Use not words to unravel; rather, use words to weave
Things I’ve authored
Sometimes silence,
Let yourself be carried away
On the barely a ripple,
Wave of silence
A golden
Cool
Peaceful
Resolution
All cosied up
On a chair
Fluffy socks
Housecoat
Duvet
Not willing to incur
Heating costs
Yet still warm
Silence says
Be
Nothing more
That who
You are
There’s something special
To a solitary silence
Something nurturing
And restorative
A real present tense sense
Sense of who, what, how,
And where
You are
I have a distinct memory, of all the thing I was ever interested in (when I was much younger than I am now), being made into daily practices. Somehow, I would find a way to return to them again and again, day after day. Nowadays though, it seems like I can’t find the focus or the memory, or perhaps the executive functioning to keep up that kind of regularity apropos of no external structures.
Perhaps I tied my interests to activities I would undertake regularly. Like with writing, I regularly woke up in the middle of the nigh during my GCSE years. Looking back I think it was likely that the stress was impacting my sleep. My sleep is often quite sensitive to being influenced by stressors in my life. That said, if I woke up in the middle of the night, I would bake some cookies, them load either Julia Nunes or Taylor Swift up on YouTube, and get to writing. I woke up in the middle of the night often enough in my teens, that I had quite a regular writing practice. Or with rollerblading, it would always be on a weekend, and always along the thames pathway from Battersea to Chelsea.
I suppose there’s also something about the relatively fewer amount of responsibilities I had as a teenager than I do now. As a single mother/full time student/ trainee counsellor, there’s so many more things “to-do” that it seems like the energy for pursing things I enjoy with the regularity (probably) needed to improve, happens very sporadically- (when the kids are away, I find myself returning to journaling, and meditation, and maybe with e ought time to practice scales and chords, yet when they’re back, there’s barely enough executive functioning to go around, what with keeping track of all the things that need keeping track of when you have young children in the house.)
I have this little voice in the back of my head, that’s quite persistent in reminding me not to forget *whatever hobby/ fun interest of mine catches my attention presently. And the high I get from engaging in things I find fun, means that once I’m sat down, I tend to zone in completely, losing sense of time and place, and then I’ve spent four hours knitting something, and quite possibly have to run out of the door to pick the kids up, suddenly aware of the need to pee, and thirst wracking my throat.
My ideal would be to be able to dedicate myself a bit at a time to all of my interests every day. there would be time for painting, time for writing poetry. I would spend time writing any of the novels that I’ve left mid stories, characters on the cusp of their respective character development journeys. I’d find time to bake, and find new nutritional recipes to try out. I’d finally get round to re-learning how to sew using a sewing machine, and I’d spend time speaking to guests on my podcasts. There would also be time to play around editing videos, and polish off my website, playing with and further developing my web building skills. I’d also create time to keep going with teaching myself to code.
It is a blessing, being filled with so many things that spark my interests, being so deeply interested in many things, yet the challenges of time-blindness, and difficulties with focus, alongside the organisational requirements of ‘running a household’ as well, as the time and focus I put into parenting, talkies of learning and CPDs- I find myself mourning how quickly time passes by.
So here I am, returning to one of my early interests, blogging. I’m curious to see how long I can keep up some level of consistency with it, and I’m happy, I’ve found a few moments to return to it.
I suppose that’s why so many of my previous blog posts, are typo filled, peppered with run-on sentences, and side thoughts cosseted in parentheses. I’d aways try to get my fingers to catch up with my thoughts (always an impossible task- better informed about this now, having learned about the hyperactivity of the minds that can come alongside ADHD), and then rush to hit publish, before I forgot. Sometimes I’d schedule it to be published on a certain day, sure I’d come back and make the necessary edits in the time between when I’d written the first draft and the date I’d scheduled it to go live, and inevitably I’d forget about the post’s existence, until I got a notification from WordPress.
Something I’ve been embracing the years since I last wrote here is the idea of perfect imperfection, allowing rooms for mistakes, and the mantra “done is better than perfect” and “good enough, move on”.
Holding myself to extremely high standards, is one thing, not allowing myself to progress due to minor imperfections is quite another.
So that’s it.
I’ll end here.
If you enjoyed this, thanks you for your time, I’d love to know what stood out for you, and your thoughts and insights in the comments.
With warmth,
Fine Words Weave
As a writer, I’ve decided to give myself freedom and permission to admit that I don’t exactly know how to write. I just know that I do. The rules of grammar, and story plotting often times escape me, I feel it’s why I do so well with poems, and perhaps essays, and very short stories, yet have struggled historically with longer stories. I have grand schemes and ideas, and things that I know are important in the story, like flashpoint in the history of the novel, and yet a very bumbling sort of meddling through method of conveying it all.
