27 Sep THE SOUL LONGS TO GROW – why writing won’t leave you alone until you do it
“Courage is the price that Life exacts for granting peace.”
Amelia Earhart
There is a calling within you to write. You know it. You long to tend to it. You ignore it.
You are not alone.
In more than three years on The Write Road this I have learned: just about every human being longs to write. (And just about every single one of us needs guidance, encouragement and support to start . . . but that is another story.)
We long to write. With all our heart, we long to write a story of some kind. Whether we want others to read it or not (and most of us do, whether we are ready to admit or not . . . that too is another story), whether we write for ourselves or write to share, the fact is we have stories inside us bursting for release.
And still we hold them back. We deny ourselves our right to write. We deny the world our story. We withhold. And we shrink. And not only do we not grow, we cannot grow.
And yet . . . the soul longs to grow. And no doubt about it, writing will grow us. Writing expands us, leads us places we did or didn’t dream exist, takes us on an excursion into our own interior that will surprise, delight and break our hearts. And still the soul will grow.
Abandoned, however, the soul will haunt us. The longing to write will not leave us alone. No matter where we turn or who we turn to, sometimes soft, sometimes unbearably deep, the incessant nagging will follow along with us. Because the soul longs to grow.
Writing grows us.
Writing grows us because it takes courage to step up and claim our right to write. And it takes a funny sort of confidence to believe we have what it takes to put pen to paper. And it is a sublime act of lunacy to believe others may want to read what we write.
And in the end none of it matters – except that we did it. We wrote.
We wrote for no other reason than the soul was calling us to write.
We celebrated for no other reason than . . . we grew.
We grew and we knew peace.
Written by Stephanie Dale, author, journalist & traveling writer; founder of The Write Road and Walk and Write.
Stephanie Dale is an award-winning journalist and author with a fondness for walking and writing. She is a passionate advocate for the visibility and voices of everyday people and focuses on supporting new and unpublished writers to write and keep writing. The Write Road and Walk and Write are dedicated to empowering people to tell their stories, their way.
