What last week's post missed:
Turning the question around
Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash
Last week’s newsletter felt itchy to me like this one from last summer that I ended up revisiting. I’d rounded up all my posts from the year, put them in neat little categories, and given some thought as to what made certain posts “most viewed.” But something was missing.
And then I got a text from a dear old friend who has the patience and grace with me to read these posts every week: “Instead of most viewed, what was your most favorite??” she asked.
I’m always forgetting to ask myself the important question I’ve just asked someone else. I am always learning again how to turn the question around. How to live from the inside out.
Two posts were my clear favorites this year:
This one about remembering why I read and write—a lesson I learned from my daughter’s Halloween story;
And this one about watching my daughter puzzle and seeing a whole new set of possibilities for my creative work.
Both of these posts draw lessons for life and creative work from watching childhood unfold. So much has been written on how to parent. I’ve found myself less interested in what I’m teaching my daughter or how I’m doing it. I’m more interested in what she’s teaching me and how she’s doing it.
Writing about my daughter also helps get me out of my head and into my heart. (A fun fact about the past year: The most frequent feedback from my editor David was “can you get to the heart sooner?”)
I am someone who feels things deeply. This Taylor Swift line is me in a nutshell: “And the voices that implore, ‘You should be doing more.’ To you, I can admit that I’m just too soft for all of it.”
But I built an analytical shell over my tender young self for reasons we both might understand better if you stay here a while with me. That shell became grades and then financial security and all the while I was thinking, thinking, thinking, and doing, doing, doing. All trying to make the world feel less like glass.
I’ve spent years thinking and doing my way back into feeling. Each week, this space helps me practice writing my way from my head to my heart. Most of the time, it’s a struggle. But there’s something about this space that helps me. So I’ll keep going, watching childhood for clues and trying out loud.