I M Perfect lady

Tag: writing

  • Mold in sight.

    What I didn’t know about writing is that you are supposed to have a plan first, a graph, a map, an idea, an outline, something for the words to fall into, that you don’t just stand there empty handed and catching them as they fall.

    I felt like a neglectful writer, unskilled, untaught and uncaring, yet as I step back and see the overview, I am astonished how hard most writers make it.

    It seems they are trying to predict the unpredictable, like trying to control reality, or planning for an unknown future.

    As I look upon my first 46 years of living, I had structure, I had rules of a religion to follow, and I had to fit into that, foregoing all my instincts and passion.

    My natural spiritual self was whittled down to fit into their mold.

    My mother sculpted this mold, and we had to squeeze ourselves into the walls, making sure we didn’t jut out unbecomingly.

    Our goal was to replicate this mold and make our children to conform to look the same, sound the same, and walk the same, little molds of sameness.

    Kept to the outside were words that didn’t match this mind set, this ideology and beyond their very rigid lines danced wonderful words and ideas in a field of pure potential…forbidden to us congregants.

    We had to disregard all things that didn’t match the mold, and by doing so passed up 99.9% of reality…and lived with .1% of our self.

    This .1% of me is where I began writing from, asking how I had sold so much of myself off and what did I truly believe coming from the base of me.

    From the base of me I ask the question and have no rules as to what comes, or where it takes me, what conclusion we draw, what systems we debunk, there is nothing off limits, there are no walls between me and my words.

    In fact I am tearing down the parts of me that have been crammed into the tight space, and giving life again to the long forgotten parts of me.

    There just simply can’t be a grid to follow, for I have no idea who I am, where I am going or what my purpose is…writing is helping me define who I am.

    I am meeting my words with a blank slate and they are coming from the mold of extreme restriction, so they too are excited not having to guard themselves and their truths.

    We are the clay and the sculptor with no pattern or mold in sight…

  • An Artist with words.

    I have been going to writing classes, listening as Authors speak of their writing techniques and style, it seems they all know what their pattern is called and how it works, and I have yet to hear one who writes like me.

    My words come barreling out, pushing and shoving each other; they are not at all concerned about style and land on the page happy to be free from my tangled mine.

    They are driven by confusion and fear mostly, and feel much better on a clear white paper, all sorted out and explained.

    My writing starts usually with a thread or a nagging and often times a sinking feeling, and it matters not to me or the words how they look after we are done explaining.

    They are all bunched up in my head, running over each other, truths buried beneath the piles of fearful thoughts, overrun with uprooted beliefs and all are wanting the space to sort themselves out.

    A place where they can line up and be seen and felt, acknowledged and labeled correctly, room for separating truth from fiction.

    They are in a hurry and are reckless, heedless to watching where they land and how. Haphazardly flopped they care less about how they look as long as they are felt properly.

    As a writer I have failed in the eyes of the writing teachers, for I have not followed any proven path, but set out on my own and let my words land as they may, letting them be the creators not I.

    It truly puzzles me how they can know ahead what the words are going to need, how they can have in mind the structure that they will use to express themselves, like map writing, they seem to know where the words are going.

    My words are like vagabonds wandering around or riots of revolting feelings; it would be nearly impossible to know ahead of time where they are going, let alone draw a map ahead of time.

    Perhaps my words and self-expression have been tied up in the dark for too long; guarded, restrained and held in strict beliefs and ideas, that we are not willing to succumb to lying down nicely, instead we run wild in expressive freedom.

    Maybe I am not a writer at all, but an artist with words.

  • I write so I can listen.

    In the Little White church on Finlandia’s campus a poet spoke, his words didn’t rhyme but instead they took us on mini tours into the complex moments on his personal journey. (Randy Freisinger)

    He described his style as narrative and was introduced as an accessible poet, and it didn’t seem it required nothing of us.

    All we had to do was sit back and listen to his tales of youthful freedoms turning naiveté into knowing or be an eavesdropper watching life speed out of control, to the silent wisdom of aging it’s secret never told, into viewing prejudice from where we were grown.

    These wonderful narratives were well written and easy to follow and I guess accessible, but what he didn’t tell us is that we would either feel an affinity with his desire to know or the screaming fear of not wanting to go where he’s been.

