I tremble. I stall. I wash dishes and then dirty them again.
I sit and stare and will words to come, but they do not. They will not. I have been poured empty, my soul and body wrung out like a dirty sponge spilling out yesterday’s water.
And, I’m sorry I disappeared, altogether gone missing, left no notes for stones unturned in search of me. My emails abound. Text messages swarm unanswered. Piles of mail date back to November of last year. What’s a girl to do when life begs but books beg louder?
It is just as Mary Oliver wrote in Upstream: Selected Essays:
It is six A.M., and I am working. I am absentminded, reckless, heedless of social obligations, etc. It is as it must be. The tire goes flat, the tooth falls out, there will be a hundred meals without mustard. The poem gets written. I have wrestled with the angel and I am stained with light and I have no shame. Neither do I have guilt.
Neither do I have guilt. For, two weekends ago, just five months after my first book released, I turned in a manuscript that turned my life over, upended all my neat and tidy interior places, as if I ever really had any to begin with.
Have you ever given your all? Have you ever breathed so much of your own life into a thought or a thing or a poem or a project that the heaving left you lifeless? Left you a ghost of sorts, walking the earth, feet touching the ground but spirit seemingly separate and levitating? Gone.
Creativity does this, you know. It takes as you give and, sometimes for seasons that seem to have no end, it does not give a return. It does not give back or fill up. Just leaves you empty, weary and waning thin.
There is a full moon coming, though. In just two days, the waxing moon will glow full and round and proud again. And, I guess what I’m here to say is that I rather like how the moon carries on through its ceaseless cycles, waxing full as if to say, Here I am, here I’ve always been.
This giveaway is now closed. Winners have been contacted in the comments.
I’m giving away five free copies of the audiobook for Let There Be Art.It’s been a hard season for so many, myself included. I know this gift will gently usher in some joy as we start a new week.
If you could go anywhere in the world this week to watch the night sky and stand in awe of the full moon, where would you go? (And why?!)
Share your answer in the comments and I’ll select five winners, at random, to win a free copy of my audiobook. Giveaway closes Monday, March 6, 2023 at 5PM ET. Winners will be notified in a comment. May the odds be ever in your favor.
I’d go to the Blue Ridge Mountains with my husband and daughter. It’s heaven on earth for me. And when the good Lord takes me home one day, that’s where I want to be released. I pray you are well and that you keep on writing!
I can definitely relate to this! I barely wrote anything for 1.5 years because all my creative energy was being poured into, melodramatic as it sounds (but actually), surviving and keeping my kids alive. Adrie Garrison from Exhale Creativity shared some words with me last year, on the tail end of it, that were so encouraging to me, “Sometimes you’re living the material.” I haven’t been able to find the right words for all of that period yet--of course--but she was right. Looking back on that time, I see so much I want to share... eventually... and it’s okay to give myself the space to do that. Just want to share that with you. 💕