What’s Stopping You?

It’s Tuesday morning. Gerry will be home from the gym in about a half hour, and we’ll enjoy a bowl of homemade chicken soup and a game of chess. This afternoon, we’ll take Molly to get her nails cut and, perhaps, wander around the beautiful Wakamow Valley, where fall colours are at a peak, with our cameras. At the very least, one of us will go to Safeway to purchase a gallon of milk.

(Here in Canada, we don’t actually purchase quarts or gallons of milk anymore. Having switched to the metric system in 1975, we buy litres or 4-litres containers of milk. I’m old enough that, stubbornly perhaps, I cling to the imperial system. That’s not completely true either. The speed limit of kilometers per hour works for me, as does the metric temperature readings. Conversely, when taking my own temperature, I revert to good old-fashioned imperial measurements. It makes no sense, but I’m not alone in this. That’s life in Canada for you.)

I digress.

This morning, I have been tending to Story Circle Network business. I coordinate three writing competitions for the organization every year, and one of them just closed to submissions. That means there’s work to do to behind the scenes, connecting with judges and such.

I also put a sheet of Roma tomatoes (along with chopped onion, garlic, and herbs) in the oven at a low-temperature to roast. We picked all the tomatoes last week and they’re ripening in bowls on my dining table. I’ll do something with them as they ripen. Just now, the house smells wonderful.

I’ve also been procrastinating this morning, because something’s been weighing on my mind since Saturday when spent all day in my woman cave on Zoom attending Story Circle Network’s virtual conference. It was wonderful to gather with my SCN sisters and immerse myself in all things writing-related for a whole day.

But I came away with a pebble in my shoe; something niggling in the back of my mind. In the first workshop, titled Writing From the Heart: Where Grief Becomes Art, we were asked to write the answer to this question: what’s stopping you from writing about your grief?

The answer came immediately from a corner of my mind that I don’t allow to speak very often. What’s stopping me from writing about my grief is the feeling or belief that I’m not entitled to it. I tapped out the words in a document on my MacBook, sat back and looked at them.

Whoa. Where did that come from? Not entitled to my grief? What? We’re all entitled to our feelings and beliefs. I’ve done enough personal work over the years to know that’s an irrefutable truth. So, why the sense of not being able to own or express my personal grief about a certain situation?

Logical Linda tells me that, of course, I’m entitled to feel whatever I feel and that there’s no time limit on grief and no need to justify or explain it. “The heart wants what it wants,” says poet Emily DIckinson, and it grieves what it grieves for as long as it wants, say I.

I’m not sure what to do about this except, of course, write about it. By virtue of the fact that there’s a deep part of me unable to acknowledge the pain I know I’ve got to do so in order to heal myself. I’ve got to get into the muck and own and express those feelings—even if only through written words that no one ever reads.

Instead, I lay awake at night remembering and realizing that time has stolen some details I once believed were indelibly etched in my mind. I argue with myself about what it might mean to do this work and whether it’s worth the risk involved and, ever so slightly, I let some of it bubble to the surface.

I am reluctant to begin this work. It would be easier to forget about the unbidden thought that I’m not entitled to pain that is real in my heart and that manifests in my body from time to time, but I believe there is value in examining it. I’ll stumble along using the written word as a tool to make sense of that which doesn’t at this time. Writing can be a powerful tool when used this way. I know this to be true.

So, my question for you today is this. Is something stopping you? Unresolved grief. Unfulfilled dreams. Fear. Something else.

Maybe you’ll ask yourself the question and your response will be along the lines of “Nope, I’m good.” Great. Move on. Or maybe, like me, something unbidden and surprising will come up and you can choose whether or not to examine it further. If so, writing words that no one else will ever read is a tool that might be useful. Who knows what might happen as a result?