Dear Friend,
I’ve been hearing your cries in the night. Your fears that all you care about may be lost. Too much is at stake, too much has been damaged already, so why bother, picking up your pen, to write.
Sometimes the weight between you and the page seems massive—the full force of a hurricane gale. And you fall back in the face of it all. You crumble in despair, and give up.
I hear those cries because they’re mine, as well.
And this is how I answer back:
Writing feeds life.
Creativity generates creativity.
What the world needs now is love—yes, always.
And one form of love that’s especially needed is the power of creativity. The power of solutions. The magic of making something where once there was nothing.
You can do that just by picking up a pen and tossing down a word, and seeing where it goes.
“Once upon a time a marigold bloomed on a gravestone, and two bluebirds courted each other on its yellow blooms.”
There’s my first sentence, will you take it from here? Write the next one, and pass it on?
Words have power to light candles in the dark.
Despair is thick in the air in our world now. Can you see it and know it’s not your own?
Yes, rest when you need to rest. Restore. Repair. Take exquisite care of your precious self and then—
Rise again.
Sing with your bones.
Dance with your dreams.
Stand up and open your arms wide to the gift of your life—
You are still here.
Every time a woman raises her eyes to the sky and says yes:
I will speak the truth,
I will write what is mine to write—
Stars shine brighter in heaven.
Rivers flow with a little more ease here on earth.
Why?
Because we are all connected.
Your yes feeds a yes in my own heart’s longing.
Your no closes a door for a child half way across the world.
What if we took our power that seriously?
What if all the power you need exists already inside you, and one of the ways for you to know it is by sitting down to the page?
What if another way to know it is to not give up on what you begin?
Yet another way is to believe you are stronger than the voices inside you
that scream: “I can’t?”
You find that power when you open your eyes to the magic of “Once upon a time.”
When you sit down at the page, you’re no longer living by the rules of ordinary time.
You are at a threshold, and it’s your life that’s at stake.
But it’s easy now, not hard.
Because your soul is right there with you,
dictating the words that come through your hand.
We need each other to keep going
To not give up
To remember, over and over again,
Every voice matters.
When you’re tired,
you matter.
When you’re scared,
you matter.
When you’re curious and wonder if maybe
just maybe you can find the courage to begin again,
you matter.
I want to live in a world where every woman’s story is heard. Where every woman knows the worth of her own life. Where every living being, human and non-human, has a voice and the means to make that voice heard. Where we all find our way to the voices that support life and create more opportunities for life to thrive.
I know that writing is not the only way that this will happen, it’s simply my way.
Thanks for reading. Do you know one or two people who’d appreciate what you just read? Please forward this to them using this link. https://deboraseidman.com/writing-as-an-antidote-to-despair/
Right now I have openings for my private mentorship program for two women who are ready to make a six month commitment to their writing and to their self. Send me an email at DeboraSei@gmail.com to learn more.
