I had yet another experience of making something public and feeling that power surge within myself because I’d authorized my courage to collide with my vulnerability. I was reminded of witnessing and its importance – of having someone hear or see you in such a way that it can’t be undone. It becomes real. YOU become real. Or in this particular case, I did.
Over the past month, I’ve been participating in a pilot group of women that are taking my new writing experience for a test spin. We’re kicking the tires, seeing how it feels on the open road, and if it will get us where we want to go. If I had a Crazy 8 Ball (remember those?) to shake, it would be saying, “All Signs Point To Yes” right about now.
The real treat for me has been in actually participating in one of my own experiences – to the degree that’s possible. For sometime now, I’ve avoided writing, which feels ironic considering that some days I feel like that’s all I do. But it’s for my business, not just for my own consumption. A friend who knows me well recently called me on it: “Write!”, she said. “No one can listen long enough for me to find out what I want to say – that’s why I write. It’s for me to figure myself out.” Like I said, this friend knows me well.
So I started to write. And in the process I discovered I wasn’t the only woman who was resisting the whole writing thing. That discovery was the seed for the idea that became In Her Words, which is a five-week writing experience for women that will “officially” begin in early March.
So here’s where it gets ubber personal. Yet another notch in my leap-of-faith-I-can’t-believe-I’m-doing-this belt.
I’m now in the third week of this five-week writing experience and I’m feeling the stretch and pull of me being stretched and pulled – much more so than I ever expected. I’ve surprised myself – with words and comments and images and instruction popping onto the paper unbidden, kind of like blurting out a core truth when speaking without thinking.
This week’s theme was “Choosing” and the question I chose to sit with for the week was this: “What IS it that you want?” (gulp.)
The process is to come at that question from three different angles in writing: jouraling (1st person), correspondence (2nd person), and storytelling (3rd person). What follows, in that order is an audio track of me reading each of my entries for this week (gulp.) And here’s why:
Aside from my personal discoveries in going through this process, my greatest learning has been about appreciating just how profoundly powerful it is to give voice – literally – to one’s own words. To bring something that has lived inside, up and through to the light of day. And to have others bear witness to that act. In debriefing with my pilot group, we’ve come to the conclusion that knowing we were going to actually be reading what we’d written to each other actually increased the potency of what we wrote.
There is a positive and direct correlation between potency and publicity, it seems.
So without further ado, I offer to you a glimpse of my personal journey – from the inside out. Because I want it to be realer than real and sharing this with you makes it so. So thanks for bearing witness.
My journal entry: 1st person
[audio:https://shechanges.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/journal-reading.mp3|titles=journal-reading]
My letter: 2nd person
[audio:https://shechanges.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/letter-from-universe.mp3|titles=letter-from-universe]
My story:3rd person
[audio:https://shechanges.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/story-loose-change.mp3|titles=story-loose-change]
