When I\u2019m confused or upset, when I\u2019m clear or\u00a0overjoyed, I write. I\u2019ve always done it. I recall a particular day when I was\u00a0five years old, sitting
cross-legged on the beige and green shag carpeting in our living room,
scribbling in my Cinderella coloring book. It was a stormy day in January and\u00a0the cast iron radiators were spitting and hissing. Icicles jutted down from the\u00a0eaves of the roof, solidified in midair. A hush had fallen over the city and\u00a0all I could hear was the mechanical roar of a snowplow.<\/p>\n
I looked around at my family. My parents were sitting in\u00a0matching upholstered chairs, reading the newspaper, hypnotically handing
sections to each other and dropping them into a pile on the floor. My older\u00a0sister sat on a chair at the kitchen table, writing a book report on Treasure Island. I felt like the odd girl out as I scanned the crowded bookshelves that climbed from floor to ceiling. I wanted to read and write like my big sister did. I was hungry for the adventures that were hidden among the pages of the books, just waiting for me to discover. And I was hungry to create adventures of my own.<\/p>\n
When I first started writing, I was pretty bad at it but I\u00a0didn\u2019t know and I didn\u2019t care. I wrote stories and\u00a0sometimes I wrote poetry that rhymed with no expectations or judgments. That\u2019s the gift of being a child. When I got home from school, I\u2019d sit on the little red cane chair in my bedroom with a pen and a pad of paper in my hands and write because I liked it. I did it every day, not because I thought I should. Not because I wanted to shore up my stamina or get approval from anyone. I didn’t fantasize becoming a writer when I grew up. It just felt good so I kept on doing it.<\/p>\n
It served me well. When I left home at fourteen\u00a0years old to pursue my ballet career, I wrote through the loneliness. When I\u00a0felt invisible, I wrote. During one-night-stand bus tours, I wrote through the\u00a0tedium. When I trained on bleeding blisters and sprained ankles, I wrote
through the pain. In the sixties, I wrote when I swallowed mind-altering drugs that\u00a0led me on psychedelic journeys to worlds of wonder. I wrote through the guilt when\u00a0I cheated with a girlfriend\u2019s boyfriend. When I traveled the world to research\u00a0the faith healers, I wrote through the astonishment. When I was being battered,\u00a0I wrote through my suffering and then through my recovery. When I met the loves\u00a0of my life, I wrote about each of them, when we got together, when I left them or\u00a0when they left me. Writing was my healing gift and I embraced it with all my heart.<\/p>\n
I recently found an old report card from my elementary\u00a0school in which the teacher had jotted down, \u201cAndrea should not pursue creative
writing. She is not suited.\u201d Thank goodness I didn\u2019t remember that admonishment\u00a0because if did, I wouldn’t be sitting where I am today. I would have missed the\u00a0challenge and fulfillment of being creative, even when I wasn’t any good at it.
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Writing with abandon and no judgments is what Buddhist\u00a0call \u201cBeginner\u2019s Mind,\u201d approaching a situation as if you\u2019re seeing it or doing\u00a0it for the first time. Whether you were good or bad at anything in the past,\u00a0you might do something fabulous this time if you can leave the past in the past. Some years back, a friend was teaching me how to ride a horse. at first, \u00a0I was at odds with the animal, bumping along, getting a sore butt as I tried\u00a0unsuccessfully to post on the saddle, to rise and fall and connect with it. Then\u00a0one day, I got on the saddle and I felt the rhythm. I connected to the horse\u2019s\u00a0gait and my friend said, \u201cYou found your seat.\u201d If I hadn\u2019t approached it like\u00a0it was the first time, I would have felt awkward and decided that there was no\u00a0way I could ever ride a horse.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Here are some of the gifts that writing has given
me.<\/p>\n
It got me through Covid.<\/p>\n
It distracts me from suffering loneliness.<\/p>\n
It encourages me to face my fears.<\/p>\n
It gives me an outlet for my emotions.<\/p>\n
It gives me the courage to face my fears of inadequacy.<\/p>\n
It delivers me to the glorious writing writing zone.<\/p>\n
In my life, there is no greater joy than making\u00a0it into the writing zone. I get to fashion my own private world where I make up\u00a0the rules, define the boundaries, and I can stay there as long as I like\u00a0and leave whenever I want. I am judge and jury of my internal reality and I
decide who is welcome and who is not, who is guilty and who is innocent. It\u2019s\u00a0rare to find a place where you are the sole creator of a reality that is yours\u00a0and yours alone. It\u2019s a gift to have access to a safe haven, an escape hatch\u00a0when the world around you seems overwhelming like it so often does these days.<\/p>\n
Writing gives you the ability to tell the\u00a0truth on the page while you empower others to do the same thing. It allows you\u00a0to do something that has the potential to bring joy, both to you and to someone\u00a0else. Whether you feel ecstatic or intimidated, inspired or blocked, when you
refrain from deciding if your writing is good or bad, the gift is always the
same \u2013 expressing your feelings, overcoming shame, celebrating joy and\u00a0unburdening your heart.<\/p>\n
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\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I\u2019m confused or upset, when I\u2019m clear or\u00a0overjoyed, I write. I\u2019ve always done it. I recall a particular day when I was\u00a0five years old, sittingcross-legged on the beige and green shag carpeting in our living room,scribbling in my Cinderella coloring book. It was a stormy day in January and\u00a0the cast iron radiators were spitting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2319,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2320"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2320\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2321,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2320\/revisions\/2321"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}