My writing focus this week has included prompts inspired by All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks and the “Inviting Optimism” section of Living The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. This post includes excerpts and quotations.
What I am processing, healing from and seeing with a new perspective, involves letting go of faulty hopes and habits steeped in faulty beliefs.
I spent a lot of my life trying to deny the bad things that had happened, trying to cling only to the memory of good and delicious moments in which I had known care.
bell hooks
The first set of prompts for “Inviting Optimism” included writing for guidance about self-forgiveness.
This resonated with me is a surprising way amidst feeling “stupid” for trusting someone who isn’t untrustworthy.
- I trusted someone I love but for whatever reason they continue to teach me they are not someone I can trust (to be forthcoming and faithful).
- That fact is about them, and doesn’t mean I lack intelligence.
- I “forgot” who they are during a time of need and vulnerability.
- I thought they were an ally, but I am learning the difference between an ally and a someone who just wants to stay in the loop of information.
- I believe people are truly doing the best they can in the moment.
- But that does not require me to be subjected to their choices.
In this season of my life, I’m choosing me, prioritizing people who prioritize our connection, and making intentional space for reciprocal relationships rooted in clarity and care.
Alex Elle
Sometimes (usually) we cannot predict the details of our relationship choices.
- Relationships we believe will be with us until “death do us part” can end suddenly without anything making sense as to why.
Sometimes (usually) the conversations we desire for some degree of closure or a basic understanding of what led to the end of the relationship never occur.
Sometimes (usually) all of our visual expressions and conversations and counseling leave us wondering when the pain to stop — or at least stop constantly pulsing.
💜 But, Braveheart, Life goes on. And it is absolutely vital to remember:
These details are merely Life. Part of the adventure of our one wild and precious life.
[If] one’s goal is self-recovery, to be well in one’s soul, honestly and realistically confronting lovelessness is part of the healing process.
bell hooks
- “Why should I know in advance,” he said, “where I am going? If I travel from New York to San Francisco by car, do I want to know that I will meet so-and-so in Topeka and we will do such-and-such? No! That is not life! It is not fun! Yes, I want to know I am going to San Francisco … and maybe that I will stop in St. Louis or Omaha. But I don’t want to know who I will meet or what I will do.” (from “Fellini’s Screenplay” by Steven Pressfield
- This prompt, via Stephanie Harrison, wisdom to consider as we our options.
- How does [thing, person, goal, place, situation, experience, relationship, job, role…] make me feel?
Life also includes unexpected joy and peace, profound healing and fulfillment, Braveheart. This is why a creative practice is so vital.
💜 This week’s writing sessions have reminded me why I journal. My journal-planning practice enables me to move through Life’s high/low adventures — and to chronicle all the goodness in-between.
[I] am grateful to have been given a definition of love that helped me face the places in my life where love was lacking. [To understand] love ‘as the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth’ [via The Road Less Traveled].
bell hooks
Creative scaffolding (designated time and sequence) enables me the comfort of a starting point and structure in this space I share my process and practice with you, dear Braveheart.
- My current writing goal: 150-ish (or less) words daily as free-writing, compiling notes from my self-directed studies and chronicling ideas from (and for) my creative work. 💖 Sometimes compiled here and published, sometimes not.
These compilations allow me to document, discern and ponder my living along amidst the ever-changing details of certainty, uncertainty and random challenges mingled with the details of daily minutia and my story-unfolding. 🔮
Until you value yourself, you won’t value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it.
M. Scott Peck
