Deep breath and an exhale blows away writer's block

Sometimes words are hard to find. 

I haven’t blogged for what seems to be a very long time. Every time I attempted to capture my thoughts and feelings — my impressions on my life — I stared at a blank page and the words bottled up. Nothing flowed. Every attempt was shit. The more frustrated I became, the more stymied I became. The only thing I felt was anger, which was so wrong because out of all the emotions I was feeling off the page, anger wasn’t one of them.

I write my blog for a few reasons. One, because it’s cathartic for me to capture how I feel and what I think about my widowhood experiences. Secondly, I want to share my experiences with others in a sense of community. Grief, loss, healing, moving forward. I’m not the first to go through this and I won’t be the last to be forced to travel a new path and create a beautiful new life. Sharing my experiences and learning from the shared experiences of others helps connect us all.

So, how am I supposed to do that if I can’t string together the words to make it happen?

I cried a few tears of frustration. Cussed in a manner that would make my Mom happily stick a bar of Ivory soap into my mouth in an effort to purify my vocabulary. 

Nothing…..

It took some time but what I finally realized was that maybe I wasn’t supposed to capture my life into words. Maybe I was just supposed to feel what I was feeling. Live what I was living. Maybe the day would come when I’d find words that I could craft into sentences and paragraphs. Maybe not. But either way, it was important to just breathe, exhale and be.

Last week, the urge to write started to stir again. It was inspired by a poem that a friend of mine is crafting for me. He’s attempting to capture my transition working in the skies to working in the soil. It’s interesting because what he’s written DOES capture how I feel like my life is flowing and he’s doing so eloquently and thoughtfully.

His writing for me spurred me to write something in return. It’s not a poem or a story; it’s simply observations I’ve captured about him. Once I wrote the first sentence, the words began. Unlike him — who takes his time reworking his art until he feels that he’s said what he wants to say and how he wants to say it — I wrote until the words trickled to a stop. And then I sent it off to him; 30 minutes of words with no reworking. I sent it at 12:30 a.m. because that’s when the words decided they should end.

I waited for his response the next morning. Would he feel flattered? Like I captured who he is? Or would he look at my writing, perplexed?

I needn’t have worried. He was flattered. 

That’s when I knew that while I would still be ruminating on everything that is happening in my life, the words that I thought had failed me — disappeared from me — were back.

I look forward to writing what my heart is feeling and how my mind is dealing with it. 

I look forward to having that part of me back again.

❤️