I’m admitting this to myself, and to all of you, in the hopes that pulling down the walls of perfection that entrap my writing, will allow me to be more open to learning, and perhaps improving.
The fear of not getting things right, I’ve allowed that fear to prevent me from writing longer stories, or at least getting to the end of one, for a good too many years now.
I’m doing away with that now, and pivoting. I’ve decided to begin sharing (and complete the writing of) a novel that I started to create in 2016. It has been languishing on my desktop for a long while now because I don’t know how to bring it all together in the perfect way. I have accepted that it will not be perfect, it will be messy, and perhaps it won’t make as much sense as I would like, there may be potholes, and things won’t go exactly how I wish, and that is okay. (So far it’s been a daily practice of reminding myself this.)
If you wish to read the story you can read it here. Perhaps you could encourage me, and join me in this journey as i go from a very unpolished yet meaningful novel, to something slightly more polished.
Take care,
Fine Words Weave
One more round with the tempest.
She stands,
arms outstretched
in a daring embrace,
as she locks gaze with the eye of the storm.
Energy jitters up her spine,
and her tongue is dry.
She’s danced this whirl wind before.
Spun out over and over,
leaving breathless and dizzy,
that’s if she even leaves at all.
The tempest calls her name,
blowing temptingly in her ears.
Drawing her in just a bit.
One foot forward,
without conscious thought,
she’s already in forward motion,
Pulled in by the deceptive calm.
Still the weathered shawl of foreboding
settles on her shoulders,
and her skin pinpricks with that quiet
un-nameable sense,
that something is just out of step here.
She’s been around this tempest before,
this isn’t her first spin,
and lately she’s tired
of letting herself be reeled back in.
Emotionally battered,
mind windswept,
she’s intimately familiar
with the post-storm landscape.
The tempest howls,
the wind buffets at her mind,
the noise is reaching crescendo.
She turns inwards to the quiet within.
And asks a single question.
The answer makes steel rods of her legs
and she is at a stand still.
The question?
Is this, what you want, for your life?
Lightning fizzles
from within the tempest,
aiming at her stock still legs.
There is pain and tingling,
and the metal taste of hot electricity.
As the bolt hits at where she is grounded.
Is this what you want for your life?
Honestly,
the answer is so quiet,
it’s hard to hear it
beneath the roar of the storm.
Still it matters not,
because the answer becomes her vision.
She feels it right in the gaps.
She unstormably knows the answer
in every fiber of her.
She is steady as the tempest rolls over.
It flails and roars,
wails and hails.
Steadily drags at her core.
It comes with dark
and thunder and shuddering.
Shaky teeth,
and the shivering.
The storm is a mighty thing.
The knowing within is mightier still,
and she does not let the storm in.
She draws deep from within herself,
The strength to weather it.
At moments her legs falter,
and at times she is almost carried away
by the force of the storm,
still the unstormable knowing is her steadying.
The storm does its worst.
The knowing is unstormable.
The tempest passes.
She stands, still.
Her arms outstretched in an open embrace.
The storm has subsided.
And faintly in the post-storm ozone
she hears a new question.
What do you want for your life?
Hey loves,
It has been such wild twelve week ride. I’ve finished my first term of university, and it has been quite a journey.
I was wild with excitement at the beginning, buzzing and full of fuel, and so excited to get underway with my course. I had a beautiful moment of running up the stairs in our empty lecture theatre and calling out loudly “Counselling degree here we come” or word to that effect in my very first week. I literally could not wait to get started.
Then the work began, the assignments, and group projects, and reflective journals, coupled with family drama, and the usual parenting work, by week six, I’d gotten to a real low point. Just then the whole family caught the flu, at one point I was physically too sick to look after my boys.
Still eventually I regrouped, and out of the valley, I decided to start a youtube channel . Gradually I started to get back on course, digging deep to rekindle the passion for my degree programme. I kept working, and stumbled on some study methods that worked for me, pomodoro being chief amongst them, along side study vlogs and study with me’s on youtube to help me stay motivated.
And now here I am already in the winter break, and awaiting my results for some of my modules, and a 2000 word essay due for january 6.
Still, I want to document all of these feelings, I know I’ll look back on them someday as fond memories.
How are you all doing?
Did I tell you I’m recommitting to writing? Too long I let this limiting belief around my writing take root, that two year bout of writers block really took the wind out of my sails. I am embracing the wordsmith within once more, and I want to return to my first love. Novels, and short stories.
Watch this space.
2020 is a year of taking action for me bi’ithni’llah.
