This is radical acceptance.

I came across this quote by the British novelist A.S.Byatt recently. It is so honest and true, and it says what is so often unspoken. I haven't read anything by Byatt, but this quote makes me feel like I want to know her better: 

"I think of writing simply in terms of pleasure. It's the most important thing in my life, making things. Much as I love my husband and my children, I can love them only because I am the person who makes these things. I, who I am, is the person who has the project of making a thing. And because that person does that, all the time, that person is able to love all these people." 

For me, this quote gets to the heart of things, the heart of all conversations about the conflict women feel when they spend time nurturing their creativity when they are also wives and mothers. I am a wife, and I am not a mother, and I feel that this is the truth. 

Who is the person doing the loving if they are not also nurturing and affirming their own being? 

A quote by Nathaniel Branden

This morning, here's something by Nathaniel Branden on writing. It seems to talk about how to make something artful, so I think it goes beyond writing, into anything that we are trying to infuse with spirit, but yet want to keep empty enough so someone else can enter into it:

"If you want to obtain the strongest emotional response, then you write between the lines, never on the line; you write around the feeling, you don't spell it out explicitly. Because -- if you tell the reader everything, if you don't leave spaces for the mind to fill in, if you don't engage the consciousness by giving the reader something to do -- if, in effect, you try to do it all -- then you leave the reader passive, the consciousness is not engaged as it could be, and so the reader is not that involved emotionally."                                                       

Being an INFP writer

We all struggle with different parts of the writing process. As we write more and more, different tendencies within us stop us in our tracks. Sometimes, it feels like we are trying to move a mountain outside, when the real problem is the way we are relating to our work.

We have to deepen our understanding of the different needs that live inside us.

We have to approach these needs holistically, instead of trying to ram through a perceived block.

I have written before about clarifying my writing process here and here.

One more aspect of my struggle became clear to me as I read this article by Dr. A.J.Drenth that talks about  INFPs' (and INTPs') quest for convergence and certainty. For those of you who are not familiar with personality types and MBTI, this link might be helpful.

Essentially, what the article says is that there is an innate drive in all of us to reconcile our natural way of being in the world with the most undeveloped aspects of our personality. For an INFP like me, this means trying to reconcile my natural preference for engaging with the world (through the lens of my feelings) with a more objective world-view.

I can see this happening inside of me, this struggle to arrive at a concrete conclusion. But what this article says, and what can be so helpful for INFP writers, is that trying too hard to arrive at a final conclusion or identity might be premature for us. One of our natural preferences as INFPs is looking at the outside world and noticing infinite possibilities and patterns. This means that if we try to force a final conclusion, that conclusion is often brittle and changeable.

We are too aware of the infinite possibilities to arrive at the kind of surety that we sometimes see and envy in the people around us. By trying to force a conclusion, we are trying to act like these other people, people who are nothing like us.

One reason why we do this, of course, is because of the deep need inside us to integrate different aspects of our personality. But we stumble when we bypass the process required, and also bypass our natural openness in order to quickly resolve this tension that we feel inside. 

Another reason could be that we have faced uncertainties in our live that have left us scared and wanting to cling to some permanent answer. Our minds are trying to fast-track to an illusive place of certainty and stability.

It could just also be that we discount our natural preferences because they have some down-sides. We envy people who have firm opinions about how the world is because our own nature sees too many possibilities that can leave us feeling paralyzed. We could be going from one option to the other without really following through. 

So, we start feeling that the answer is to act like people who have strong judgments. But trying to do this too fast, too soon means that we fail to use our own strengths. We can only arrive at a stable opinion once we have experimented, asked questions, and meandered this way and that. This process asks us to take our time.

How does this understanding - that our natural strength lies in possibility, in asking questions - help us as INFP writers?

One way it can benefit us is that it makes us realize that we might have been wrongly assumed that the world needs us to provide conclusions in our writing. Because we believed this, we might have been trying to force answers. But what the world really needs from our writing is the willingness to go down the rabbit-hole, to be the explorer of nooks and crannies. We can provide the vision that expands and fortifies conclusions.

This is what Dr A.J. Drenth has to says about INFPs struggling with their own natures: "But these assumptions are merely projections of their own subjectivity. The truth is that the world needs them to ask probing questions, to poke holes in existing theories, and to provide creative or explorative “food for thought.”"

