My writing process is a prayer.
My writing process is a prayer. My writing process is for every woman, including myself.
It’s for every woman who has ever doubted herself or thought herself to be too much or not enough. I write for every woman who has thought herself ugly — too fat, curvy, skinny, pale, dark, blemished, or asymmetrical. I write for every woman who has ever concealed her identity, her voice, or her radiantly, beautiful essence. I write for every woman trying to find HER way. I write for every woman who is exhausted from trying to be everything except the truth of her shapeshifting, messy, raw, beautiful self.
I write to wake the beautiful women of the world up to their power. And I write for me as much as anybody else.
I’ve tried to write for SEO, I’ve tried to write for word count, I’ve tried to map out quarterly topics for my biweekly love notes to align within a business plan or an event being launched, but in the spirit of what writing means to me — that doesn’t work. The divine does not deliver in such a way. This type of regiment squanders the magic of creativity and passion. It takes the heart out of it. I’ve surrendered to offering up the intention to the stars, and the overarching theme to the divine, and let it unravel as it will. Sometimes what comes through is anticipated, and sometimes it’s far from it. I’ve had to find a balance of discipline, structure, and divinely feminine, intuitive surrender when it comes to the practice of writing — because it is a practice, and there is a discipline in all practices. I write more days than not, even if I don’t always want to, but it’s always worth it. Not because of what’s produced but because often, the process is more important than the final compilation of words.
In my most spacious moments of writing, I treat it like a ceremony burning the sweet scents of palo santo, copal, or cedar, with smoke filling the air. I turn on some sort of soul-provoking music, dance, and drop within to listen. I activate all the senses with a divine cup of coconut milk-filled coffee, flower essences, essential oils, and sound. There’s an opening that happens for me when I drop into a creative space within my physicality, it somehow opens a creative space within my being where the words can then flow. It turns off the critical part of my brain that wants to edit and control. Sometimes I jot notes while circulating the floor, and sometimes I’m overtaken by words before the music stops. Sometimes the insight or the vision of the message comes swiftly, and sometimes it takes time — more time than I’d like, leaving me more confused than I began only to clarify itself in the days to come.
Sometimes I don’t like what comes through, and sometimes I get high off of it. Sometimes I have to swallow my pride and judgment and hit submit knowing that consistency is more important than perfection.
Sometimes repetition happens over weeks, and I want to resist repeating myself but a process is happening and I have to let it be. Sometimes I hate when what comes through seems to be stuck in a current of shadow work and that mucky process of clearing the past and our victimized perspective of the world, but it’s necessary. Just as necessary as it is to get swallowed by the luscious, sensual, joy when it’s there. Sometimes I fear how my words will be received, but I can say, I don’t care near as much as I used to. Because even if for only a single person, those words are always a gift to somebody. Whether they read them today or someday far to come.
Sometimes I try and force a piece and in the end wished I would have just stopped and waited. Sometimes I edit and polish relentlessly, sometimes I assist and pull at the words arrival just enough, and sometimes they come through in nearly one clean sweep. Like labor, sometimes birth is fast and furious, graceful and profound, and sometimes it takes days, inching closer minute by minute, and hour by hour. Sometimes the words come so fast, I don't process what’s come until days, weeks, or even years later. And sometimes I've steeped in its medicine for a lifetime before the words or articulation will show itself. What I can say is that my wisest moments are usually surrendering — whether that means accepting what’s come, or that nothing has come at all. When you think you can wield something greater than you, it will never give away until you let go. You cannot force it and you cannot run, the process will be what it will be.
These days now as a mother, I write in the surprising moments when that sweet girl has fallen asleep and I’m able to slip away even though it stings to leave her. Or sometimes at night after she’s gone to bed I’ll stay up until she wakes wondering where I am, and I shut my computer even though it stings to stop. Now as a mother, the spaciousness for extravagance does not meet me in the same way it used to. But the foundation is already tended and I tap into it in more simple ways.
Sometimes I dance with her in my arms, sometimes I ponder while she’s asleep on my chest, and sometimes I take her on a walk and pop headphones in and listen to some sweet instrumental magic that has a way of unlocking a creative flood of universal insight. Sometimes I listen to a meditation in bed before falling asleep with some flowers under my tongue or carry my intention into a yoga practice (even if it lasts five minutes before she interrupts me), or an acupuncture session so the ideas can simmer and emerge by the time I find myself in a space to write in the days ahead. I’ll often voice memo notes via email to myself with thoughts I can revisit later so they aren't lost, and I often journal on the computer instead of in an actual journal because I can type faster and words don’t get left behind in the lag. This technological and simplified process is not as “sacred” as I’d fantasize it to be — but it’s real.
Motherhood is full-time, and so is living in this crazy world keeping up with our basic needs, and tending the magic so life stays juicy. I’d love to live in ceremony all the time, in the middle of the woods, but there’s a reality that encourages me to receive simplicity instead of clinging to the ideal of what I think the sacred should look like. Sometimes I feel like I should be writing a book and not a blog or emails, and that I should be sitting in a bay window somewhere far, far away instead of in the city. But that’s not where I am. I could say it’s not as sacred in defense of my self-consciousness of not being conscious enough, or I could be honest and say it feels just as sacred as it ever did.
Ultimately, what writing has taught me, what passion and creation have taught me, is that if I don’t show up with grounded love, and presence aware of this sacred space within me, even if it’s simply while I’m driving or brushing my teeth, the relationship dwindles and the words stop. No matter how simple my ritual may be, it’s just as sacred, and honestly more so than it ever has been — in the name of letting go.
This is something our passion I believe is begging for us to all understand. There is a creative fire within all of us that is asking to live freely, as imperfect and messy and simple as it may seem.
Writing for me is a prayer, it’s cathartic, and it’s where I discover parts of myself I never saw. It's where I heal things I haven't been able to grapple with and find beauty I was blind to. Writing is where I find power that lies within me waiting to be claimed. I believe writing can be this for everybody. When we free write, particularly in the privacy of our own journals where nobody else will ever dare see a word, we unlock a part of our psyche and gain deeper access to ourselves. All the parts and voices we may have unknowingly stuffed down, reveal themselves when they have a safe space to be. This is why writing is part of everything I offer — whether it’s just for you to read, or a push for you to write yourself. It’s easiest for me to communicate via writing, I can speak through the written word in a way I struggle to through my voice on the spot, and the best thing over these past few years has been claiming that.
I love writing. I love writing to you. I love writing for me. And I love hoping and dreaming that it genuinely touches you, and at times in the most profound of ways.
With love
Abby
