I’m afraid to blog. I know, that’s sounds a bit absurd but I have been missing writing in this format for months and although I’ve told myself, “Wait until your sabbatical is officially over June 1st” and “Wait until the new blog is up at Comfortqueen.com so you don’t have to import any more text” I know that’s bull hockey.
I’m afraid to write. I’m afraid to create. I have never been so afraid to create, I don’t think, in my life. I’ve become the queen of busy work and I’m pissed at myself.
What am I afraid of?
Do I really care? Naming what I’m afraid of feels so boring and so besides the point. Because the point is: I need to create to live and life doesn’t feel good when I’m not. But one night, when I wasn’t looking, even in the midst of my retreat (more on that later but not this post or I will never push publish) my old nemesis “BE PRODUCTIVE” latched on to me and has been riding me raw ever since.
Developmental psychology posits that when we are destabilized, we regress to the level of development where we last felt stable. Because all development happens in waves, we surge forward or upward into more complex ways of being (think of learning a musical instrument) and then when life presses on us (in positive and negative ways), we fall back (you suddenly can’t remember that chord progression for the life of you). My stress has been overwhelming miraculously positive (I’ve fallen madly in love) . I’m feeling so much joy and letting go in my body and heart — you might think that would translate to wild abandon with pen and paper and ideas and you know what, you be wrong! Feeling so much joy has destabilized me and sent me back to a former, more stable, but much less satisfying way of being creative: be productive, get things done, worry about money, no time to play, etc.
So here I am, writing this to create something. I’ve also been art journaling and making weird messy paintings.
Off to exercise and then family night – yes, blended family dates are happening, he has a 11 year old, the sweetest coolest boy in the universe.
Ah… Breathe, Jen, it’s all going to be okay.
22 responses so far ↓
1 Rebecca May 10, 2008
Ah, but the blog is the *old* you – you, in the course of your sabbatical year, have moved on to a new you. And you haven’t blogged (communicated/recorded) the process from there to here – which makes it really hard to sit down and write (catch up) now. To go from the grief and release of one relationship to the thrill and acceptance of a new relationship – that’s a big shift. How do you communicate as this new you? Is what you have to give the same, or not? Talk about scary.
But I’m really glad to *hear* from you after so long, to see you growing and happy. You’re right – just breathe. Best wishes..
2 CirceNona May 10, 2008
Wow! Just today I was thinking about how much I missed hearing from you, in your blog, on the old Inner Organizer calls etc. I kept thinking, Jen better get back to us all soon! Now lo and behold, Yay!!! You’re back!
Congratulations on your new found love, it’s always such a sweet delight! Also a very good excuse to not blog
I also completely understand life pressing in on you, and that it comes in waves. I’ve been having problems putting pen to paper and fingers to the keyboard , like I am stuck in a place where I move neither forward or back. I think it’s a limbo state, like life is on hold until my husband returns again from Iraq. Yet I also know that I can’t stay inert for another seven months. To use a Hawaii metaphor, maybe I need to learn to ride the waves!
You’ve been much missed and I’m glad you’re back,
Diedra
3 Barbara May 11, 2008
Hooray Jenifer – you are so creative.
4 toni May 11, 2008
Do not be afraid. Everything is right (write?) on schedule. It will all come together as it should.
You have been such an inspiration to me so many times, so please don’t stop.
hugs,
toni
5 Jodie May 11, 2008
oh, you are so right on that ebb and flow….i relate to that up and down tide and also find that when i am easily distractible it leaves me, at some point, feeling completely unaccomplished, thus thrusting me right back into where my creation once began: in a state of total confusion and newfound questions floating around me. what a wonderful time to begin blogging again! As usual, thank you for sharing.
6 Jodie May 11, 2008
yes, the ebb and flow…i am more familiar with it than i care to think about…but it’s that very tide that thrusts us right back into where we usually began…i find that after i have become burnt out or “given birth” to enough for a bit, or even when i feel overwhelemed or pressured, i tend to become easily distracted….then i end up right back where i began: in raw creation. thinking about new questions, thoughts and ideas, not that different from before, but yet entirely…..and thus begins a new cycle. it’s the perfect time for you to jump back in…thanks for sharing. it helps us all stay “in the flow” as well….
7 Lauren May 11, 2008
Dear Jennifer… I, too, have been wondering about you and how you are doing on your journey. And yet, I think it may interesting for you to consider, as you dip your toe back into creative waters (you’re not at the same point along the river as you were before, which can be understandably disconcerting)- what does it mean to you to blog? Perhaps there is a bit of a pressure to keep us all up-to-date on your process, but maybe this re-entry into creativity is a time to only do what feels utterly real and authentic to you at any given moment. You don’t owe us anything… just know that if you WANT to share, we are here, we support you and love you without condition!
