Writing to know oneself

"It was only once we started writing that we started to know who we were."  

from the Wednesday Sisters, by Meg Waite Clayton.

In case you haven't read it, the Sisters is about 5 young mothers who begin meeting as a playgroup, but become a writer's group of sorts, and along the way the kind of life-long friends that no woman should live without.  For them writing is rife with conflict - they are not even sure who they are or are supposed to be, what they want from life, what they think about the enormous changes whirling all around them in late 1960s Palo Alto, California.  I'm reading it for my book club, always grateful for the challenging ways those amazing ladies stretch me.

I can relate to the Sisters' confusion!  I feel blessed my many sweet, generous, bold and funny women holding me up, expecting the best from me, always accepting when I show the worst of me.  I also struggle with just who exactly am I?  And what is my heart telling me that my mind is missing?

I am loving this blog because it's helping me know me better; every time I sit here with the blankness in front of me, I find myself spiraling inward, the only real journey worth taking..

Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depth of your heart; confess to yourself you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.

~~~~~

The only journey is the one within.
— Rainer Maria Rilke