This is a common human problem. We all discount what comes to us most naturally, and try to move to the opposite extreme. INFPs who are spontaneously creative and bursting with ideas wish they could focus on only one idea like INJ personality types and build it into something towering over the course of a lifetime. On the other hand, INTJs and INFJs face their own struggle where they think that the world needs them to make art or combust into spontaneous self-expression, instead of providing the deep analysis that is their strength.

As an INFP who absolutely loves INFJ writers and philosophers, it's hard for me to understand how they could be blind to their own strengths. And yet, I discount the strengths of my own style - the pictures tumbling out of my head, the endless ideas I want to engage with.  

But just the awareness that our drive to integrate different parts of ourselves comes from somewhere deep inside can help us be more compassionate with our struggles. We start understanding what this tension is all about. We start channeling our strengths, instead of getting our foot caught up in the knots in our psyche. We can acknowledge that there is a push and a pull inside us, and that it can only really be resolved when we act authentically and struggle with the challenges that our gifts bring us.  

If you are an INFP writer, honor your creativity and value your style. Be who you are, and stay with the questions instead of forcing the answers. The world needs your unique expression, it needs you to keep asking so that the answers can crystallize in their own time.  

On being creative and cracking an egg

Here's an exercise to practice for breaking through resistance. Whenever I have done it, I have felt slightly heretical, as if I am doing something that I don't have permission for. It is from Eric Maisel's book Creativity for Life. All you need to do, before you start your creative work for the day -- your writing or painting or software designing -- is to crack an egg!

Just break it in a bowl, egg shells and all. Then, get up and go do your work.

Here's how Maisel describes this small act of power. "If you want to crack an egg because you are baking a cake, you whack it (carefully) on the side of your bowl, it breaks, and you drop the contents of the egg into the bowl full of flour. There's nothing simpler (though it takes a little skill to break the egg so that egg shells don't get into the batter). Your grandmother did it a million times; your young daughter can do it after a few minutes of false starts and small accidents. In the service of cooking, we are not reluctant to break that egg.

But if you are not baking a cake, an egg's shell feels remarkably formidable. There is something scary about cracking an egg for no good reason, something that makes us squeamish, something that feels like a violation of the egg. Trying to crack an egg for no good reason elicits the same sort of feeling that chalk scratching on a blackboard does. It is a physical reaction, rooted in some primitive fear and anxiety."

This feeling of resistance to actually begin is a part of the creative process, Maisel says. What can also be normal are the experiences where there is no hard shell to crack. This happens when we are really working on something. Everything becomes easy then, and we crack right through the beginnings of things.

But when we are stuck in an infinite loop -- feeling bad about not creating and yet not doing it -- cracking an egg can help us. "Experience the cracking of that egg as the cracking through of your resistance. Feel yourself exhale as you crack it, as if you had just survived something dangerous, then proceed directly to your creative work."    

What exactly is this resistance? What are we cracking through? Some of this resistance to beginning comes from our most primitive parts, where there is fear lurking in the shadows. Some of it is our rational mind telling us how difficult it will be to succeed. The dread we feel is these things and many other things besides.  

Try cracking an egg for a week and see what comes up for you. Does it feel like a subversive act? Does it make you feel powerful, as if you are naming resistance as a normal part of the creative process and using your will to crack through it? Do you feel like you don't have permission to act on your own behalf? Or do you, like me, sometimes feel you just can't waste an egg in the name of letting myself be more creative? If we can't even do this, how much permission do we then have to experiment, to be ourselves, to be an artiste?

Try cracking an egg, and observe how that makes you feel.  

A Quote from Jane Eyre

                  “I do not think, sir, you have any right to command me, merely because you are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world than I have; your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of your time and experience.”  

Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

                                                                                             
I read Jane Eyre as a teenager and couldn't quite pin-point all the things I loved about it. But loved it, I did. Maybe because, in part, it's a book about freedom -- about our right to feel our own feelings and to think our own thoughts. 

On Writing Better

As creative people, we struggle with doubts and misgivings on an almost daily basis. We are trying to do something that feels inherently risky to us, that feels like taking a leap of faith. At the same time, we are not really sure whether we'll ever be able to get beyond our current level of skill. Will we become as good as we imagine ourselves to be? Or will we fall short? That will surely hurt.