See you on the flipside
Take care,
Fine Words Weave
One of the things that sometimes hinders my writing is, I want my writing to be honest. I am aware that my truth may not hold true for someone else, and it’s in that difference that learning and interchange can happen. Why am I writing about this?
There’s been a topic that keeps coming back to my mind, and I guess in some ways I’m afraid to write about it, publicly at least.
When I think about the reasons why, I think a lot of it is due to the fact that as a child I was repeatedly taught that “it’s not everything, that you tell to everyone”, said differently, ‘keep your business your business.’ As a child how do you judge that? How do you know what are the things you share, and what aren’t? Sometimes you choose to follow the example of the adults/ caretakers who gave you that advice. Other times you become paralysed by the indecision and decide it’s safer to not share anything with anyone.
The thing is it that by the time you become an adult with the capacity to re-examine things and make those decisions according to your judgement, you have already formed the habit of a lifetime, and might not even consider re-examining the decisions that you made as a child, that likely no longer fit your current circumstances, or perhaps even work against the life that you desperately want to lead.
I recently finished reading (listening to the audiobook ) “Maybe you should talk to someone” by Lori Gottlieb, there were so many insights and lessons within it, and days later, I feel I’m still absorbing some of the gems of it. One such point of interest was when the author mentioned her therapists use of something I had come across before but inevitably fell out of practice with. Allowing for space between an action and your response, means you can intentionally choose what that response will be, as opposed to a reaction, (which from my view is more about neurological pathways that have been so travelled that they automatically come in to effect).
Sometimes it is okay to delay your response, sometimes it is okay for your response to be, I don’t know, or ‘I’ll take some time to think about that’.
So currently I’m not completely sure when or if I will write about this topic which is weighted, and emotional and really important to me. I’m going to allow myself to sit with that uncertainty no matter how uncomfortable a feeling that is (which i could write a whole other post about) and, not let it be a driver of my decision i.e. deciding never to write about the topic, or just put it all out there just to be rid of the feeling. I’m going to give myself time to formulate a response, and then take action accordingly, and also remember that if at a later date that decision isn’t working I can re-examine it and change my course of action.
Do you have lessons from your childhood that could use some re-examining? Have you done any un-learing? What was that process like for you? Do you make space between an action and your response? How have you found that practice? Do you have different thoughts to me?
I really love thoughtful conversations, please leave your thoughts in the comments, if you’re reading this.
Take care,
Fine Words Weave
Leave yourself.
On the pages
the words
and stories,
They matter.
Breathe ink,
write out;
lived experience,
weave. Tales
use words.
You matter.
Fine words
don’t produce
food; Butter
no parsnips.
Hungry for
more, hungry
for truth.
We matter.
“Stop Digging!”
You hear in your mind
You’re not going to find gold here
Only pain and rocks and dust.
Keep digging
Just go on
Excavate and go deeper
You will find the fine pure beautiful exquisitiveness
Of your young innocent soul
Under all the dirt and soil and debris
Take it out
Shake off the dirt
It shines
So pure and Golden
It’s still you,
You’re still her
Pure
Some days
there’s nothing
left,
and you’re not
quite sure
how you’ll make it to the next.
Some days
you’re running on empty.
and you set your eyes,
on small, barely
achievable goals;
like make it through this hour,
or just muster up
the will to shower.
These words are here
a small reminder
for when you’re swimming,
up hill through sticky syrup,
At some point,
you will put your foot,
back in the stirrup.
It’s not today,
and that is far from a disaster
Hold on,
as hard of an ask,
as that sometimes is.
In the not
too distant future,
You’ll crest the hill,
Atop the saddle,
riding your way,
back to laughter.
Unheard.
That is the fear
That whispers to her.
It tries to convince her
Of the following lies;
Your voice does not matter,
You are not worth listening to,
When you speak you are not heard,
There is no value to your words.
Fear does not know,
That she found a place,
Full of listening ears,
And learning
That taught her to vanquish fear.
To step on it.
Two feet planted firmly
On the face of fear
And jump.
Bend down, shift your weight
And spring forth,
Soaring high
Using past failure
As a springboard
For growth
And change
Gleaning lessons
They teach her
To lessen the fear-
Not listen to lies.
Come to realise
That what she does
Stems from what she decides.
Her voice does matter.
She is worth listening to
When she speaks she is heard
There is value to her words
Fear let me tell you once more
Listen to the sound
Of the springboard
My voice matters
I am worth listening to
When I speak I am heard
There is value to my words.
–
This poem was birthed from my experience in the Evolve during Ramadan course run by LaYinka Sanni, and having spent time in a community of women who shared their story and listened to mine. ❤
Fine Words Weave 
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