“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.“
~ Sylvia Plath
“The uniqueness that allows us to be creative is also the place where we stand absolutely alone and are, therefore, most vulnerable“.
~Martha Beck
“A novel is often a longer process in handling self-doubt. “
~ Robert Sheckley
Confession: this has been a hard week for me. And it feels really good to admit it.
This morning I had a coaching call with one of my yogini clients. I’m guiding her through a big creative professional project that she’s in the thick of this summer. During our talk today she revealed that she’s welling up with self doubt: “Who am I to do this?”, “I’m not good enough,” “No one’s going to like it”…and on and on the tape plays.
Sound familiar?
Yeah, I thought so. It does to me, too.
As she shared with me her vulnerabilities, I couldn’t help but smile. Not because I want her to suffer, but because I have been going through the very same things this week–and I told her so.
She felt so relieved, and suprised–saying she always got the impression that I had a handle on it all. Wrong!
Since I was so shocked that she was shocked, I thought it would serve all of us if I let you in on what’s true for me right now, which is that I’m coming up against some very old, limiting beliefs about myself and what I’m capable of. In many ways they’re surfacing stronger than ever before. Why? Because writing this book and preparing for its aftermath stand as the biggest things I’ve ever done to date.
This is something I’ve wanted to do my whole life, and now I’m doing it. And that’s really terrifying.
I think the reason why I’m so rattled this week is because I just finished the rough draft of my manuscript. I had planned to celebrate with a margarita, which I still haven’t done yet (I’ll make sure to when I’m on vacation with my family next week, I promise); but instead I have felt utterly paralyzed and overwhelmed as I dive into the editing phase.
With hundreds of pages of content and tens of thousands of words to now sculpt and refine, it all feels like a big mess. Am I really saying what I want to say? Does this just totally suck? What if it never comes out the way that I want it to? Is this just totally fake and cheesy? Is it real at all?
With very little feedback on it right now, I’m grappling through the dark of this particular stage of the writing journey. It’s very lonely and raw in many ways.
Add to that the rest of life: shopping for groceries, answering e-mails, staying on top of my other projects, and walking my talk by not abandoning my self-care.
But much bigger than the particulars, though, is the realization: I’m afraid to be truly seen. Truly heard. I’m afraid that people won’t like me. I’m the first woman in my family to have ever done such a thing. This is the little girl in my for whom it wasn’t OK to shine. For whom it was much safer to hide and stay small and quiet.
So I’m holding this sweet little girl and loving her. Feeling my fear and knowing that there’s more. Remembering that night’s always darkest before the dawn. Then, I listen to that wise, wise woman in my soul. The woman who lives inside a larger circle of female writers and artists who have spent countless hours laboring over their visions and lived through the same loneliness, vulnerability, and uncertainty that that entails….and who eventually emerged brighter, bolder, and freer as a result. Who came out on the other side to see that their labor of love took on a life of it’s own.
So from the belly of this messy chaos of creativity, I pray to love my doubts ferociously. To endure their scorch and refuse to turn back. To forever be a woman who demands to be heard and not just seen. Even if it means that some people won’t like what I have to say or how I say it. And to, oh great goddess, please remember to laugh at myself in the process.
(photo credit: Maureen_F.)
