Lately, more often than not, I’m feeling very disconnected from myself. Like my voice isn’t really my own, or very authentic. Or like if I’m writing and I’m trying to connect the words with what I’m actually feeling, I just don’t think it’s lining up. It’s weird and frustrating and awkward, and it makes it very easy to shut down and stop writing altogether and run away from it all.
But time and time again I have learned that when I feel like that is the very time I need to be writing the most. I need to find myself again, find my voice and reconnect my words and thoughts and emotions. If I can’t even figure out for myself what I am feeling…how can I expect anything to go well?
I’ve always said that one of the reasons I write so much, and why I need to write, is often because when I go back and reread it however long later, it feels SO relatable. Well, obviously, because I wrote it, right? So it should feel relatable…because it’s me. In times where I start feeling like, just kind of lost and not quite put together, wanting to write but feeling like I just shouldn’t bother, I always find myself going back and rereading some of the stuff I have written in the recent past.
I spent a good chunk of this morning skimming through some of my posts from the past month, the same time period where I’ve felt very disconnected from myself. And I have to say, even if sometimes writing felt forced or it didn’t quite match what I might have been trying to say, rereading it actually did feel very much like me. It felt familiar, even if it didn’t while I was writing it.
A lot of the times I write without thinking. Thinking about it usually holds me back, it makes it awkward and just…it’s a style, and it’s something I do occasionally, but some of the most “relatable” content usually comes when I write without stopping. Without stopping to think or edit or think about what sentence or thought should come next… Just do it.
It’s funny, because I may think I’m going to write about one thing, but then it ends up being about something completely different that I didn’t even know I needed to talk or write about.
I struggle a lot with identity. The “who am I outside of a mom and wife” struggle. Writing has always been sort of something that helps me feel like something other than those things. I am those things, and I’m glad to be…but I also need to be something outside of that.
So I guess I’m just going to keep trying to figure that out. I need to be able to figure out how I’m feeling and why. And maybe there isn’t a “why”, and thats’s fine too. But I need to be able to at least know what it is that I’m feeling. I’ve been shut down from myself for so long, afraid to feel. I think I’ve forgotten what actually feeling feels like.
Writing has become am important part of my identity.
I remember after my youngest left home, how purposeless and restless I felt. Our culture does such a good job of conditioning us, to feel that what we do is who we are, that it defines us. More than that, I think a need for purpose is hardwired in us as humans. If you have never read Victor Frankls Mans Search for Meaning, I highly recommend it!
I will definitely look into it! Its funny because as much as I say I would like an identity other than being “just” a mom or wife, I know the second I don’t have my kids constantly I will definitely feel useless