And so we cringe, trying to get out of this moment of not being quite there yet. Intellectually, we know that we need to keep working at it, honing our craft till our understanding seeps into our very bones. But right now, the vision of that glorious future seems far away, and we are wrestling with the mud, trying to pick diamonds.

But in this space with which we are uncomfortable, when we admit that we are not proficient yet, is also the challenge of learning how to become better. And that's half the fun of the journey. We can teach ourselves things we need to learn. We can figure things out for ourselves or find resources that can help us. Making ourselves, adding to who we are makes the struggle worthwhile.

How do we get better at writers? By asking questions, by practicing answers, by refining our process. Do we need to start reading aloud what we've written to figure out how our words will sound to someone else? Do we need to practice writing in scenes, instead of just narrating what's happened.

In Lee Gutkind's book on writing creative non-fiction, You Can't Make This Stuff Up, he talks about the process of editing. Since writing is mostly re-writing, this is important information to keep in mind. In the hundreds of writing workshops that Gutkind has been involved in, he has listened to people praise others by saying things like "That's a great image!" or "That's a wonderful metaphor!"

But Gutkind says that when we first hear something, we need to look at it as a whole. Feedback like this can be premature. "Editing takes place in several phases, but it almost never starts with the line of prose, the sentence, or word choice." So, we may write beautiful, lyrical sentences, but if the entire piece is not structured well, we won't be able to take the readers to a place where they can appreciate our particular talents.

"So consider the blueprint, the structure and shape of your piece of writing first. You'll see that the words, images, and ideas will change as you reshape the structure of your piece, so there's no point in addressing them early on in the revision process."

Only once we know the overall form of our piece, can we sculpt it with greater precision, and add more depth and specificity. Thinking in these broad strokes helps us clarify our process. Then, we won't get stuck in trying to perfect what we've written. Instead, we'll think about what's important to do first. This will help us move ahead.

What part of your writing process can you refine? What will help you become a better writer? 

On writing loves

I have found another writing love! Thomas Moore's Care of the Soul has been on my reading list for a few months now. Yesterday, I finally began the book. I am only a few chapters in, and I already know that this is a book I will love.

I woke up today feeling the kind of expansive, comforting feeling that comes only when you catch a glimpse of the bigger picture and things start to make sense. 

There are so many things that Moore talks about with such great understanding.

One thing that he talks about is our tendency to move between two extremes. He tells the story of a client of his comes to him and tells him that she wants to be more independent. She thinks her dependence is creating problems in her relationships, and becoming independent will solve them.

Moore says that this is not necessarily so. The soul has many aspects, and cutting off one of them in service of the other wouldn't solve the issue. She would only be facing it again from the other side. He says, "The fact that her dependency is making itself felt doesn't mean it should be bludgeoned or surgically removed; it may be asserting itself because it needs attention. Her heroic championing of independence might be a way of avoiding and repressing the strong need of something in her to be dependent."

He tries framing her need differently, in words that don't reek of the wimpiness that seems to bother her. He asks her, "Don't you want to be attached to people, learn from them, get close, rely on friendship, get advice from someone you respect, be part of a community where people need each other, find intimacy with someone that is so delicious you can't live without it?"

Is that dependence, she questions back. Yes, he says, that's what it sounds like to him. And like everything else, there's no way to have the good without also having to deal with its shadows. The good that comes from healthy dependence is accompanied by its shadows - its neediness, inferiority, its loss of control.

Moore says that he had the feeling that his client was avoiding intimacy and friendship by "focusing these qualities into a caricature of excessive dependency." By getting caught in this caricature, she was failing to understand the deeper issues involved. Like her, we might be scared of being deeply involved with the people in our lives and the life being lived around us.

What we need to do, though, is to "go with the symptoms" instead of against them. What this woman needed was to find ways to be dependent that felt fulfilling to her and that were not so extreme that they split off dependence off from independence. She needed to value healthy dependence and not idolize a quality she perceived as being the panacea for what was ailing her.

Our soul is manifested in many aspects. In this client, Moore says, the dependent face of the soul needed to be acknowledged and honored. Cutting off her needs to be dependent was actually a move against her inner life, against her soul.

