I have been stalled in my formal writing.

I write furiously in my journal. Producing pages of nonsensical dialogues with my many selves and internal voices. I write out my dreams in painstaking detail. Pouring over them, trying to unravel and unwind the messages my unconscious Soul is communicating with me.

I write out conversations I wish I’d had or feel like I need to have, but also know to say the things I wish to say would not be kind or compassionate or true, in the long run. I write letters I’ll never send. I write poems no one will ever see. I write from altar egos trying on what it would feel like to be completely different than I am.

I write statements in the margins of books I’m reading, on random scraps of paper I find around the house, in the notes app of my phone, of potential topics I would like to think and write about more deeply. I have a notes folder called “inspiration” with close to a thousand half-started articles and essays and incomplete thoughts.

It’s all felt dense; heavy, lately. There is never a time when my mind is quiet enough to focus, always thinking of who needs a dentist appointment, what to cook for dinner and playing mental Tetris with my schedule so I can squeeze in a walk or workout.

When I do get a moment to write with a seemingly solid a thread to follow, I only find another knot. Like a pile of tangled gold chain necklaces. It feels impossible. So all my writing has stayed spread out, like a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle. I’ll come back to it later.

There are times in my life when writing has felt easy. I have so many things to say and I just have to let my fingers fly around the keys and something relatively cohesive spills out.

Sometimes it feels like God is just whooshing through me and I just have to get out of the way. Those are the days for which the slogging becomes worthwhile.

When I’m writing a lot, I am in the habit of translating my thoughts and feelings to words. Everything worth doing in this life, takes practice. Writing is no different. Expression is no different. We have to actually express imperfectly; messily, before we can express in a way that fully lands for ourselves and for others.

I am not a great writer by any accounts. But, I have indeed put many, many hours into the practice. I have been writing here on Substack since 2021. And I started with a 100 days of writing practice, which I completed. I think there are over 200 articles on this account. I don’t write weekly, but I’ve written one or two articles a month since beginning, sometimes more.

Before Substack, I wrote on Facebook, instagram, blogs, newsletters, for years. I have journaled since I was 10. As I think about the sheer amount of writing I’ve done, I’m realizing I should probably be a better writer than I am.

Writing is medicine for me. When I first started this Substack it was called “Medicine Writing.” I was a brand new mother of two really needing a creative outlet. Those first 100 days of writing were me committing to a practice of spending time with myself each day.

I will not forget the moment I sat down to write my first Substack article. It was early morning, the sun was rising, breaking through the mist that had settled around the river below my home. My babies and husband were still sleeping and I had a hot cup of cacao steaming next to me and my computer open to a blank page. I felt like I could take a deep breath for the first time in a long time.

There is something very healing about allowing other people to see you in your process. The perceived accountability of other people watching you show up for what you’ve committed to can be the thing that keeps you going when you’d rather not push through the humps of resistance.

I don’t feel any external pressure to write publicly at the moment. I am having a very family-oriented summer and enjoying the slower pace immensely.

However, I am very familiar with the feeling of what I will call: expression-constipation. It feels a lot like a head too full of ideas. It feels like you’ve eaten too much dinner and it hasn’t quite started leaving your stomach. It’s uncomfortable. It makes you tired and complacent, sleepy and forgetful. It makes you apathetic and unenthusiastic. Sometimes you can feel very “busy,” but you just can’t seem to focus on one thing.

When you do have something you want to say or express, this overfull fogginess makes the resistance to saying it have a little more weight and feel more tempting. Whereas, when you’re in the practice of expressing, that resistance will burn off quickly.

There is so much of this apathy in the world. So much non-committal, draggy, tired, stuck energy towards our own inevitable and necessary regeneration. We are alchemical creatures. We are here to transform, shift, learn, grow, and flow, not stagnate and idle.

I read a quote the other day from Joanna Macy, “Apathy is the refusal to suffer.”

Reading this was like finding a key piece of the jigsaw puzzle under the coffee table. So much could finally fit together.

This swelling discomfort I’ve been experiencing is the exact thing I need to move towards. As I refuse to feel it, experience it, allow it, I am ‘refusing to suffer’. I am refusing to allow the alchemical, creative process to happen. I am postponing the inevitable ever-changing reality of my humanity.

This is not a small concept. Nor is it easy to embody or take in. But it is relatively simple. I am reminded of another anchoring statement I have used throughout the years, “Whatever is arising….love that.”

Writing is one of the ways I turn towards my own suffering and feel it. It is the way I acknowledge and make sense of my own jumbled thoughts. It is the way I work out what is me and what isn’t me.

Writing is one of the ways I stay fully alive, awake to the burning transmutation happening within me and without me at all times. It keeps me as conscious as I can be of the pain and joy of this Life.

Thank you for being a witness to my process and writing.

My prayer is that you find something in these writings that sparks this aliveness within you.

May we all be a little more willing to feel what we have been refusing to, so that we may awaken from our slumber and turn our open heart towards the world again.

Get full access to ReMothering at clarabelize.substack.com/subscribe