    It is one thing to be a silent observer into another’s life, but do you have the courage to openly and loudly explore your own?

    Can you tell a narrative of your life, the troubled spots and not just give us details of the sunny days?

    Will you give to me the places that brought you to your knees and then how you managed to stand back up?

    How deep does your narrative go?

    How much of yourself do you know?

    I felt affirmed as I listened to him.

    I understood that writing doesn’t rhyme in my narrative either, it has its own unique style and it’s own individual way of speaking to me. I write and I listen, I ask and am told.

    I have an intimate relationship with writing and I believe that it trusts me as well, that I will write what needs to be written and I will tell my tale no matter how uncomfortable or scared I am, I will put words to paper and my truths will be known.

    Writing has been my most honest friend; it has given me the courage to face what I didn’t want to face, to speak the unspeakable and to know more than I needed to know.

    It is the oddest thing; it brings me where I don’t want to go yet I am eager to arrive. It tells me things I don’t want to hear yet I am an eager listener.

    I left that little church once again knowing that I am a writer, that I have a narrative to tell.

    I write so I can listen.

  • Using Words.

    I went to my first night of the Writers on Location series held in the little white church on Finlandia’s campus.

    The topic this week was singer/songwriters. Eric Koskinen and Mike LaBeau entertained us and shared their experience about putting words and music together.

    How music is used to back up a word, how it can change the meaning of the word by how the music flows behind it, swirls around it and carries it away.

    They spoke of the Business of song writing, how you write for a hit record, for a catchy tune, to be the one that makes the money, and how sunshiny bright tunes sell better than the dark renderings of pain and sorrow.

    Seeing how there is a market for ‘lightness’ and how the more poignant journeys of the soul are of lesser value in the market place seemed sad to me.

    I came away knowing it would not be fun to write for an audience or for a buck, to have to force words of a certain flavor forward.

    They did sing their songs and you could hear their hearts and souls wind around the words and music, perhaps not a best seller, but songs with feelings and longings, words sharing with us who they are.

    Most singers today do not write their own songs, they are actually acting out what someone else has wrote; someone in a room with a few other folks, playing on instruments and tossing around words to frame up a song. The singer than gets the song and uses their voice, but the words are not from their soul, but a collaboration, bits and pieces strung together to make a story to be sung.

    Listening to all the different writers, authors, storytellers, songwriters, singers I see that we all use whatever avenue we are comfortable with to share our journeys. That we each have an outlet for expression, an Art form that we happen upon that is our vessel to express what is in our souls.

    Words are words and how we arrange them in ways that leave a trail for others to follow what we feel is the magic to writing.

    Perhaps it is getting in touch with feelings, digging down deep into the caverns of our soul’s journey, and then using the words to deliver their message by laying them out in a poem or a song, in a book or a blog that connects us together.

    It is the longing to be heard, to be understood, to know that we are not alone, that we are not the only ones who have suffered, known sorrow, lived through confusion and angst, to be carried away by overwhelming pain or bursting with joy or engulfed in love that leaves you breathless.

    Connecting souls on this journey called life, using words.

  • The Artist Way

    On the CD of “Romancing the Ordinary” by Sara Ban Breathnach, she mentions Julia Cameron a few times. She is the author of the book, “The Artist Way”.

    My brother sent me the book and notebook that went along with it a little over six years ago to begin discovering the Artist within me.

    Julia wanted us to write “Morning Pages” just a simple practice of writing a few pages each morning, putting to paper our thoughts.

    They could be just stating what we had to do that day, how we were feeling, just ramblings but getting them out of our heads and on to the pages, cleaning up the space to be creative.

    I was a beginning student to this Way, when all hell broke lose in my life, and what surprised me greatly, is that I clung to these morning pages, which often grew to day long pages, for sometimes I wrote morning, noon and night.

    I filled that first book in a short time and then bought my first journal and after four years of writing longhand, I began a blog.

    I still write most days, sometimes more depending upon the unsettledness of my soul; writing is now part of who I am.

    What is so synchronistic is this book came to me just a week or so shy of a major event in my life, and it helped me find my way.