This is something for all of us to grapple with. When I look inside, I can see how easily polarized I become, how I take up position on one extreme. I love the guidance that Moore offers, as he asks us to listen to the different needs within us and honor all these needs, instead of getting shut off in a corner. This is something I will attempt to do more of this year, to flow more instead of stagnating on one side.   

A New Writing Year

It's the start of another wonderful new year - an empty blank canvas that is both exciting and a little frightening. Will we able to pluck all the ideas that are ripening in our heads before they fall and go to dust? Will we be able to have the courage to live our lives this year as ourselves? Will we actually do what we are meant to do or will we get off-track at some point?


And if we do, how will we pick ourselves up?

Like you, I don't know the answers to these questions.

When I first started writing and blogging, I thought I needed to know all the answers, that I needed to come to some conclusion almost every week in my writing for this blog to make any sense.

But as I've continued on my journey, I have found that what I need to do is stay with the complicated questions, stay with them and keep asking till I am ready to accept the answers and live their sometimes difficult truths.

If your wish for this year is to start on your creative journey, then I hope that you don't get fooled into thinking that you need to know all the answers to begin. You don't.

We just want to walk behind you as you go forth bravely into the darkness. We know it takes courage to disregard the clanging voices both inside and outside. We are waiting for you to give us a piece of the puzzle that we hold in our hands. We need your understanding so we can make sense of the bigger picture.

What you are doing is important.

In this new writing year, I hope both you and I can follow our curiosity into the nooks and crannies, have the courage to meander as well as the courage to experiment. I hope both of us stop looking at other people and how they do things, and instead look inside and find our own, unique ways.

I hope, this year, we find our rhythms and dance our own dance.

I hope this process is both fun and interesting and challenging and expansive.

Let this be the year when you walk on the artiste's path, and find that everything is just as you wished it would be.

Happy New Year !   

Being Creative

In his small and wonderful book, The Courage to Create, Rollo May illuminates the mysterious, glorious subject of creativity in such a wonderful way. I am in love with his mind and his thoughts. 

Creativity needs encounter, he says, when something inside us meets the outside world, and something new is born into the world. 

And for this meeting, this alchemy to take place, we artistes need tools. 

We need our pens and paintbrushes and musical instruments. These tools make us as much as we make something with them. Without them, we are unformed, undeveloped. With them, we realize the potential that was always inside us, but that had no shape and form.  

With our tools, we mold ourselves. We give ourselves shape and form. 

I believe and understand this now. And if you are someone who is asking, am I an artiste, am I, the answer lies in picking up a camera or a pen or taking a design class. Engaging with different tools will help you encounter your creative spirit. You will find your joys and loves and shape the magical, powerful energy that is swirling inside you. 

And as you give birth to what's inside you, you too will be born. 

How is this creating different from a child's play ? Mature creativity, May says, is about staying with the anxiety of not knowing whether you will be able to bring your visions to completion. 

You may have an idea in your head about a  book, or a series of paintings, or a performance piece. But your struggle with the void to bring something new into being has no guarantees. 

The dance piece, the work of art exists perfectly in your head. But can you bring it to life? 

All artistes, all creative people struggle with this feeling, this sense of going out into the forest where there are no maps. And that takes courage.

Creativity, in its true form, is the process of "bringing something new into being." The something new will take time to sprout wings, and in its hatching stage, it might look ungainly. 

We, as artistes, have to find the courage to stay with this weird and wonderful being, have to believe in our visions, have to feel our frailty as we sense our way through the darkness. We have no guarantees, and that's the challenge of our calling, to move forward in faith, to knock on the door and believe that our knock will be answered.   

Moving Gently Forward

Last week, somewhere in the middle of writing my morning pages, starting a yoga routine and consciously taking care of myself, I had a moment of insight that should have been obvious to me before, but wasn't. This really was “artistic recovery.”

I lost sight of this reality, expecting myself to be consistently productive, forgetting that I am still learning to show up as a writer and artiste everyday.

I am still learning how to break the addiction to self-doubt. I am still learning how to let go of the knife of my inner perfectionist that slices through ideas even before they form.

I am still learning to take one step after the other. I can't expect myself to run.

But I forgot this, or didn't acknowledge it, and what this ended up doing was bring me to a screeching halt. Comparing myself to others, and trying to match their steps only added to the pressure I was already feeling.

