“You’re the only one who gets to feel what your body feels". The truth and goodness of this statement resonated differently with me today, for some reason. This idea used to make me feel so isolated, so sad and lonely and just a couple days ago it flipped on me—holy buckets—that’s incredible! What a wonderful gift that we all experience differently and can make choices based on those feelings. They’re cause for so many of the wonders in our life and also much of the heartbreak. But to have the freedom, the authority, to actually choose?! To freely live—that’s incredible.

These past couple months I channeled so much of my energy and creativity into my book—vowing to not create or focus on anything new until it was finished. But instead of completing my book in record time, I grew so stagnant. For months I did not write a word. I did not splatter my fingers with paint nor ink the sides of my hand in pen. Instead of it becoming a source of power—to have less distractions—it actually became a source of fear and neutrality. I kept putting certain timelines on it, which naturally pass like the wind, to which I never grew disappointed by, until these past couple months when I opened my book and the last edit had been in the previous year. It all felt so stale to me. As though I just silenced so much of the beauty and strength and heartbreak and confusion within me. I didn’t let it have a voice in any form, so it’s just grown, not evaporated, but sprouted out of my ears, begging to splatter itself on a page, a screen, a canvas, anything. Just asking for the bare minimum of a safe space to express. So, I’m not going to put my creative outlets on hold, nor will I filter them, limit them, or silence them. Expressing is so, so important, and yes, yes, I want to finish my book, but that should not come at the cost of silencing other parts of me, and nor should it for you :)