Dear Witchy Writer,

I fell in love with reading the summer after first grade. My teacher called my father and me in for a meeting, and she told my dad I was behind in my reading skills. Then she gave me a book of stories I needed to read over the summer.

I gobbled up that book. I loved it, and then I read more and more. My desire to write came into being around that same summer. I wanted to do whatever this was - to write stories like the ones I was reading.

Currently, in my closet, I have a small pile of my writing from elementary school. My favorite is a story called “Private Detective Girls”. It’s a hilarious, cozy mystery about a group of girls in college who hate the Dean and who also have to solve a crime. I’m sure I had been reading Nancy Drew, BabySitters Club, and Sweet Valley High at the time.

I loved writing. Throughout middle and high school, I wrote journals of poetry and stories. I remember sitting down at my little desk and feeling a story flow through me. As I wrote, I would feel alive and successful. I was always proud of my writing. It was a pure joy zone for me.

Then I became an English major in college, and I suddenly stopped writing for pleasure. All my creative energy went into getting good grades on literary analysis papers. Whenever I inserted some of my unique voice or humor into my writing, I would get criticized by my professors, who definitely did not like it.

When I graduated, I had a degree I was proud of, but I felt like a husk, with no creative spirit in her anymore. I stopped writing for over a decade. Even though I wanted to write, I no longer knew how to put words on the page without the voices of my professors ringing loudly in my head. Those voices stopped me in my tracks whenever I had a writing idea.

After graduating, I got a job as a pre-school teacher. I taught for about five years until I burnt out. Then I got a job at a local university doing data entry, and I got promoted over the course of eight years until I was the database manager and project portfolio manager for the alumni information systems team.

This was a good career, but it wasn’t the right career for me. I found myself crushed from stress, overwhelm, and boredom, while also experiencing the pain of wanting to write and not writing.

At 34, I hit my bottom. I was sick, tired, and depressed. I went down to part time at work and took Martha Beck’s Life Coach Training and Bev Barnes’s Soul’s Calling Coach Training. These programs took 16 months to complete, and they were all about supporting folks through finding their own north star and doing their soul’s calling. Of course, these trainings weren’t only for helping me help other people, they were what I needed for myself.

At the end of them, I had done a lot of healing and understanding of who I was and what my essential self most wanted in life, and I sat at my computer to start a blog. I was going to write for real.

But my first blog post was terrifying to write. Everything in me shut down. I could barely eek out a word or two onto the page. Even after all my trainings, the critical voices of those professors and of my family and community took hold of me. I was so afraid of what people would think that I couldn’t write at all.

This time, however, I had more skills at my disposal. I noticed how scared I was, and instead of running away, I closed my eyes and breathed. I sank into a quiet place in my soul, and I asked myself what was going on. As I sat quietly with this riot of emotions, I acknowledged my fear and sent it love, and then another voice came forward.

This was a wise voice from within me. It was the part of me that knows things before my mind knows things, and it said that writing was going to be a healing journey for me. This would not be a thing where I could just sit down and start writing. I had so many creative wounds blocking my way that each blog post was going to be a healing process.

And then I realized something important. Even though I was writing for others on a personal development blog, I was really writing for my soul and for the freedom of my voice. This healing journey would be hard, but worth it.

For each blog post, I took the time to slow down and to call in my helpers and friends. I had life coach sessions with colleagues, where I worked through what was holding me back. I pulled oracle cards to help me find the path to healing for each post. And I listened within to that wise voice, which helped me keep going.

Over time, the biggest blocks to my writing dissolved, and my creativity flowed. As I wrote post after post, the critical voices got quieter, and my voice got bigger. I felt less afraid whenever I sat to write, and I noticed that instead of feeling like a husk, with no creative spirit, I felt enlivened creatively. I felt proud of my writing again, and I felt the joy of my words flowing onto the page.

It’s been about ten years since I wrote my first blog post. For these ten years, writing has been a major part of my life. I’ve mostly written blog posts for my business, because that’s my favorite kind of writing. But I’ve also taken time off blogging to write a children’s novel (which is a file on my computer that still calls to me sometimes). I also keep a journal, where I let my words flow without editing them, so I can see what needs to be seen.

What I can say is that even though my writing journey isn’t always easy, it feels amazing to be on a writing journey. To be a person who writes, and who feels nourished in my life because I write.

When I listen to that wise voice within me today, what I hear is relief. “Ah, that’s better,” she says.

xo,

Emma