Love,
Lauren Miranda
8 Jennifer Louden May 11, 2008
Wow, thanks for all the kind encouragement, it is helping the ice water in my bowels become a tad, well, warmer?
I really am on the edge here and as my friend Mark Silver said the other day, when we’ve accomplished something, we want to own it, hold on to it, possess it but it’s like having your hand stuck in the cookie jar and not being able to get it out because you won’t let go of the cookie you’re holding.
I have let go and I’m between that and what may come and there while i want to comfort myself with “The best is yet to be” I really don’t know what is to be.
Breathe~
9 Vicky White May 11, 2008
Ahh, it seems so many people are going through transitions right now and are in the midst of reinventing themselves. And being between the worlds is not comfortable – we long to know what’s next so we can get on with it. And our monkey minds have a field day with all this too.
Sounds like you’re in the perfect place Jen, being present with the wonders in your world and while you’re doing that, know that the ‘next’ is on its way.
I know this place and I wish you lots of tender caring of yourself and nurturning what brings you most joy – sounds like you’re doing a great job of that. Uncomfortable though it is, it’s also a fertile time – a great opportunity to be in this unknown/all is possible space of nothingness and how exciting to see what emerges.
Love, Vicky White
10 Anonymous May 11, 2008
Jen,
I’m so glad you’re afraid. If you weren’t afraid then what would you learn or we learn? You see it is because of your willingness to be afraid, to be vulnerable on this page again and again that you have offered us a place to be vulnerable as well. Your talking about your “afraids” makes us understand our own “afraids” more clearly and with fewer self lashings than we would normally give ourselves.
When I read this entry about your falling in love, I wanted to be happy, but part of me–the part of me that is not completely divorced yet, the part of me that doesn’t know if I will find love again ever in my whole life so help me God, the part of me that is afraid I won’t find love again because I’m not lovable or haven’t learned to fully love myself (and isn’t that a prerequisite to true love), doesn’t want someone else to have what I’m afraid I can’t get.
So you see it is through your saying you’re afraid to blog, I’m able to say I’m afraid I won’t be loved again and that part of me doesn’t want someone else to have that until I have it. And I know that is selfish and irrational, but hey, if I send love to that part of myself, I’m amazed how quickly that feeling ebbs into a joy for the love you’ve found and the love I will find and the love others have found or will find. It is only in the saying of it and in the honoring that part of myself that the fear in me diminishes.
And I think I get what you’re saying about falling back into the predictable when we aren’t sure where we’re headed. It’s ironic, actually, I just did an angel reading for a sweet man and his angels gave him a message about using busy and productive almost like a pacifier to calm those “I’m afraid of where I’m going” fears. The self says, “Look what I just went through. What if I fall in love and the same thing happens?”
“Maybe if I step back into production mode, I won’t have to face the afraids.”
And this is what you said:
“What am I afraid of?
Do I really care? Naming what I’m afraid of feels so boring and so besides the point. Because the point is: I need to create to live and life doesn’t feel good when I’m not. But one night, when I wasn’t looking, even in the midst of my retreat (more on that later but not this post or I will never push publish) my old nemesis “BE PRODUCTIVE” latched on to me and has been riding me raw ever since.”
But the point in being afraid is in the naming of it. And sometimes when we write that it’s “beside the point,” we really mean that it IS the point exacty. I could be wrong. I’m just positing here.
Sometimes when I’m afraid of something like blogging or writing or never knowing true love, I’ll do what I call the “follow the thread of the fear” exercise. I’ll try it here with my fear of not knowing true love again as an example.
It starts with an “if” statement: “If I never find true love again, then I’ll know I’m on the ‘put out to pasture list’ just like I thought. If I’m on the put out to pasture list, then I’ll be just like my grandmother whose husband died when my dad was two and she never remarried. She never drove. She sold Avon door to door and lived alone for the rest of her 83 years. If I’m like my grandmother and live alone the rest of my life, then I’ll wonder what life is about and if there is a God because God made me and made me passionate didn’t he and what is the cruel joke if I live alone until 83 and the core of who I am feeds on passion? That’s not funny at all. And if the core of who I am feeds on passion and I am never able to know passion again then I might as well give up now because life becomes pointless and optionless. And if life becomes pointless and optionless, what am I supposed to do tomorrow morning when I wake up at 6:30 a.m. to go to an English Dept. Workshop on Ranking and Evaluating when I feel optionless and pointless then? And if I feel optionless and pointless tomorrow morning before my English Dept. workshop then maybe I’ve always been optionless and pointless but just wouldn’t admit it to myself. And if I admit to myself that I am, in fact, optionless and pointless, then how can I justify my life here on earth other than saying I’m a being of love. And if I can admit I’m a being of love is that enough for me to give up my fear of never finding true love again?
