Writing our way through and beyond

Writing as a practice for precarious times

Dear beloveds,

What a year this month has been. How are you holding up out there?

Everyone I know is overwhelmed.
Everyone I know is at capacity (or over it).
Everyone I know is struggling with the question of how to live our values in times when it feels impossible, when every system we seem to be stuck within was designed to devalue life, when the onslaught of political upheaval was designed to overwhelm us.
Each overwhelm is not a personal failure, but rather part of a systemic one.

Amidst the collective state of chaos that is the new US administration, which is wreaking havoc and harm across the globe, I have been in a personal state of overwhelm this month - small in the scale of collective upheaval but real nonetheless: navigating summer (school) vacation here in Costa Rica, getting Daphne ready for first grade while trying to keep my head above water with work.

You might be wondering, “If you are so overhwhelmed, what are you doing here?” But that’s exactly why I am here. I’m here because writing is a lifeline. Writing is how I process life. Writing is how I make sense of the world, and in writing my way through it, I just might write my way out of it into something else. In sharing my writing with you, I hope that you might find support in it, or resonance, and maybe you’ll find that writing could be a helpful practice for you, too.

As I struggled with what I could possibly offer that would be helpful or useful in this moment (I have about sixteen drafts in progress this week), I thought I would just share my own grapplings, and how I am practicing with this moment. One such simple practice is writing. And I believe we need practices in this moment- all the practices we can muster - that can guide us through it and beyond it. We need our imagination, we need our creativity, and writing is one way we can tap into them. We need to find steady ground, we need anchors, and practices can be that for us, practices we can return to no matter what is going on outside.

View from the writing desk

Why write

Recently I have had a few friends share with me that they felt like they needed or wanted to write, but weren’t sure how to start.

The short answer is: just start.

But the longer answer is: connect to your why, and make it a daily practice. Write to share. Write to heal. Write because you have to write, and write your way towards what you do not yet know. Write because the world needs your voice and your story, because it does. Write to peel back the layers of your creativity, to allow creativity and imagination to flow through the rest of your life.

Write for the love of the written word.
Because words will wait for us.
And when we are ready to hear something,
They will be there for us, waiting.

You might write to share with an audience, or you might write just for yourself. For me, writing for an audience has really stimulated my creative practice. Nearly two years ago when I started this Substack, I set a goal of publishing every week, and I have found that in having this goal, there is almost always something that I feel inspired to write about. Writing for you has fed my writing life with so much inspiration.

But even if you are writing for an audience, you need to write for yourself and write just to write. If you only write for an audience, you can lose yourself in the process. You have to stay close to your voice and your dedication to creative practice while writing publicly.

Relating this back to this challenging moment, we need to write to for our imaginations. For our creativity. Because what we need in this moment is all of the imagination and creativity our heart-minds can muster. As adrienne maree brown wrote in Emergent Strategy:

“We are living now inside the imagination of people who thought economic disparity and environmental destruction were acceptable costs for their power. It is our right and responsibility to write ourselves into the future.”

We have to write ourselves beyond this mess. We have to write ourselves in futures rooted in love, care, healing, and collective liberation.

It’s bougainvillea season

For love of the written word

One of the things I love about the written word is that words can wait for us. These words came to me while chatting with one of my former students, who was sharing with me that she had gone back to something I had written to her class because she wasn’t ready to take it in at the time when I wrote it. Now, she was ready to read it, and could receive the message in a way that she couldn’t have at the time when I wrote it.

Sometimes, when someone says something to us, we are not ready to hear it. We can’t take it in. Words land in our ears and can’t reach our heart. Words can get blocked by the noise in our head if we are not ready for them.

When we write something, it stays, for better or for worse, and we can go back to words and they can touch us in different ways when we are ready to hear them. This is one reason to love the written word - words will wait for us, and when we are ready to receive them, they will still be there, waiting to be taken in.

Within modernity, the written word is valued over other ways of knowing, deeming knowledge that isn’t written down or published for public consumption, as inferior. This means a devaluation of embodied knowing, intuitive knowing, emotional knowing, for example. And in some ways, the static nature of words might feel insufficient to hold the emergent, wiley nature of the ever-changing world. But I think we can I think we can hold these limitations while still loving words and writing and books and the thinking and creativity that goes into them. We can love the written word while understanding it is one among many ways of knowing. We can love words for what they are and what they can do, while also honoring their limitations¹. We can love them for what they are - and that they will wait for us.