If you are a recovering writer or painter or photographer, then like me, you are still in the process of forming a relationship with your work. 

You are still learning its nature. You are still learning how to make decisions as an artiste. You are still learning what everyday habits you need to replenish your stock of inspiration.

To give a concrete example, I just finished a quite personal piece that talks about being an HSP. While writing it, I had so many things that I could say that I didn't know where to begin. 

My entire identity, or at least the part that I most identify with, is based on the intersection of being an HSP and an introvert. There is so much that I think and feel about the topic that just beginning was hard. 

The actual process of writing was choosing what I wanted to talk about, and letting go of most of the other ideas. It was essentially a process of paring down, making decisions.

In the background was the emotional charge of the writing, the fact that I was revealing something about myself. And also the fact that I wanted to say it in the right way.

All this is a lot of emotional engagement. It requires a certain attitude and a certain skill-set.

As a recovering writer, I am still learning how to do this, how to take baby steps forward. And yet, I had gotten into a space where I was comparing my hesitant steps with others who seemed to be galloping forward.

The reality is that I was getting ahead of myself. If you are a recovering creative, then you will need to first engage with and break through the patterns that keep you from moving forward. You will also need to learn new habits that support your creativity.

You can't compare your progress with someone else's, someone who might be more comfortable in their emotional relationship with their work.

Last week, I was a little more gentle with myself. Instead of putting off exercising, I started a manageable yoga routine. I let myself draw some baby drawings using a charcoal pencil. I copied drawings of birds, and a squirrel, and made a baby tortoise. I felt happy.

While I did it hesitatingly, the act of moving the pencil across the paper was grounding, clearing. The permission to make mistakes, to be just okay and not great, was freeing.

Later, I watched some youtube videos on how to draw hands. They used delicious words like vine and willow charcoal. They talked about color values, and the different kinds of shading. 

I understood the concept of first seeing and drawing the overall shape of the hand, and then filling in the details. That felt exciting.

What I need to learn, I think, is to correctly identify what's stopping me every day. When the store of my images dries up, I need to change my tools, maybe pick up a pencil or my camera. 

When I feel unease and ambiguity, I need to learn how to stay with the feeling, instead of getting up and giving up for that day.

Learning how to make myself, see myself is a process of listening to myself and encouraging the easily discouraged child within. Learning how to do these things will take some time. And for now, I am happy to just move gently forward.  

Why write?

Writing is nebulous. Sometimes, I think of it as an energy that grows or shrinks as I pay more or less attention to it. Sometimes, it feels like a raw nerve that twitches when I touch it. 

It electrifies my life. And sometimes, it slips out of my hand and falls into the outer world. I find myself losing the connection, trying to join again with it, trying to solidify this relationship.

If you are a writer, you might be constantly looking for answers to questions: Why do I write? Why do I want to write? Who do I write for? Sometimes, like me, you might be using these questions as excuses to stop yourself from writing. You might also think that knowing the answers will help you.

I have been grasping at these questions. They matter to me because they clarify what I am trying to do. And I am learning that like a child, knowing the answer, knowing the reason helps me do the work. I can't will myself to do it. I can't jump into it and do it. 

I have a cautious nature, and maybe the reason I have not been moving forward is because I have been expecting myself to imitate what I think strong, adventurous people do. While the truth is that I need these answers. 

I need to gently pull myself forward, instead of getting into a battle of wills against myself. Yesterday, I opened Natalie Goldberg's Thunder and Lightning, and came happily to an essay called “But who is listening?” I had read it before, but I felt closer to the words. 

Natalie says: “I never wanted to write to my grandmother and grandfather. They were my audience my whole childhood, not a beat off. I spoke in the moment and they listened. No gap. Maybe it's the gap, the feeling that someone isn't listening, doesn't get it, has half heard us, that compels us to write and explain. That's why we turn around and speak to our past, as if others can hear us now, as if we can finally hear ourselves and catch our fleeting lives.”

That is one reason for writing. This need to bridge the gap. This need to be heard and mirrored back, hopefully by someone, somewhere who we don't know, but who knows this precious part of us. There are other reasons. 

Sometimes, when I am writing, I feel like I am shaping clay, and while I am attempting to make something, this something is also changing me, bringing me into relief. There is also this reductive part of me that wants to arrive at a linear conclusion. That's uncomfortable with spontaneous movement, that hangs behind the rock and never wants to come out. It always want to play safe. 

