12/13/20
Honestly, it feels a little bit like I’ve been in a cave for a while, and I’m finally stepping out into the sunlight. It’s bright, my eyes are all squinted, and I’m pretty uncomfortable. Exposed. At least a bit confused.
I’ll try to give you some context. At the risk of sounding like a cliché, I’ll say that I started writing – like for real – because I had to. Poet Rudy Francisco describes, “I write best when I’m either falling in love or falling apart.”
Well, I fell in love, and then I fell apart.
Everything began to feel too big. Too heavy. And on this clunky, burdened journey, I realized that I wasn’t even sure what I was carrying. Thoughts and emotions sat in my gut and in my words, but I was entirely unfamiliar with their sensations, with their triggers. They didn’t have shapes, and sometimes, they didn’t have names.
I started writing because it helped me see all of these things, and so much more, outside of myself. It helped me name loneliness and excavate despair and lean into laughter. It unburdened me, at least for a moment. And I haven’t stopped – in fact, as a new therapist, writing has only become more important for me. Now I have to process not only my own thoughts and emotions but also those of dozens of other people. I never expected anything that I wrote to exist anywhere except in the journals on my bedside table in the safe cave of my bedroom, but here we are.
I’m finding that there’s falling in love, there’s falling apart, and there’s plenty of space in-between.
So here’s to existing together in a moment, unburdened. Lighter. Here’s to stepping out of the cave and into a version of ourselves with freckles on our skin and tan lines on our shoulders.
Lightly,
Leah
Leah Kepley, M.Ed. 