You hold their stories. Their hopes. Their pain.
You are steeped in words all day. Theirs may come out in torrents, but, at least in session, yours flow in a carefully tended stream.
You are there to support everyone who steps into your office or books an online session. Through your thoughtful presence, you provide a rock, a safe harbor, a nurturing place to land. You are that stronghold of safety and acceptance.
Yes, you hold all the feelings with your welcoming smile and your empathetic gaze, but you’re more than the figure in the chair… You are more than a static keeper of stories who listens and dispenses wisdom, and returns to sit and do it all again tomorrow.
You are a fully embodied creative being who has your own stories, your own vast life that comes before and after and beyond the practice of holding and healing others’ stories.
You are a port in the storm for so many, but within you, there are seas that crash against your own history. There are eddies of pain. There are waves of passion. There are rocky shores that offer no comfort. There are sweet beaches where you know you can rest from time to time.
Within you, there are journeys enjoyed, endured, and abandoned. There are voyages on the horizon and voyages relegated to the wishful “someday” dreams.
There are riptides of words that swirl around your ankles and pull against your hips. And, there are periods when the tide is out and you walk along the empty stretch of sand, wondering if you’ll ever be inspired by your own ideas again.
A collection of truths known to writers, healers, and beachcombers
When you walk the beach, you fill your pockets with pretty shells and fragments of driftwood and slivers of glass polished into roundness. There’s incomparable beauty in these random found objects.
Here’s a collection of thoughts that may seem just as random but which I believe will reveal some beautiful truths...
- The storms of life will change you and force you to hide within yourself, just as hurricanes change the beach and drive everyone indoors to watch the salt and the rain lash against the windows. You won’t know who you’ll be on the other side and you may not recognize the beach you once played on, but you know the story isn’t over yet and you will go out to explore once again.
- When the tide spools out and you need to walk a mile just to have a swim, it’s easy to feel disappointed. You’re trapped on vast expanse of sand when you were longing to close your eyes to the sound of crashing surf. In truth, those tidal flats are always teeming with life. The beautiful, the frightening, the icky, and the awesome all come out to play when you gaze into those pools and follow the ripples of sand.
- Those tides will come in again as sure as the sun will set in the west as the full moon rises in the east. Your stories and inspiration are as unpredictable as the ocean weather and yet, at the same time, they as reliable as the tides.
Come sail the sea of story with us?
It’s the middle of February and I’m hundreds of miles from the Cape Cod waves that cradled me from the day I was born. I carry that ocean with me everywhere, as surely as I carry my stories. And, as you see, the element of water helps me find my way and helps me express my message.
Today in the Sovereign Writers Circle, members will gather for our weekly writing practice. One of the two prompts is going to be an invitation to write into whatever element is asking for your attention.
I'm going to a pose a question that goes something like this: Earth, Air, Fire, Water… which one wants to be your creative ally today?
I invite you to write into that prompt yourself, and also consider joining the Sovereign Writers Circle where you can join with colleagues who are also writing their way through their professional messages and their personal stories. Together, we’re learning to ride the swells of our creativity and craft our visions into sentences and paragraphs that carry us home.
We welcome new members at the start of each month. Will you write with us?