I used to read Natalie's books and feel myself drawing back, trying to protect myself, unseated by the twists and turns of her mind. Now, I am more comfortable with the ride. I am a shade more comfortable with uncertainty. 

I like this feeling, this sense of free-falling and yet, somehow, landing on my feet. I can't get up the nerve to do it often, but doing it, when I can let myself, is freeing. I have always been looking for freedom.

As I work to stretch my relationship with writing, to get out of the little boxes that I cage myself in, I see the ways in which I limit myself. I have no trust. I am always trying to think about the future. 

One part of me – the hack – wants to strategize and do the least amount of work. It's always on the lookout for what will legitimize me as a writer. The other part pulls back from these machinations, it's turned off by them, but doesn't quite have the faith to go it alone, to walk in the darkness. Screaming in their midst is the child who feels the pain of all the unfolding, the pain of the growth. It doesn't want to feel. It just wants to sit there and dream.

It's no wonder that we can lock ourselves in one place.

Today, I think the child in me needs a little bribing. It's sore, and I don't treat it well. I try to push it. It pulls back. 

Where is the fun in all this, it asks? Where are the trees growing upside down? The enchanted forest with streams that run into dragon mouths? Why is everything so plain? Where is the enchantment?

Too much reality is not good for me. Delusion is also not good. It has drowned me in the past, taken me away from myself. But this reality – of clip-clopping along, of thinking that everything worldly is good and grounded – this isn't good either. 

I need my reality tempered with magic. I need it tempered with hope. I need my writing to cook these things up, in a dancing pot. I want a magic potion that will wake me up and make me dance, instead of plodding along like a mule.

All words are not made equal. Maybe right now the words that you need, the words that will nourish you, are words you will form into a story, throw with abandon into the wind. At another time, maybe the words you need are the words that face things head on. Maybe you will write an essay then, or an article.

What are the words that you need today? Are you writing to connect? Or to dissolve? Do you want to play? Or be serious? Which part of you is coming forth? 

Why are you writing today? 

Listen to this post!

Creativity and Risk

I haven't written for what feels like long centuries. It's actually been a few weeks, interspersed with a visit by family from India and going out of town for my anniversary celebration. 

And I have been itching to come back and write again. But when I've sat down to form words, my mind feels clamped shut. Today, my hands are heavy on the keyboard and I want to get away. Writing feels painful.

Writing also brings clarity, it brings all this stuff that we've stuffed down bobbing up to the surface. I want to push it away, make a ball of it and throw it out of the window but it keeps bouncing right back. Writing calls out. Are you willing to feel? Do you want to? Or not?

Many times, I don't. I don't want to deal with this scum rising to the top.

Before I went on my holiday, I'd been reading Seth Godin's The Icarus Deception. I pick it up again, and shuffle through the pages to find my place. What Godin has been saying made sense. 

Among other things, he talks about how it's no longer safe to just play safe in today's world. How clinging to the safety of what we've always known will destroy us because the rules are already changing. 

And since he talks about the shift to a connection economy that rewards risk-takers, he also talks about the supreme risk-taker of all – the artist. And the artist is not just the painter or the musician, but anyone doing anything new and risky and bringing it out into the world.

What he says is true. As we all know, many walls have been falling for the last couple of decades. Today, if you want to be a musician or an entrepreneur or a writer, you don't have to wait for the traditional gatekeepers to give you permission. You can start. 

You can begin where you are and get your work out there in the world. But, as Godin quotes Adrienne Rich, “The door itself makes no promises. It is only a door.” Beyond that door, lies our opportunity to connect, our possibilities. But nothing is guaranteed.

We will have to dig deeper into our work, and come up with something that will be of value to the world. Then, we will offer it. And if we haven't been able to create something worthwhile, we will have to go back and dig deeper and make something better. 

Godin calls this emotional labor. I understand what he means, as I am sure does any artist who is working on bringing forth their ideas into the world. It takes courage to step through a door that has been opened to us. It takes emotional work. 

We don't know the rules because it's a new world. We have to turn inside to negotiate the twists and turns. We've not been taught how to risk, and we learn only by doing it.

