What feels like a lifetime ago, I was an undergraduate student at Kansas State University. I majored in Secondary Education, with an emphasis in English. I felt like I ate, slept, and breathed English some days. (Mostly the semester when I thought I could handle four English classes. Note, I do not recommend this, ever.) In all honesty, writing became, and has remained, second nature to me.
As I became a mom three times over, I realized that although I wasn’t sharing most of my writing in a public forum, I was writing for myself more often. And though not usually profound, the words were honest and raw. It was healing.
On a bad day, writing helps anchor me; on a good day, it feels like breathing.
Freewriting my way through motherhood has almost become a lifeblood for me. Sometimes I will scribble thoughts down for five minutes, mostly to get them out of my head. Sometimes a certain emotion is so strong that I jot down whatever comes so that I don’t lose it. Sometimes the papers get thrown in the wastebasket; other times, I save them to read later when I can process the emotions better.
If you aren’t familiar with freewriting, it essentially involves writing for a period of time without paying attention to any rules. I use it as a stream of consciousness a lot of times. But, you can also use a set topic or prompt. Recently, I have found myself drawn to images throughout our home that evoke feelings. For example, a number of months ago, I was cleaning up around our home when I almost stepped on a blueberry. I will leave the actual photo I snapped with my phone below, as well as the words that came with it for me.
I hope you will join me in finding creative ways to express yourself throughout your ordinary days. The ordinary ones really do contain so much.
One blueberry. I nearly squashed it as I walked into our dining room to scoot in chairs, spying it just in time to sidestep.
