A truth is easing into view
Turning 43 and nodding yes
I turned 43 on Sunday.
I took myself to a new-to-me coffee shop to do one of my most favorite things in the world. Write poetry and work on a new project.
My body melts with joy as I hit play on the perfect playlist. Noise-cancelling headphones turn the people noise to background. I open my book software and check the status of my latest project.
My fingers tap new titles to a few poems.
I rearrange a number of themes leads to a whole new flow.
Flipping through some notes causes me to realize an entirely different kind of potential reader for this next book.
A few new poems birth themselves as I read journal entries from the past few months.
Sipping on my hot chocolate, I swear I can feel the neural pathways firing with delight, curiosity, and awe. Slipping into this hyper-focus state makes my insides break into dance.
It’s been four years since uncovering my ADHD and autism diagnosis. Plus the joy of adding OCD and PMDD to the hilarious mix of mental chaos. I’ve got 200 plus poems sitting on my laptop, wondering if it’s time to come out and play.
There’s something about birthdays that’s long caused me to take one significant step forward in my story. One year I decided to host my first meditation workshop. Another year, I decided it was time to make a major career shift. Still another year, I decided to put together my collection on grief following my brother’s death.
I could feel the creative juices inviting me deeper.
Sure, we get that it’s awkward writing about living inside the mask of autism.
Yes, many people won’t understand. They might not believe you.
You’ve spent your entire career ensuring people never saw your inner chaos.
But maybe…it’s time to deepen the story.
There’s an arc here as I flip through poem after poem after poem. There’s the not knowing before diagnosis. Then the uncovering. Then the deconstruction of everything I thought I knew about myself. Then the rebuilding of something new.
Two hours later, I take stock of this writing session. Poems are moving around so they fit a better flow. But I can tell there’s one major task I’m avoiding.
There’s about 20-30 poems that basically say the same thing. It will soon be time to escort those from the final draft. My most precious ones will make the cut. This is the hardest part, but so worth it for the reader. Each one of those were written at a moment in time when truth muscled its way to the front and found words. So I’ll honor them and set them aside. My “maybe” pile is growing.
But also, I just moved a “maybe” poem back into the book. So who knows. Ha.
i could never heal
what i didn’t know
was trueuntil i went all the way in
pulled the next uncertain thread
asked the next scary question
looked in the piercing mirroruntil i chose to trust my pain
had something to say
more than another thing
to hide
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The Thread
The Thread is a weekly-ish newsletter where we untangle the stories that make us who we are so we can show up to our lives with spacious presence, brave honesty, radical love & wild curiosity.