When Everything Connects

Do you have a little shadow?

Stop reading about writing and just write.

Do you know how many times I have written that sentence in my journal over the years? About 2,984. Give or take. Or how about these gems: Stop reading other people’s novels and write your own. Stop helping other writers become better artists and focus on yourself. I face a thousand creative choices everyday: practice your guitar or make the beds, do your morning pages or write your son’s math teacher back, finish this Substack essay or walk the dog. And some days the dog wins (most days Lola wins), and some days I forgo the beds and play my guitar. I still continue to make the choice to help others engage with their creativity, and often ignore the pull of my own.

Being gentle with myself about these choices does not come easily. Gentleness is not my default setting, no matter how many times I have struggled to make it so. I’m a loud, sarcastic, Italian-American woman. I’m also a passionate, inquisitive, literary intellectual. For many years, I would make a New Year’s resolution to be more like one of the older English teachers I worked with in New York. She wore black turtlenecks and classic silver jewelry, embraced her gray hair, loved Barbara Kingsolver, and elevated every conversation. I did not want to emulate her personal choices, or even glean her knowledge of classic literature; it was her evenness I envied.

I wanted more than anything not to be stirred up by others or to quiet my quick tongue and busy mind in those days. This other teacher would often be shocked by what came out of my mouth in a department meeting, but yet, I realize now, she relied on me to fight battles that needed to be fought: for more money, more professional development, more time to plan.

I was told to be more humble, to quiet down, to suffer fools gladly. I wished I could, even if simply to get out of those uncomfortable meetings where my boss had to tell me what was wrong with me before she could get to the good stuff. You know, the stuff about my close relationship with my students or my love of teaching and the way I felt about good writing.

Those “quiet down” voices, those “you’re too much” voices, those “you’re too dramatic” voices have followed me my whole life, and I was often ill-equipped to combat them and ended up trying instead, to ignore them, and stifle my own creativity in the process.

However, I have learned humility in spades as a parent. I have practiced meditation and yoga my whole adult life. I read poetry and relish quiet spaces and silence. I have cultivated a good relationship with food and have grown out of the need to numb scary feelings with drugs and alcohol and bad relationships. And I write.

I did the work, my friends. And still on a bad day, when it comes to those voices, sometimes I still listen to them as if they are me.

You are not a real writer, they will say.

I have had to grow stronger because of those voices, and go deeper as an artist. I can stop listening to them because those voices are not mine. I have stopped feeding them. Instead, I have fed the wholeness. I have fed the voice that says: You may not be a real writer, but do it anyway. Write anyway.

So let me save you some time. Those voices are not you.

One more time for the people in the back: Those. Voices. Are. Not. YOU.

They can, however, lead you somewhere if you let them. As RL Stevenson wrote, “I have a little shadow it goes in and out with me/ and what can be the use of him is more than I can see.” These darker voices can lead you towards shadow, but they can also lead you towards the light. They can be the energy behind vulnerability and love, passion and self-acceptance as much as they can be the energy behind despair and sadness.

You cannot awaken to your true self, the one that can sound Whitman’s “barbaric yawp” to the limitless sky if you only pay attention to the resistant voice. You cannot do great things if you think that voices rooted in doubt, defensiveness, and darkness have more power than you do. If that were the case, then you would never gather up the courage to try and do the thing you love, make the art that moves you, and on some days, even get out of bed.

So start paying attention to your whole voice. Look at your shadow and look at your light. Discover the song that only you can sing. Allow someone to experience you and how you want to see yourself. Show up for yourself everyday.

How do you do this?

I don’t know.

I don’t know what will work for you.

Sure, I have ideas about where to start, but the most important one is this:

JUST BEGIN.

You just start. Do the thing that makes you feel joyful, that frustrates you, that makes you feel alive, empowered, excited. Do it for as long as you can, but do it everyday. Even if you can only muster up five minutes, it’s five more minutes in the light. You deserve to explore that golden horizon everyday.

Both/and. Both/and. Shadow/Light. You can/You can’t. Over and over again. Like that boy or girl you were on their childhood swing. You pump between the two energies, sunshine and shade, gathering strength and speed with every movement. Eventually, when everything connects:

YOU JUMP OFF AND THEN YOU FLY.