diagnosis.
Needless to say it's been quite a season. Almost two, in fact, as I write this we are already half way through Winter.
He is now fully recovered from surgery and is getting appropriate oncology care here in Rome.
This is not the first hard thing we've ever been through – over 30 years of marriage living in multiple countries comes with decades of life-altering experiences – but this has definitely been the hardest. And the most terrifying.
The reason I'm choosing to share this with you my artful friends is because while obviously this shattered my life as I once knew it (and I won't go into the details) it severely impacted my writing life as well.
I literally thought I would never write again. Not one word. Not even in my journal. And you know by now how much I love journaling! I felt completely cut off from everything, everyone, depleted and without the capacity to locate myself.
{locus / place, from latin locare}
Until I finally did reach for pen and paper. And what a solace it has been, finding myself over and over on the page.
All to say:
if you think you can't write, you can;
if you think it's too late to start writing, it isn't;
if you think it's too late to return to writing, it's not.
We have endless reasons to not write:
we believe we aren't good enough, we say we don't have time, we think that it's the wrong time, or we believe our lives are uninteresting, that we don't have the space, or the talent, or the focus, or the stamina, or the support…
BUT we also have so many reasons to write, mainly, that we are alive! We are here, right now. Writing helps us feel that aliveness even more.
The best reason to write is because deep down inside we want to; we really want to write. We really want to know ourselves, deeply. And we really want to connect with others, deeply.
And that counts for all forms of self-expression, too. Choose your art, choose your destination. Create!
This is what I {re}learned sitting in the lonely hallways at the hospital over the late Summer. It's not new, we all know this, we all know we have to just do it, whatever it is that we yearn to do, whatever it is we are afraid to do. I am here to be the cliché and remind you to just do it because you never know when you'll be out of time.
We know this, but why don't we act on it??
So go off and make, dance, cook, cry, laugh, paint, draw, yoga, quilt, sew, knit, embroider, sing, garden, bake, bead, decorate – and above all, LOVE!
p.s. ~
If you are feeling the call to write – or make a return to writing – I’ve made this writing guide for you.