A Tongue-Tied Challenge

Early spring time at Little Blue House and Nikita in the background. She also brings me joy.

Sometimes I feel like my tongue is tied up in tiny little knots creating a lumpy boulder in my mouth.

What would it take to un-knot it?

What would it cost for me to un-tie myself, and to speak?

Something happened during Covid that had me tie myself up. To withdraw from the online world of sharing. To retreat. To reserve. To cease to speak.

In part, it was because the online world became quite hostile. In larger part it was because I did not know what to say or what to think of most things that were happening. I had feelings, that is for sure. I had beliefs in the moment of what was right, and what was wrong. But, I also felt early on that I could not speak for anyone else.

I did not know the answer, though it seemed like most people thought they did.

I spoke out on a few issues at the outset and it cost me a friend. We’ve tried to mend the bridge between us, but the trust and care and admiration that was once there has not come back.

It’s ok, I know. Not everyone is everyone else’s cup of tea.

Yet, I built it up in my mind into something more. Maybe it was. Maybe I needed to ground myself. To humble myself. To retreat.

I have learned a lot from withholding my views from the public space. In some ways it has been amazing. I have learned to connect more deeply with my surroundings - the people and things and places that I interact with on the daily get more of me, and I of them.

These are good things. Especially for someone like me who has the ability to disconnect - to be there but not really there.

I have had to learn to engage more; to be fully present in my life as it is in each moment. This has been hard for me, yet rewarding.

I have realized that I actually prefer living here, now, in my life and in this world with all its messy faults, beauty, uncertainty, joy and disappointment, than in the world I create in my own mind where all my dreams are manifested in perfection.

Yet, I do miss it. Writing. Visioning. Creating. Sharing. Escaping to an other world of my own imagination.

I’m not really sure how to do it in a way that is safe to be honest - and safety is important to me now. I’m not willing to sabotage what I have created in this world for a moment of blissful indulgence into the ecstasy of my visionary inner world. But, I do long to indulge a little. I do believe that I, and my close circle, and also the world in general, would be better off with my creative spark and my joy lighting me up just a little bit brighter.

So, I’m reaching for something familiar to jolt me back into my imaginary inner realms - a writing challenge.

I’m not going to take it to the extreme as I have I the past: like 40,000 words in a month, or waking up at 4am every day to write for 2 hours before work.

Instead, since it is national poetry month, I am simply committing to writing three poems in each of the next three months, and sharing them with at least one person.

Who knows, maybe I will finish my next poetry book after all.

My heart does feel lighter thinking about the possibility of releasing a new creation into the world. Maybe it is time.

Thanks for being on this journey with me. My first poem is for all of you: a spring haiku!

That musky spring smell
Has me hopeful even though
The flowers aren’t out!

xo,

Danielle