SubscribeLong ago the word alone was treated as two words, all one. To be all one meant to be wholly one, to be in oneness, either essentially or temporarily. That is precisely the goal of solitude, to be all one.
-Clarissa Pinkola Estes
I took a break from writing in 2011. I did a fair amount of writing in 2010 and the early part of 2011, I liked how it felt, I got used to putting my words out there and having them be reasonably well-received, imperfect as they were. So after a handful of published pieces, some part of me figured I should probably stop while I was ahead, while everything felt golden and I felt a bit unstoppable. At the moment when I could have aimed for bigger things, I found I needed to go back to where my words didn’t matter so much—my own not-so-exciting, incoherent, unpublishable life—and do more work there.
Writing in public made me realize that I needed to go back to find out what I cared about. I thought I knew what I cared about, but it turns out life has a way of changing you, sometimes in rapid cycles. Dar Williams says it better in one of her most heart-breaking/healing songs: “Life gets into who you thought you’d be.” That’s the feeling. All I knew this past year was that I wanted to observe and participate in what was happening around me without needing to say something about it. A lot had happened and was happening still. For the first time in a long time I knew I was a part of it all whether or not I ever opened my mouth.