When I started this blog last year, I was scared of even sharing it on Facebook. What would people say? What would they think of what I'd written? And yet, I knew that I needed to start sharing it in some way if I didn't want my words to just float in the ether, crumbling because they couldn't reach anyone.

The kind of questions I wrestled with included egoistic ones like: Wasn't blogging a form of bastardized writing? Was it the correct, valid way? 

And then I fortunately thought, holding on to the belief that I needed to present myself in a certain way as a writer was what had held me back from being one all this time. Is my audience not an audience because it is not reading my book ? Is it a lesser audience? 

I don't think so.

This blog has been the beginning of several things for me. It started me on my real writing journey. Because of it, I have sent out other work into the world. And some of that work has started finding a home. I have connected with so many people, and found so many voices saying “Me too.”

And what has happened through this claiming, through this saying “I write” out loud to the world, through sharing my voice is that what I believe is out. It is solidified in my writing. 

It's a little risk my heart took, and it's a little risk that has paid off. Sharing my work instead of keeping it in helped it grow, so other people could see it as well. And that helped solidify my identity as a writer. If you are an artiste of any kind, you have probably asked yourself: Am I really a painter? Am I really an actor? There is no easy answer because who can say that but yourself? There's no way to quantify it. 

And so, we can get lost in these murky questions of identity without ever taking a concrete step. The truth is that I let go of waiting for permission and I started giving myself permission to go out into the world. When I did that and gave form to my ideas, other people saw that and acknowledged it. 

They saw me as a writer, and their seeing me as one, in turn, nourished that identity. If nothing else, that is one practical reason to start sharing what you make.

In his book, Godin says that art is personal, untested and intended to connect. He also says that art is “an interaction with a recipient, a gift given and a gift received.” If it doesn't ship, he says, it's not art. 

That's an interesting point to consider. Why do we make art ? Isn't it to expand who we are, to attempt something that nudges us to become bigger? As artists, we have to keep asking: Do I have the courage to share what I believe? Art is, in the end, a statement. Of who we are, of where we are going. If we keep our work in, we are stopping short of making that statement. 

We are not risking, and so, we are not becoming artistes.

If you are someone who writes or paints or sings, maybe it is time to share what you think with the world. Take that risk, and claim your art.  

Being an HSP Writer

Putting myself out there hasn’t been easy for me. When I started this blog, I was scared of criticism, scared of making mistakes. One of my weaknesses is over-thinking, so I tried to control the future with my mind. 

But after I decided to just do it and see what happens, I have sometimes easily and sometimes, just about hobbled through writing this blog.

As a writer, the constant tension has been between my nature, which is very reserved, and the fact that I write from a very personal space. This tension paralyzed me in the past. What’s different this time is that I realize that I need to hold this tension inside and use it to refine how I express myself in my writing.

As an HSP, I care about how my writing affects the people in my life and their privacy. Every personal experience is not grist for the mill. Before I started this blog, I consciously decided that I wouldn’t write about close family and friends. I have mostly kept to that promise, except that I have written about my husband quite a bit (hopefully in the positive light that he deserves).

One thing that I have learnt from this constant push and pull as well as a few mistakes is that the best test for deciding whether to write about something personal is this: Does it take more courage to write about it or to say it out loud in my own life? Writing is not a space to confront what we should confront personally. And yet, there are certain personal truths that we need to say out loud.

If you are an HSP writer, it is important to learn to discriminate between these two. You won’t find writing pleasurable if you find that it’s creating disharmony in your life. But you will not find it useful if you hold back from saying the truths that give your writing meaning.  

Sometimes, even when these truths involve just us, we often hesitate to say them. For me, hanging in the background is the specter of that age-old Indian refrain: What will people think? When I wrote about washing dishes here at home in America, it felt like a minor risk. Washing dishes is lowly work in India. When I wrote about not wanting to sing the Ganesh aarti (prayer), a prayer that countless Indians know by heart, I felt like I was doing something wrong. Even though I knew that a prayer that says that God can confer the gift of a son (not a daughter) to a so-called “barren” woman is crafted by mere human beings, not God. 

The voices in my head said: “Keep quiet. Be obedient.” Keeping quiet and being good felt like the same thing. Maybe as you write, the voices in your head will scream in a similar way. But if we were to go behind these voices, strip them down, we see that what they are really saying is: Shame on you for airing the skeletons in the closet. We would have liked you better if you had kept quiet.