Writing as practice

For me, writing is a daily practice, along with tending to my dreams (which is also a writing practice - you can read my suggestions for dream journaling here) and meditation. The core practice is inspired by morning pages from Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, which I have been practicing morning pages since I was in the Peace Corps. When I am in a dedicated practice with them, I am at my most creative. And that is the point of the morning pages: it is not to create masterpieces or beauty (though sometimes they flows through). The point is to clear away the gunk of the mind to get creativity flowing, to make space for creative force to flow through.

When I am in a regular practice of morning pages, creativity can flow through the rest of my life. I am more open to be a vessel for creative energy. Morning pages are like decluttering, and allow me to have space for creativity to want to visit.

I recommend reading Julia Cameron’s guidance on the morning pages practice to start. I do not strictly adhere to the three pages - I find this varies wildly depending on the notebook. I usually just write until I run out, aiming for three pages but sometimes it can be a little less. Sometimes it takes me in a direction that I need to flow in before I finish. And sometimes I get interrupted and need to stop. But when I am following the practice most closely, it works, and I can’t recommend it enough.

As I’ve shared before in the peek into process of my morning routine, I usually write my dreams down before I meditate, then practice morning pages freewriting afterward. It can also work really well to use the morning pages as a way to clear the mind before meditation. Experiment and find out what works for you.

Words weaving their way in the world

Writing for the sake of writing is enough, and you don’t need to share your words with anyone. But when you do share, it is beautiful to think about how your words weave their way through the world. When you write and share, you never know how your words will travel in the world, how they will weave their way into other minds and hearts, what they might spark beyond my fingertips and keyboard, what they might do. I delight in imagining this, love hearing about how they travel, and always send them out with all my love.

When I submit a journal article or hit send on a Substack post, I often send it out with love, with love, with love, hoping the words will have a positive effect in some way. That they’ll do what they need to do in the world, that they'll serve someone. Once you release them, words truly take on a life and energy of their own, in such an exciting way that you can never fully anticipate. We might think that words are static, but they never truly are - they are always interacting with everyone and everything they come across. They are alive, and writing is one way we can weave our living hearts into the world, and spread the kind of energy we want to see more of. Not to mention, our words can carry our energy beyond our earthly bodies, living far beyond us.

Love letters to the moon

The new moon in Aquarius just passed, and one of the writing practices that has been a core ritual and magical practice in my life is writing letters to the moon. If you have been around Enchantable for a while, you know I write love letters (you can find them in the lectures, love letters, and essays section), and I practice with the moon and astrology and other natural cycles and rhythms. My most basic lunar ritual every month, twice a month (on new moons and full moons) is writing love letters to the moon.

Like meditation practice, new moons invite us to begin again, and again and again and again.

Where do you want to start over?
What do you want to begin?

When we are overwhelmed, we can ask for help and support. The moon is here for us, to support us. To renew us. To help us begin again.

My moon letter writing practice goes something like this:

Dear (new moon in Aquarius),

Thank you (for reminding me that I can begin again in each moment). Thank you (for teaching me the wisdom of the darkness, and reminding me that all seeds need the dark to begin).

Today I ask for your support in (helping me reset my relationship to work, my habits in relationship to how I work).

I would like to plant a seed (to recalibrate my relationship to working. Please support me in creating healthy habits…).

Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Love,
(Stephanie)

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A new moon is a great time to start a new practice. A meditation practice. A writing practice. Any practice that will ground you, that will connect you to yourself and the wider whole we are a part of. Write a love letter to the moon. Write down your dreams. Write morning pages. Write me a note - I would love to hear from you :)

I hope you write. Write for yourself, write for your love of the world. Write what is happening and don’t let it be erased or forgotten. Write to release, write to share. The world needs your voice, your mind, your heart, and I hope you will write - write through and beyond this story. May we write our way into another one.

May this be a moment of renewal.
May the law of impermanence remind us that this moment will not last forever.
May we start over where we need to and where we can.
May we double-down on the practices that serve to ground us, regulate us, uplift us, connect us.
May we find strength and support in our practices, each other, and the Earth.
May we write ourselves anew.

Happy lunar new year!
With love and infinite care,

Steph

P.S. For additional support and inspiration for working with the moon and astrology, I recommend turning to the Moon Studio, Chani, and Virginia Rosenberg.

1. There is so much to experience in life beyond words, and so much that words cannot capture. I recommend listening to The Telepathy Tapes podcast for a deep exploration of that theme.