Category: My thoughts…

Today was an odd day.  It was a day of hearts. 

Hearts always seem to be of love, and togetherness, warm feelings of emotion.  Yet hearts can be full of broken dreams, of broken families, and broken hope.  Hearts are what connect us and what tear us apart. We meet each other heart to heart. 

If our hearts don’t match, if the truth in your heart is not the truth in mine, our hearts turn away, like magnets flipped.  No matter how hard we want to try, there is nothing we can do to be close.

There was a wedding in my family today, a sister’s son.  I did not go.  My heart felt no connection there, so I stayed away, rather than bring a body, with a resisting heart. 

My heart resists because it knows where it would be going and with whom?  It knows now and I understand.  I stand by my heart, my soul and my truth.  I stand outside often.  It would hurt me more to go than it does to stay away. 

This is new.  I used to be there in the center.  It will take time to become the one who is not there.  Do I miss them or me not being there?  Do I miss the old me, or the me I have yet to become? 

My heart is so courageous, so brave and so sure.  I follow along feeling like an imposter.  I am hoping that by faking it until I make it, I will become better at this.  Maybe it is just my mind, my thoughts of me that is taking awhile catching up.  I am not at home in my mind yet.  In fact it seems I live more ‘out of my mind’ than in.

Maybe you don’t have a broken heart, but a broken mind.  My mind thinks and believes from long past ways.  My mind hasn’t kept up with the truths of today.

A broken mind, now that does sound much better. The mind has thoughts that are shattered by reality, thoughts that can’t do their magic and make it all better. 

What breaks the heart is to want what isn’t possible.  What makes you go out of your mind is when beliefs no longer match reality.

My heart really isn’t broken, the dreams and hopes all lived in my mind.  I now try and keep my mind from going too far into the future or to get left in a past I cannot change.  My mind is the cause of so much pain, not my heart.  My heart, well I think it just rides along happy and free, until a thought arrives.  

A broken mind holds broken families, broken hopes and dreams.  Is it possible that a broken mind can cause a heart attack?   What damage can a broken mind do? 

I have been attending the "Writer's Journey" a workshop at Finlandia College.  It meets, for free, one night a week for a semester.  It has been a wonderful experience for me to see the different types of authors.  I know I am naive, but I must have had an idea of what an author was, needed, looked liked, and how they were taught.  I was delighted to see they were like regular people.  Regular except they dared to put their thoughts, ideas, imaginations, feelings, desires etc in the written word, and then offered to share them with everyone.  It is like bringing someone into your mind!  Into your world, your areas of vulnerability, sorrow and fear as well as what excites you, brings you joy, and desire, to just name a few.  If done in a way that can hook an ear, it is quite profound.

The more open and revealing and daring, the better.  It is story telling but with a way personal twist!  I had never looked at books from the Author's view.  I only knew what I liked and what I didn't….I just never sat down and thought, what makes a book grab me and what doesn't.  I know that we all have our interests, our areas that we want to explore, but even in our certain areas, there are Authors who can say it in a way that holds our attention.

While trying to decide if I could write, I grappled with the Taught or being an Untaught writer. I truly didn't know if it was acceptable to step out into the Author space without training.  Are you literally allowed to just write.  Just write from what comes into your thoughts, to what has been your experience of this journey.  Is this a free landscape that anyone can wander on to?  Are there not writing police that will arrive and eventually ask me, "who are you and how dare you write, you have no idea of the structure, the grammar and even have trouble with spelling.  Don't you know it takes learning to do this well?  You have no certificate from a school of higher learning!  I think it best to leave the writing to the folks who are well taught and well versed in this area." 

Well I am out here, I am going to try…and I haven't seen any Writer's Police yet.  I am not sure what they look like, but I best come up with a good excuse for being here, writing as a Untaught Writer.

So, I asked myself one day in my journal, "is it really possible to be untaught."  I mean can we really live on this planet to the age of 50 and be untaught.  Surely I have learned something.  I do know words, the alphabet, and I can speak so others understand me.  I can write like I talk.  So am I really and untaught writer.  Maybe we can all be writers.  Maybe the scary part for many of us is that we won't be heard.  That what we have to say will not be important or trusted, or taken seriously.

Untaught or is that an excuse to not write.  How about if we delete that phrase and instead say we can write, but we are untaught as to how to expose ourselves, our inner values to the world.  Maybe we are untaught as how to be courageous, truthful with ourselves.  To open ourselves up to new experiences, to explore areas that are fearful and unknowing.  Maybe I am an untaught explorer.

Because to simply put words down that isn't hard.  To put words down that affect another, now that requires you go deeply within.  To put words down that will resonate with others, that will spark a cord of recognition, to honor the words with feelings and emotions that are true, now that is harder.

Words…they have the power to change lives or wreck them.  They have the power to inflict pain, or to bring awareness into dark areas of our worlds.  They can make us laugh, bring us on a trip and descend us into the darkest of human kind.  I guess, we all have experiences to draw from, it is just are we able and willing to be the courageous ones to put it down on paper for all the world to see?  That is the question….Do you want to be the writer of the human experience or the reader of such.  But in the end, we are all experienced in the experience of being human.  We cannot be an untaught person. We all have been taught something, and we all have something to share.  What we need is the courage to begin. Begin where we are, unsteady, unstable, unused to writing.   If you can write, you are taught.

I am not an untaught writer, but maybe a self taught writer.  I write in my own way, without rules and structure, hoping to carry my message in this vessel, an imperfect lady, just doing what she wants to do.  Write.  To put her truth out there.  To do it my way imperfectly. 

What is my imprint?  My imprint has changed a million times over the years and it depends upon who you ask.  Imprints seem to be like what kind of memories we leave behind, or feelings when others think of us.  Our affect on other people could be our imprint on them.  The imprint I leave behind on this planet, to my imprint I leave behind to my children, as well as the imprint left on my husband.

I am not driven by what imprint I leave behind, anymore than anyone else.  I believe we all do our best in each moment and when we know better we do better, and then the imprint changes again.

There seems to be two sides of the imprint, what we feel we left behind and what others feel and that can be two entirely different feelings. 

Are imprints like the residual affect of our choices, the aftermath of an action?  I believe the imprints are out of our control.  Imprints are decided on the side of the receiver, not on the side of giver.

So what is my imprint?  Well that will depend upon who you ask…..and I love how I can just be myself and do what I love and not worry about my imprint, it isn't my job.  My job is to bring my truthful self into each new moment, and when I leave, you will decide how that imprints on you, and off I go.

Freedom comes when you don't have a certain flavor of imprint, but just arriving and be in reality.  How nice it is to know that imprints are not our job, at least not of ourselves.  But maybe you want to remember others as you would like to be remembered, in understanding.  Understanding that given that state, you too may have acted that way.  Allow them free will, but get out of their way, knowing what their imprint will do for you, it may be best to walk away, asking for space. 

We too have the freedom to receive others imprints or not.  If all they have to offer us is pain, we can say no.  And I welcome others to say no to me, for I know what it is like to have others imprints forced upon me.  I only want to be with folks who can tolerate my imprint.  Birds of a feather flock together.