Coming back to this page after two years of not publishing any writing is a bit awkward.  Why have I stayed away so long?  What caused me to stop posting in this blog spot?  This was suppose to be a place for me to share an honest and authentic expression of myself and to allow the practice of writing.

I will tell you in two words what stopped me.  I was … Scared Silent!

Thats right, when I first posted here, I felt I was on an adventure of waking up my voice to speak things that had meaning to me and me alone.   So what happened then?

People stated reading, that’s what happened!

That was my first hiccup anyway.  The thought that someone was reading what was going on in my heart and head was frightening to me.

When I started this blog, you will see in one of my first posts where I expressed that I did not, in anyway, want to post pretentiously.  I figured that’s what Facebook is for.  HaHa!  But seriously, we have enough social media spots where people post the best and only the best about themselves.  I am quite bored of seeing the perfect portraits of what we all hope ourselves to be, rather than the honest portrait of who we are.   Facebook for me is just that.

So I made a promise to myself… this blog spot would be a place to work out issues of my heart honestly.   To speak authentically and openly, And to type with my fingers boldly.

That was easy, as long as no one was listening.

Then, as I began to understand there were listeners to my disfunction and struggles, I cringed a bit, actually a great bit!  But, I push forward so as to speak what was on my heart regardless.

Then the next hiccup came…

I was told people were reading my post and ascribing their own motive and their own directive to what I was saying.  Some even developed their own idea of why I was posting in the first place.  I was accused of writing specifically about a particular group of people in a few of my posts.

“Wait?  This is my blog” I thought.

If you read my blog post and how I have written them, without formulating a motive from your own agenda, you will see clearly the post are about me.  They are about how I feel.  How I think.  How I see things.

It is my voice speaking, no ones else’s but mine.

Of course, I do use life situations as word pictures to express ideas that are formulating in me. Yet, still the outcome is about me.  I was told at one point specifically…

“Everyone knows your writing about us.”

Really? … Everyone?

“Who is everyone” I thought to myself?  I think instinctively I knew what was coming next, but still it blind sided me.

“Will you take your post down?” I was asked.

“Are you crazy!” I screamed in my mind.  However, the words that actually came out were firm, yet gracious, if even a bit disregarding to my true emotions inside.

“No, I will not.”  I replied.  “This is my blog, my voice and about me.  If people suspect it is about them or someone else, they can ask me rather than talk to others about it.”

I was determined not be controlled about how I am to think, or how I am allowed to feel.  I will blog, I will write, I will express who I am… I have a right, to my own voice.

I felt a small victory rise up in me that day.  To stand up for myself.  To stand up for what I knew to be right, regardless to how others decided to interpret my motives and intentions.

A small victory for a moment, yet 2 years followed by a stunted & silenced voice.

That was enough to close my lips and to stop my fingers from tapping the keyboard to my computer.  But, even though it has been 2 long years since I last wrote, it was not enough to stop my brain from thinking, nor to stop my heart from feeling, nor was it enough to stop my voice… permanently!

Today, I pick back up.  No longer writing in stealth, nor allowing any assaulting words and actions of others to silence me any longer.  No longer worried what the reader thinks.  Back to the drawing board if you will, to express my heart, to unravel my thoughts and to practice my voice, by typing in this place yet again.

To those who read here… you are welcome to read.   You are welcome to connect to my thought process… or not.  You are welcome to disagree with me, to dislike my style and to be perturbed by my unpretentious posts.

However, you are not welcome to hinder me from expressing myself any longer.  You are no longer… the critique that Scares me Silent.

 

On August 31, 2015, I ran across a women named Cheryl whom I met in a coffee shop in Bisbee, Arizona.  For some reason we connected and began a conversation.  She happened to be a writer and an artist.  We had an honest discussion about writing and I expressed to her that I was having a block with writing based on “fear of the reader.”   The words below are a quote from her, that I immediately wrote down because it spoke to my heart.

“When you write and share it publicly, it now no longer belongs just to you.  You are not responsible for how others perceive it.  You are authentic in the creation of it. You will have some who will criticize, but you will also have those who love it.  The more people that hate it, you will find there will be that many more that will love it.”  ~ Cheryl (Bisbee coffee shop)

Thank you Cheryl for these words.  They helped me this day to finally post again and to be honest to the reason I lost my voice in writing.