I recently read a story about a series of journals a mother left her daughter, all of which were blank. The book, which is titled When Women Were Birds by Terry Tempest Williams, is a reconciliation of this experience and her mother’s death, along with an exploration of what it means to have a voice, what suppresses it, and what's left in the wake of its void.
About halfway through, I closed the book and felt intense gratitude for the dozens, maybe hundreds – I've never counted – of notebooks that I've filled over the last 30 plus years in a way I never appreciated before. I've always had the impulse to write, but never paused to consider why.
And in that moment, I realized it didn't matter what happened to those notebooks. It was the act of writing, the process, the practice, the ritual of picking up a pen and expressing my unique view, if only to myself. It has led me on a well-documented path of self-discovery and growth.
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