Themes

Recently I have started writing more - mostly because it is a compulsion but also because I'm actually taking on some writing work. This is something I've been projecting for and have known the time was coming. I am finding that this shift is arriving at just precisely the right moment to fit in seamlessly with one of the big themes in my life these days: Letting go of my fears around what other people think of me (also known as "Kewal, you really are getting too old for that nonsense.")

So the hair situation, obviously, has been a big process of letting go (in oh, so many ways.) There are those who congratulate and embrace me and feel excited for my changes. And there are those who are so opposed to my choices that they prefer to close the door our relationship. And while I, of course, have emotions to process from those responses (from the sweet smiling tears to the acceptance and mourning of an end), I am learning to find it all enjoyable. Did I just say enjoyable? Hmm. Well, if not always enjoyable, it is at least interesting. Like a ballet, there are the fiercely emotive movements and the soft, lofting dances. There is the romance and the drama. There is the laughter and the death. It is a story unfolding and all the different pieces are important and valid.

And I find myself working my way through it as I face my writing too. All these years, I have held back because I couldn't feel ready to put myself "out there" (wherever that is.) I have that initial fear of what people will think, if they will agree or disagree, if they will find it helpful and worthwhile or if they will think it is utterly useless garbage.

I talked with my husband about this yesterday. He said, "Not everybody is going to like your writing." (Note: Don't go to my husband for pep talks. Go to him for reality checks.) He reminded me that it is about expression and we are most free in our creativity when we let go of the fear. He said, "Just do it because it is what you do."

For me, that says it perfectly. We all dance our roles in this wacky ballet. We all just do what we do. We like it, we hate it. We resist and we flow. It is an amazing and unexpected gift in all of this, that I am finally dropping my old agendas of people pleasing and waiting for validation. Now I am finally learning to release that tight grip and soften into the realization that I just have to be me. And then I can, with honesty and openness, let you be you.