Showing up to the screen

I’ve been wanting to write a blog for a long time and it’s funny to come to it now…after reading blogs for years. So, in this first post, I want to share a little of why now and why this medium. After that, who knows where this will go.

I’ve kept a diary since I was 13. That’s a good 17 years now. Back then, I was such a reader and a writer. Fiction. I dreamed about being published…about having a book out in the world that had my voice. But, over the last ten years, I’ve lost that will to write and maybe even the ability to. Then, a few weeks ago, a friend who my writing from back then asked me why I had stopped. What was keeping me from writing now? And I didn’t have an answer for other than…I think I had forgotten how.

This conversation reminded me of a poem or short story I had heard recited once and could never forget. About a little boy who loved to draw flowers. He would draw all sorts, with so many different colors. But then, the little boy went to school and his teachers taught him to draw flowers in only one way – with five red petals and a yellow center. He had been able to draw peonies,birds of paradise, and so many other types, petals upon petals…and over the years they became the 5 petal flowers. And then one day, a new teacher asked him draw whatever type of flower he wanted and he could no longer draw the peonies or birds of paradise.  Just that one type of red flower.

A few days after this conversation, I went to a talk held with Carol Gilligan and she spoke of the true voice a girl – the voice that comes out when she is 9 and 10…the voice that had been the writer.

So with all these coincidences coming together, I thought…I want to call back my creativity, call back my voice. So my goal with this blog is write a finite number of posts that allow me to explore what I want to write. Some of the posts may be fiction and others may be what happened that day. But the goal is to write again and share this writing with friends and acquaintances.  Maybe start some new conversations in my life, new energy. The red flower is an experiment. I still have my journal – I still show up to that page. And now, I show up to the screen.