Inner Gold

Book Project Week Three Update

What I learned this week: Writing is undoing, then putting myself back together.

This week I feel like I’m being reassembled. It’s like I crawled into the attic or pulled the box out from under my bed to turn over in my hands all the old parts, stories, ideas, behaviors, coping mechanisms, and versions of myself. I decide what to shed, what to let go, the stuff that never belonged to me anyway, and the stuff I willingly took on because it served me at some point.

It feels like I’m excavating myself, digging through mountains and layers of dirt to find all the bleached bones, the most fundamental scaffolding underneath all the shit I piled on top.

It’s been hard and confusing, and I haven’t been exactly fun to be around. But I know from experience now that these phases of more intense or painful inner work, are just waves that will recede eventually, so I apologize a lot, practice taking responsibility, and ask can we start again? A beautiful thing is happening: I see myself a bit more like a human and less like a machine that has to function and produce. I have a little more grace and kindness for myself, if only for a moment.

To help with processing these feelings and calming my anxiety, I decided to try out a different kind of meditation/relaxation approach. I got a free trial for a breathwork app, called Soul. I’ve done yoga and different kinds of meditation. I like the first, and have always struggled with the second. Today, I did my first breathwork session or breathing meditation.

I felt awkward in the beginning, because, well, breathing loudly through my mouth in strange patterns just reminds me a bit of having sex, or giving birth, or dying. With a bunch of teenage kids who were due back from school shortly, I knew I would NEVER live it down if they’d found me on the floor like this:

I kept going though, and was able to stay present simply because it took all my attention to keep up the unusual breathing pattern for an extended period of time. My entire body started tingling and buzzing, the bridge of my nose started building up pressure, my hands, especially my thumbs, were cramping, and my body was turning cold. When the instructor asked me to let the breath fall away and recede, my face involuntarily contorted in a quiet sob that held in my throat until it dissolved into two tears that ran down each side of my face and into my hair. Afterward, I felt soft and light, and warm.

The session was named “Inner Gold” — how to see the good, sparkly, golden, and luminous inside ourselves more clearly. I realized that not only is it time to get rid of the crap I piled on top of myself, and discover the gold that’s already there, but it’s also time to get the parts of me back that I lost or gave away. The parts that I gave up to survive. The parts I gave to other people when I should have kept them for myself. That parts that I loved but thought I didn’t deserve.

What made me want to quit writing my book this week:

• Worrying about taking too much time to write my own stuff rather than work on the client projects that pay my bills.
• The difficult inner work writing brought up this week. The stories and memories that came up shone a light on my old coping mechanisms and patterns of behavior that no longer serve me, but that I haven’t changed yet. It’s like I haven’t updated my operating system for a couple of decades…(which is exactly how I treat my phone and then wonder why it’s glitchy).
• Feeling like my book outline and chapter structure is not quite right, and therefore my first draft is shaping up to be a real mess with some gems sprinkled in.

What kept me going:

• The generous offer from a colleague and editor I respect and admire to edit a sample chapter of my book so I can submit it for a writing residency (I’ll talk more about that later). I trust her and know that her feedback will make my writing a million times better.
• The daily email gratitude list I’ve been doing with three friends for a couple months now, listing ten specific things I’m grateful for. It’s not that easy to come up with so many things (without constantly repeating my kids, my partner, my health). Those are all true, but since I tend toward depression in the winter, I am actively looking for the little gold nuggets in every day right now.
• Excitement and anticipation about presenting to a writing group next week. I get to talk about stories and book coaching and creativity and the writing life with other people who are also totally into all that. I can’t wait!!

Week Two Stats: Finished Chapter 3, wrote 3,692 new words