    What also has happened simultaneously my Artist arrived, she is having a ball playing with ladies, fabric, colors, designs, and is going places Artists go and her work is in an Art Gallery.

    I don’t know the way, but it seems to happen anyway.

    Perhaps that is the Artist Way.

    (I will have to go back and read in her book to see the marks I hit unbeknownst to me.)

  • Die in peace.

    A horrifying thought flittered across my mind, “ I need to write a letter to my father,” and it is like a thorn that won’t leave me alone, a bug, a thought I can’t swipe away, or flick back to where it came.

    It arrived like an unwanted guest and refuses to leave until I entertain the idea.

    I am not sure I will send the letter or if I can write it, but it seems that just as I silently left my mother, I also stopped cold any interactions with my father on December 4, 2004.

    My letter to my mother had to inspire this thought.

    My body trembled in terror back then and I haven’t addressed this man in any way, other than honoring the feelings of wanting to remain far far away.

    I haven’t explored in writing the dynamics between him and I, instead letting the words abuse and rape gloss over and suffice.

    Just not sitting down in the middle of what that feels like to a little girl.

    What will I say?
    What needs to be said?
    What thread needs to be followed through to its completion?

    What is odd to me, is that I have never once thought of writing a letter to him, yet in the past I had a few letters started to my mother, but never ever have I begun one to him or even considered one, until today.

    And I even thought to the point of sending it and finding the address to my sister’s house where he lives.

    I am sure this is the natural progression that follows the one I sent my mother, although perhaps this could be one to both of them, the final good-bye, a swan song to my parents.

    Part of me is afraid to write this.
    There is a part of me that is afraid not to write it as well, for a gift may get left there unopened.

    Many years ago I began a letter but it so enraged me I had to
    stop.

    Is there something I feel needs to be said to give me peace?

    I wonder if the swan sings to die in peace?

  • I found my soul.

    “Pen to the page to find and create sanctuary and asylum for soul. “ Margot Van Sluytman

    My blog is an asylum for my soul, a sanctuary for a confused mind, a place where I feel free to dialogue and debate the inner turmoil of unraveling a life too confusing to live, let alone understand.

    It is the place I run to when my emotions need a voice, when my feelings need to be heard, when I have discovered another part of me that was missing, it is a place for me to rest and be me.

    I speak in the asylum and I also listen to myself there, it is the oddest of things, and most often I receive newfound wisdom, wisdom I didn’t have when I put pen to paper, yet wisdom flows as I write.

    In my writings I discovered my innocence, explored my beliefs and challenged my thoughts, worked out crossed wires of dysfunction, expressed long pent up emotions, shed tears, and wrote words of comfort, all in the space of neutral white paper, my sanctuary.

    It is a sacred place, a soulful place, a place littered with emotion and tears, sorrow and pain, as well as decorated with wonderful moments of joy and gratitude and wisdom fills the air.

    I arrived to this place a very broken disillusioned girl, who had lost more than her heart could hold, and all I knew is that I seemed to feel better by writing it out.

    And it seemed to hear me, my great confidant.

    The sanctuary is my private space, to let down and let go, to not have to worry who I will offend or disappoint, for there is no one here but me.

    A space where you can go mental, rant and rave, and a place that is set aside to work on solutions, to find the answers you are seeking, to heal so you can once again rejoin your life.

    In this sanctuary and asylum I found my soul.

  • A safe place for Me.

    The sentiments, feelings, expressions, emotions of this blog may appear childlike and perhaps unbecoming of a big lady like me, but what I have just realized, is that the healing I am doing isn’t about a big lady, rather that of a little girl.

    The wounds that happened to me, happened as a young child, and what happens then the body grows big, but inside of me I am stunted and remain emotionally immature.

    Expressing my feelings now, about events long ago, sound like I am lost in my past, but what is really going on is that I am healing me in my past and allowing my emotional body to catch up with my big lady body.

    What is also very incredible is that an event today is orchestrated perfectly to heal a part of me that was hurt a long time ago.

    The gifts that I received by my mother leaving a message on my daughter’s phone, is multifaceted.

    Empowering, grieving, to seeing things I failed to notice, nothing happens by mistake.

