I wanted to write something starkly beautiful, something that would gracefully and articulately sum up this messy business of being human, and how hard it can be to take joy from the simple things and to keep practising gratitude when everything feels like a mess. But I couldn’t. What follows will have to do.
I tried to write last Sunday but the words were slippery and evasive, and I couldn’t package all the things I was feeling into one page. And today I’ve been trying to write this, but my mouse keeps hovering over the tempting little ‘x’ at the top of the page, which will cancel this draft.
What with load shedding (currently 8 - 12 hours without electricity per day in South Africa); internal struggles and pending changes that I can’t write about yet because our family is still co-creating them; and people I care about struggling deeply (which I can’t write about either because it’s their story not mine), the first two months of this year have stretched on for several decades.
Because I am primarily a memoir writer, there is often a tightrope pulled taut ahead of me on which I have to keep the balance between writing about my life and my experiences AND at the same time respect and consider those in my life who have their own stories and experiences.
Another tension I think that life writers learn to hold is how to discern when something is ready to be written about and shared with an audience, and when our words just need the private sacred space of our own thoughts.
For me, the first, rawest level of writing is the words I jot down in my journal, for my eyes only. The pages of my journal help me to vent and rant. They offer me space to explore my feelings. It is on the quiet page that I can begin to sound out new ways of being, to play with different choices that might emerge, and let the tender shoots of new possibilities unfurl.
These questions and possible choices and ways of living that I explore on the pages of my journal are fragile and shy.
They need dim lighting, the soft glow of candlelight (which is good, considering that our electricity supply is so compromised), and a quiet space in which to stretch and feel their way into the world.
When we are reaching for new ways to be in the world, asking questions like ‘What if’ and ‘Why not’, we need to remember that these are delicate, private things.
They need to be held close and tended to quietly. They are not ready for the bright lights of Facebook or to be scrutinised in someone’s inbox.
It seems to me that many of us are going through some process of change, some kind of reckoning and re-assessing. We are asking new questions, we are wanting different things from our lives, and it can be hard as hell to go through this period of transition, of wanting to shuck off the old skin and grow a different one. Especially when we have no idea what the new skin will look like or feel like.
So let’s hold ourselves and each other gently. Let the questions stretch out and fill the spaces, hold the discomfort of uncertainty as we keep breathing in and out.
And, in the midst of uncertainty and stress, thank God for the constancy of companionship (and G&T o’clock!), thank goodness for the animal comfort of snuggling up next to someone we love, for the time to savour our child’s body leaning heavily against us as he sleeps, even as we feel our children tugging at their moorings because the world out there is calling to them.
Thank heavens for the reassuring comfort of making a decades-old chicken curry recipe, the pleasant rhythm of chopping vegetables, the familiar scent of onion and garlic frying in oil, and knowing that there will be a nourishing family meal at the end of it all.
And thank all the gods and goddesses for the constant presence of mountains, and ocean, trees and birds …
I enjoyed reading this - authentic and honest - just the way it should be!
Amen sister. And thank you 🙏🏾