Anyway, you see how writing about the fear this way will take you back to the base fear that is causing the surface fear and sometimes help you see your way out of it.
When the angels gave the message for the sweet man I mentioned, they spoke to how the reading I was supposed to do for him kept being delayed due to various reasons. Even when I was in the midst of the reading itself, I experienced interruptions. This is what the angels said about how we use delays or “busyness” as a way sideswiping issues about receving and moving on.
The angels told this gentleman: “Think about the ‘busyness’ of your being or as they say, the ‘business’ of your being. They want you to consider the business of your being. Are there times when you may try to do too much and scatter energies, thus ‘delaying’ desired outcomes? They say the busyness you experience may be a way you subconsciously keep yourself from your heart’s desires.”
We all can make our lives go in a furious pace as a method of not concentrating on our desired outcome—be that due to fear of failure or success or whatever. This is their message: “Do not be deterred. Do not charge yourself with so much activity that you have less time to focus on your deepest longings.”
Falling back into a cycle of productivity might be a way we won’t have to face the fears involved in loving again, in creating again, in writing again. If we learn to love the part of us that wants to cycle into active mode, then we are closer to finding the way out of the business of our being and into the truest part of our self.
Thank you for being afraid. It helped me.
Love,
Karen
11 bettina Desrochers May 11, 2008
Hey Jen thanks. Man can i hear you on this one.I can not paint i can not write, heck i can not figure out where i am headed and today,after spending the day with my mom and my youngest daughter I have decided SOMETHING might be better then nothing. I need a kich in the pants..i think i may totally be done with where I have been but can not find the door to where I am going,
Glad to hear I am not alone here.
Be well,
Bettina
12 Irene May 12, 2008
what if you simply lived your today? You don’t owe us or anyone. Love you.
13 Tuxlux May 12, 2008
Tell the truth and shame the devil.
Go girl. Fly easy. Float. You’ve named your devil. (the wicked to-do ta-da syndrome) Now paint his portrait and laugh when he runs away.
Wish you lived closer, I’d have you over for a play day in my new art studio. We could make weird messy pictures together.
Hugs! Vixx
14 Jennifer Louden May 13, 2008
Oh Karen, I love that my fear helped you – that helped me! I also loved this piece you related,”They say the busyness you experience may be a way you subconsciously keep yourself from your heart’s desires.” I don’t know if that’s what I do to myself but I do know that busyness keeps me from my creative truth. And perhaps I will have this tattooed on my ass and look at in the mirror every morning: “Do not be deterred. Do not charge yourself with so much activity that you have less time to focus on your deepest longings.” Ain’t that the holy livin’ truth.
Vixx, new art studio – I love it! Send a picture!
Bettina, I want to write and paint as a way to show us how to find our way to full engagement in life… or at least that’s what is coming through today… We need help engaging, don’t we!
Lauren and Irene, I don’t ever write anything because I think I owe it to you — that would make me feel far too well, important or something odd like that — I write to know what I feel and think and to hear your smart voices in my head… thanks for the permission slip though, feels very nice!
15 Rebecca May 18, 2008
Jennifer I came across this paragraph in an art book that I am currently working with and I thought of you so here it is:
“Thomas Merton – ….when we succumb to busyness and overwork, we actually give birth to a subtle form of violence that destroys our own inner capacity for peace and the fruitfulness of our own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom that makes work fruitful.”
16 Gemma May 19, 2008
My journey is eerily similar to yours right now. A major relationship died in the recent past, and I have been in a fallow time. Now, suddenly, I’m madly in love, too, with a man I have dated twice before without really connecting, though we keep getting drawn back to each other. But now….WOW. For the first time I am not placing expectations on the outcome of the relationship, not willing it to look a particular way or come to a particular form of fruition. Instead, I am just living and loving in the present moment as fully as I can, and soaking up the love that is finally here for me, that I have been praying for all my life. Maybe I wasn’t available to *it* before? I will see where it takes us. I think you’re onto something, that it is the expectations and requirements that kill a living bond. Simply living the bond moment by moment, day by day, allows it the space it needs to be whatever it needs to be.
