On Inspiration

...and the lack thereof

It’s been a minute since we’ve talked.

When we last visited via the blog, I was “learning to breathe again,” recovering from a seemingly endless six-week wait for news about a potentially life-threatening health scare for our family that turned out to be nothing.

I expected that wave of relief and gratitude to carry me through the rest of the summer and well into fall. (Read: I assumed things would automatically go back to the way they used to be; the way they were *supposed* to be; *the way I wanted them to be*).

That’s not what happened.

Other things swept in—all fraught with their own what-ifs, concerns (okay; fears), and massive levels of uncertainty—dominating my thoughts and disrupting the rhythms of my life.

Like writing.

When I most needed to be able to pour words onto the page—my go-to for processing things—I had none.

A quote posted by my granddaughter on one of her social media feeds captured perfectly how I felt in this (unexpected) second season of not knowing:

“I have done nothing all summer but wait for myself to be myself again…” artist Georgia O’Keeffe, in a letter to fellow artist Russell Vernon Hunter.

It seemed like I was just visiting my own life, looking in from the outside.

Which made me ask, “If I have no words—have nothing to say—am I a writer?”

So painful was the wondering and wandering—the gnawing confusion and uncertainty of it all—I put down my pen and retreated to my sewing machine.

I viewed this season without words as one of absence and lack. But my time in the Sacred Space of snip and stitch and press reframed that perception. This was a pause, not the end; a chance to reflect; to rest and restore; a time of reorienting and reshaping, much like the transformation that occurs when scraps of fabric are pieced together and become beautiful things.

I also realized my definition of inspiration was far too rigid and narrow. I’d spent most of the year looking—frantically—for the big “Aha!”. That “Eureka!” moment when everything falls perfectly into place.

It happens, and it’s fabulous when it does.

But that’s not the only way inspiration shows up.

Like the still, small voice of the Sacred, inspiration often arrives softly, quietly—almost incognito—in something as simple as the muted colors of a winter sky, in the aroma of freshly brewed coffee, a single line in a poem, in the gentle nudge to keep going—keep doing *something* creative even if it isn’t what you expected to be doing—when you were wondering if it mattered and thinking about quitting.

Am I a writer, even though it’s been more than 265 days since I posted a blog on my website and Substack?

Yes, I am.

Through a variety of seemingly simple things in the past few weeks, I’ve been nudged back to writing, but without any great expectations. I’m writing for fun, with no strings attached.

What I’m putting on the page may wind up getting posted as a blog, as this did, but maybe not. That contemporary mystery novel may get finished this year—and I’m working on it again—but it doesn’t have to be. I may be nudged to add to my manuscript of poems and prayers, but I haven’t been (yet) and I’m not going to obsess over not doing it right now.

How about you, Dear Reader? How and where are you right now?

Are you present, or “just visiting” your life?

What simple thing inspired you today? What are you being gently nudged to create? And what expectations might you need to leave behind?