    Each event that stirs up emotions is here to teach, to bring a part of me back to me.
    Just so you all know the little girl voice is a voice of little girl who had no voice growing up, and I am thrilled beyond words, that I have the opportunity and the vessel for her to heard.

    Whether another soul reads this or not, I am reading it as I write.

    It is an incredible experience to speak as me and to hear me, to feel the sorrow and be the one to comfort, to allow tears to fall that have been repressed for years, to feel after so many years of being afraid to, I am talking to or as the little girl in each post.

    What sacred space this is.

    A safe place for me.

  • Faith

    I never thought I would step into a church again, yet I found myself there. In fact I really didn’t see the church, until months later. Like how can you walk into a church sit in a pew, listen and not see the Church? Isn’t that simply impossible to do?

    How about if you go to the church without going to church, instead you go for the message? Would you then see the building? What if you go because of all the interesting people you find there? What if you go because it seems this is where your people are, this is where you might fit in, this, is where you hope to find the answers?

    What if you have a burning question you want answered? Would you see the church, or instead would you look closely at what was said, who said it and you got to decide if that fit you. If it fit your experience of what you know to be true. If you went to find a perfect match, would you see the church?

    I even did like most loyal members, I found a seat, and it became my special spot. Imagine I have a special seat. This time, I was tentative, unknowing, very much aware, and listening closely and then I would let the words come real close and see if I could find how that could be true for me too.

    Suspicious at best, discerning of all, I literally felt like I was a fly on the wall, just watching, listening and soaking up words. What was also so weird to me, I did not feel inclined to speak, and better yet no one expected me to. Shy smiles, little nods, a room full of strangers, or to me at least, yet I slowly became comfortable there. No one acted like I didn’t belong….yet I was still unsure.

    Months went by, and I eagerly awaited each week, each new message, and each time I walked away unsure. Not really buying the message, the faith I wanted seemed to just outside the fence, freely dancing, twirling in joy of its assuredness. The general theme seemed to intrigue me, but when I measured myself, I seemed lacking, I didn’t have what it took, something was missing, something just didn’t ring true. But each week I entered and had no clue what the message would be, each week a new insight came out. I learned a lot by listening, just sitting and hearing words.

    One day, a day that would be my last, I heard what I wanted to hear. I finally heard the one thing that would set me free, to show me that I indeed did belong to this group. I heard her speak, and before the hour was over, I knew.

    My Writer’s Journey Class was held in St. Mathews Church on the Campus of Finlandia University. My writing class did not speak of God. Get this, the last Author to speak wrote a book called Sundays in America. A year long road trip in search of Christian Faith! And she gives this talk to me, in a church, a church I vowed I would never ever enter.

    She and I are not even aware of all it took for this to come to fruition.You see, she was supposed to arrive here in February, but a snowstorm kept her literally circling above unable to land. What she didn’t know was that it was my fault. I wasn’t ready to hear her message. I first had to begin doing what I wanted her to teach me.

    I had to start writing. Now get this, get what Day was her first day she entered a new church? Easter. Guess what day this Blog started? Easter. Now I am not a real good religious girl, but even I know that it is the day of re-birth a day that means a new beginning. Ok, and guess where she gives me the message….a Church. 

    And I am sure you have to be asking what could this Suzanne Strempak Shea have to say? What did she do? What was the secret I needed revealed? What was right in front of me all the while? What again, did I fail to see?

    She stood there and began to just tell us how each book was created from her life experience! Oh she was a fast talker, you could not squeeze a word more into that hour! Animated, excited, colorful and with humor she looked at her life simply as the seeds of another great book! It was like she wasn’t personally involved, but yet she was. Like her life was there for her to write about, and the more interesting the better. She looked at people like Characters, places a new scene in a future book, a nagging thought the inspiration for whole book.

    I sat there and smiled knowingly. I was looking into my future. Ironically or not, she is the mentor of the lady who started the Writer’s Journey. A full circle moment for me and I wasn’t even there in the beginning, yet some how I was.

    With her signed book in my bag, I opened the door and walked into a whole new world, with a whole new me, with my Faith restored.

    Suzanne’s husband is very encouraging. He is known to say. “Write about it.”

    I think I am.

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