I’m curious how both our journeys will develop, but not as curious as I used to be about the future. All we have is the eternal now.
Love to you and yours!
17 Karen Stewart Shelnutt May 20, 2008
I was just stopping by to see what folks were saying and I read Gemma’s comments. Gemma, I must say thank you to you today for your words, and thanks to Jennifer for this place to put your words, and thanks to the web universe that connects to wonderful souls we may never meet face to face but know heart to heart through sharing of story. What greater gift can we give each other than story?
I like to think that what you said about trying to force your relationship on the earlier go rounds was written just to me. I like to think everything is written to me, for me, or by me.
From my deepest soul place, your words exquisitely said what my heart was pondering in this very moment.
I was trying to put all the ingredients for love in the mixing bowl, then stirring it at warp speed, then not even taking the time too cook the damn thing, but just emptying the batter straight up into my mouth or pouring it over my head–love batter–as if that is the way love works.
It is corny but love does have it’s own time and temperature and being. I pray yours cooks just the way you want it to.
Thank you for saying it so perfectly on a day I so needed to hear it so badly.
Love,
Karen
18 Gemma May 21, 2008
Karen, you’re so welcome. Blessings.
19 Lisa May 22, 2008
Welcome Back, Jen!
I just finished reading your latest newsletter and then came over here to your blog and was happy to see a new post and read your words on love, art and angst. You continue to inspire us to be real. Just look at all these women who’ve already written and shared some yummygoodness! It’s wonderful to hear you’ve fallen…mmmmadly in love is a beautiful thing. (:
In the spirit of asking ourselves good questions when we’re stuck, I wanted to share a quote with you that I just read this morning…
“And what is the price of my Divine Instruction? What could I ask of you?”
~Hafiz, ‘I Heard God Laughing’
I send you much love & laughter!
Lisa
20 Tara Jun 4, 2008
Hey Jen,
I was so happy to hear that you missed blogging! I’ve missed reading about your creative adventures and trials so much. I too go a long time between posts, and I try not to care too much because at this point in my life it’s more for me and my own writing practice than any reader. But today I quadrupled my readership for some crazy reason…:) Thanks for the mention in your newsletter. I often wonder where that CQ book has traveled…. I look forward to reading more about your new life!
Cheers,
Tara
21 Wendy Strader Jun 8, 2008
I know EXACTLY how you were/are feeling. It is a place that I stand in myself. And for that same reason, I started a blog. Mine was too join creative challenge sites so that i would have a nudge at my creativity. But there seems to be so much standing in my way of doing just that. Me.
Like so many other people, I am again starting over. In the past year I have lost my father, lost a realationship of 10 years, had my daughter, her husband, and grandson move in with me, had a second grandbaby join the family, watched my daughters was-band walk away from the 3 of them, started a new job, new relationship, and had to move my daughter and grandbabies to my other daughters’ home because I couldn’t support all of us.
I am starting over, I nearly lost everything before I asked for help. And now, I don’t know what to do now.
Slowly but surely, I am reclaiming my life. I am taking one shaky step at a time.
Jennifer, I am reading Comfort Queen for the second time, as one of the ways I am reclaiming my life. Your words of wisdom have touched my heart again. I am honored to shared this path of renewal with you.
Thank you for your courage and willingness to share the journey.
Wendy
22 Jennifer Boire Jun 20, 2008
Dear Jennifer,
Am glad to come across your blog (while scrolling through Kripalu’s offerings); was at Kripalu in April & bought your Women’s Retreat Book, and organized my first mini-retreat. Just wanted to tell you that my week at Taos 2 years ago, I didn’t know where I was headed or which project would call to me. So I started a blog, and now have 3! I have a women’s circle that supports me (some came to my retreat); and have stopped thinking of myself solely as a “poet” or “mother”, two things I’m grieving and letting go (teens don’t want smothering). I am definitely on a quest, hence the blog title. And find it ironic that 2 years after I spent a week with you and Suzanne, I ran across your book and it was perfect, exactly what I needed.
Hope you’ll keep blogging, in spite of the fear; your honest expression encourages me to keep coming back to what my heart desires to do and say. I want to get out and work with women, too, and get out of my hermit writer mode into sharing with other women mode. Creating mini-retreats with others incorporates play, artwork, a bit of theatre, dance, spontaneity, rest, all those things we need in mid-life to reinvent ourselves. Have also ordered Carla’s candles to give to my circle of women this past Thursday at our pot-luck, so the spirit of Taos is alive and well.
love to you, in your giddy excited new love time,
jenn