Out Of The Writing Closet

I've wanted to be an author for as long as I could remember.  As soon as I learned how to use scissors, I was creating books...even before I knew how to write.  Although I’ve been writing in some way or another for most of my life, other dreams kept cutting in line. Dreams of painting, of being a musician, a potter. The dream of becoming an author has been tucked away, with the journals and notebooks and folders full of unfinished stories, on the storage shelf in my closet.  Life was happening.  A life worth writing about. 

Most of my writing in the last ten years has been in my journal, flowing through my other hand. This writing was waking me up out of a story.  A story that I have been creating my entire life, with my thoughts and beliefs, about my place in the world. About my worth. About the limits of my power to affect change. A point came where the insights I was receiving were beyond my normal knowing. I began to believe that my life - ALL life - is so much more magnificent than we have been taught to believe.  

All this time I thought I was just journaling with myself.  Then it happened..  My other hand wrote:

I'm not who you think I am.

Well, who are you then?

I am the Harbinger of your Awakening.

Seven words, scribbled in a journal with my non-dominant hand, changed the trajectory of my life in ways I could not fathom. That moment, however, did not mark the beginning of my 'awakening journey'. It's been a lifelong process – full of epiphanies, awkward lurches, wrong turns and uncomfortably long pauses. That being said, it was one of a handful of pivotal experiences that left lasting marks on the landscape of my life. Some were exhilarating and others traumatic but, either way, they created cracks in the structure of my reality where dormant parts of myself could squeeze through, take root and grow outwards.

One of those pivotal moments was taking an intensive year long Creative Journal Expressive Arts facilitator training program in 2007. The method revolves around dual handed journaling and collage, with an emphasis on inner child work. I'd like to say that it was a purely professional decision to take the training but, looking back, it was mostly an attempt to to gain access to my feelings which, up to that point, existed in a foreign realm that i could see but never visit. I had no idea of the rabbit hole this process would thrust me down. It has been the scariest and most liberating journey I have ever been on and, had anyone given me a clue of what lay ahead, I likely would have declined the offer.

It was through this process that I met who I thought was my Creative Self.: “Her”. She was clothed in collage, in markers and pastels, glitter and glue. She lived safely in my bulging journals. It took years of dialogues and baby steps into deeper waters with 'Her' to grasp the magnitude of what I was experiencing.

After a few years of regular creative journaling with my inner pantheon of archetypal characters, 'Her' stood out. She had her own voice, her own view of reality.  She shared insights with me by collaging together random snippets of things I knew in ways that offered me a completely new understanding of reality and how I fit into it.

I began to suspect 'Her' to be more than an assemblage of my creation. I didn't know how to wrap my head around it. Was this my Higher Self? Was I channeling? Was I crazy? I realized that I had to choose between playing safe or suspending my need for reasonable answers to let our dialogue unfold. So I put logic aside and let 'Her' speak, whoever she was.

It was never my intention to share these dialogues but, as I began experiencing profound changes as a result of applying Her insights, I would share little snippets with a small circle of people...snippets that related to whatever life challenge they were experiencing. The feedback I received was overwhelmingly positive. It was helping people and they encouraged me to share it.  This small circle slowly widened as my confidence in this material grew and, now, I will be sharing it with you.