Courage

As usual something spooky and interesting happened as I picked up my name tag at Heart to Heart.  The minute you get to Heart to Heart, interesting things start happening.  There's great significance to signing in at the registration desk because that's when you get your "word" for the weekend.  This word represents something you already are and need to acknowledge or something you need to work on during the weekend.  You just randomly pick up a name tag (which are usually hand made and very special).  Name tags are face down so you can't see the word written on each one.  The one you pick up has your word for the weekend.  This year mine was "fearless." 

On Friday night each year there's a candlelight ceremony with everyone sitting in a circle and passing the light to each other's candle.  Each person states what they want to receive from the weekend as they light their candles.  Usually I just say what occurs to me in that moment.  After 15 years of attending this retreat, I thought, "you know, I might just decide ahead of time - after prayerful thought - what I really need from Heart to Heart." And what I decided I needed was "courage."  Courage to continue to write my memoir in spite of fear of putting myself out there. So my name tag said, "fearless."  Hmmmm.

Then Friday night and yesterday morning I attended OSU's Celebration of Books - a conference for writers and poets.  I was blown away - emotionally and mentally - and I will elaborate in a another post.  But what struck me was that every writer said that they had to gather up all the courage they could to write because you are exposing yourself to the world every time you put your writing out there into the world.  Hmmm.  Guess I'm not alone in writing with fear of letting anyone read my writing.