Yes, they probably would have liked us better. But when we keep quiet and implicitly agree, we start forgetting what we truly believe in. Exercising our voice is about preserving our own integrity, instead of bleeding into someone else’s values.

Once you begin your own journey as an HSP writer, you will find that you have many more such questions and tensions to be resolved. One of my other questions was: “What if I write something today, and then I stop believing it later on?” How could I be consistent? And then, I found my answer in a quote by Mahatma Gandhi in which he says that in his search for the truth, he was free to change his mind anytime. He didn’t aim for consistency in his search. This comforted me. I was asking the wrong question. I could write from my present understanding. I didn’t have to preserve outer appearances.  

This was an important question for me to answer. As HSPs, we become suspended when we feel that we don’t have the right answers. We are loathe to make mistakes, and when we are scared or doubtful, we are likely to freeze. So, whatever questions you have, it is important that you take the time to address them, and move forward knowing that you can find answers to any other questions that may come up in the future. 

I am just at the beginning of my journey. New doubts, new fears keep on coming up. I have to remind myself that what feels overwhelming today will get easier as I learn to tackle it. As sensitive people, we can over-exaggerate the feelings of overwhelm by focusing on our fears. The key is to shift the focus to the present, to just do the next small thing. Gradually, it brings us to a place where we have greater mastery and increased confidence to do bigger things. 

An HSP Writer: A Declaration

I first started writing about being sensitive (an HSP) after reading this post on the HSP Notes blog. In it, Peter talks about the fact that, as a group, HSPs are conspicuous by their absence in the online world even though there are approximately one billion of us on this planet. He says that he was “amazed at just how invisible we are. And in the few places where we are visible, how little we participate.”

Why is that? One reason might be that a lot of us are simply unaware that we are HSPs. But if we look at the numbers that Peter gives us, we know that can’t be the only reason. I think, what it really comes down to, is that a lot of us are very apprehensive about coming out and declaring that we are highly sensitive.

For me, I know that telling people (through my writing) that I am sensitive has felt extremely vulnerable. It’s felt like putting a precious part of me on public display. It’s felt like I am giving people ammunition that they can blow me up with.

I have been scared of being judged. I have been afraid of being discounted. I know very well that many, if not most, people equate sensitivity with weakness. Declaring myself highly sensitive is almost like declaring myself weak. I’m also afraid that someone will tell me, “Come on, get over it. Stop being so sensitive” as if it’s something that’s wrong with me, something I can change if I just put my mind to it.

I can’t. And I don’t want to either. I value my sensitivity even though it’s hard to live with in a world that doesn’t value or respect it. I value sensitivity even though I have made many mistakes in dealing with it. I value it even though I’ve tried to get away from it, struggled against it.

For people that say that being sensitive is weak, I say, sensitivity can manifest as many things. Most of us are not taught how to handle being sensitive. As children, we don’t often learn practical ways to manage the discomfort and anxiety that comes with feelings of being overwhelmed, of being so open.

And when we don’t know how, it’s easy to adapt in the wrong ways. It’s only with time that I have started understanding myself better and learnt to re-frame the cultural narrative of sensitivity being a weakness. No, it’s not my sensitivity that makes me weak, but not accepting it for what it is. Yes, I do get over-stimulated easily. Yes, I do need a lot of down-time. Yes, I don’t handle things like external pressure as well.

But being sensitive makes up the core of all that’s right about me. It’s what makes me perceptive. It’s what makes me compassionate. It’s what makes me creative.

So, where did I get the idea that it was wrong? As people, we become visible to ourselves when we look outside and see ourselves mirrored back. Maybe someone praises us for how caring we are. Maybe someone can see not just the challenges that come with being sensitive, but also the gifts.

But we generally don’t get these positive messages in today’s world. Instead, we get messages that shame us for feeling too much. Yes, feeling too much can be very hard, but is feeling too little the answer? If, as a society, we consider being sensitive a weakness, do we also consider being insensitive a strength?

We need sensitivity. We need to question the cultural belief that being sensitive is a weakness. I think it’s being insensitive - well-defended, closed to vulnerability - that is weakness. Maybe the question we should be asking in today’s world isn’t “Why are you so sensitive?” but “Why are you so insensitive?"

What do you think?