I’ve been writing another poetry book. I’ve been writing this second poetry book for about two, maybe three years. Over that time I have written SO much poetry and shared only about 10% of it with the world.
One day recently something made me realise that I’ve been hiding from the world a bit. Years ago, when I first reignited my love of poetry, it was attending a couple of spoken word nights that really blew oxygen on that spark. But I now very rarely share poetry out loud. I actually don’t share much of my own poetry full stop. I got out of practise. I got in my own head. I subconsciously decided to hold back. I decided I’d wait until the book was finished and then try again. I decided I’d wait until I had some proper authority on the books subject matter to finish the book. I decided the spoken word scene was for people younger and cooler than me anyway. I knew all this was a bit weird, so I decided I’d wait until I’d figured out some of the messiness.
This week I read a brilliant piece about the growing tensions between men and women by
. I’ve linked to it at the bottom because I very much suggest you go have a read. In it, she says this:“Increasingly I’m struggling to be able to proffer fixes and meaty conclusions in my writing. I have thought to stop emitting anything here for a while, and was close to choosing this route last week. But I remembered my own sermon, from my own book: Staying in the ambiguity, the unfathomable complexity and the always-emerging truth is the entire point now! Collapse demands bearing, not fixes.”
Oh my goodness. I resonate with this sentiment in so many different areas of my life. That feeling of not being able to grasp the full solution, know the answer, find the ‘right’ decision, fix the system, make the changes that you can see are needed, show up full formed, make everything better. And those feelings of frustration and inadequacy turning into overwhelm and inaction.
Add in the fact that the patriarchy has been working to quieten women down for, well, as long as any of us remember (which takes some fighting, more if you face additional intersections of inequality). AND, now peri-menopause which, although I hear will come with some pretty rich rewards in the next ten years, right now at the age of 44 just feels like a daily grind. A foggy daily grind.
All of this mixed together can become: “I’m not sure what I’ve got to say / contribute / be here, so I’ll just…hang back until I’ve got it all figured out.”
It’s a pretty lonely place to be that, isn’t it. I know it sounds completely ridiculous to suggest that a poetry book needs to have ‘the answers,’ but in my head it did. Because this second poetry book is about women and love and desire and peri-menopause and that in relation to where we are at in the world right now. And because these themes feel SO big and SO awkward, and because I am SO passionate about this stuff, I thought,
“Well I can’t start sharing until a) I have my own shit fully together b) I have something to ‘teach’ or at least a tidy new solution to share, and c) I have the right to an opinion”.
Ooh, ouch that last one.
So I’ve been keeping most of my writing nicely hidden away, collecting virtual dust on my slowly dying computer (tbf I did eventually cave and buy a new computer but the task of setting it up is so daunting it is still in it’s box months later!)
I kinda feel like I might not be alone in this? The waiting, the hiding, the not-trusting ourselves.
Waiting until we feel like the time will be exactly right, which might indeed be a thing, but also…
Waiting until we get permission. Oh this one is a biggie. Permission from the very people and systems we are rallying against (!?) We wait for someone or something else to tell us that we can do what we are feeling like we want to do or say (all the while knowing deep down that it won’t come and that we have to do the slightly harder but also easier work of giving it to ourselves).
Or we wait until we’ve finished the damn thing and we’ve checked it twenty five million times and polished it another twenty six. Then edited it. Then decided it’s not finished after all because, “who do we even think we are???”
We wait until we feel like there are no gaps. We wait until there is absolutely zero chance that anyone, anywhere will discover an error with it or us (again, this is so very unachievable and we know that but the opposite so is weirdly scary). We might wait so long that we forget what we loved about it in the first place but as long as we don’t publicly fall over…that’s the main thing.
We wait until we feel like we’ve got the authority to say what we think or do what we want to do. Funny thing that isn’t it? Where do we think it’ll come from? A qualification? A recommendation? From social media stats (?!)
We wait until we think we have all the answers.
But what might happen if we discovered that there was strength in our not-knowing?
How about rather than waiting until we have it all figured out we just turn up as our beautiful, unfinished, messy, half-done selves.
Because I personally want to hear from more women while they are a work-in-progress. If we’re waiting until we can say “here’s what I did and now I’ve reached ultimate enlightenment I will finally reveal my true self to the world,” we might be waiting a long time, not least because I’m not even sure enlightenment happens only once in a lifetime.
I’ll be honest, I was expecting to have life nailed just as soon as I got some sleep after a decade of sharing my bed with four kids (all great fun) and now I technically can sleep and also, “surprise!” I often can’t sleep (ooh magnesium butter though, nice). Why thank you hormones and an education system that seems to think women are done after having babies (and of course, if they don’t have babies).
But when I look and listen to other women, I adore the vulnerability of “I’m not there yet and here is my completely random, weird, strangely beautiful self.” I like the camaraderie of, “we’re a whole generation of women finally able to say the word menopause out loud and not under our breath”. I like the honesty of, “none of us know what we’re doing or where we’re going so let’s not pretend we do and instead OWN that”. Funnily enough, ‘winging it,’ was a bit of a catch-phrase doing the rounds when I was in early motherhood but seems to have dropped out of use now I’ve reached, erm, full adulthood. It turns out though, that it’s a mantra for life. A friend of mine recently ventured into the world of interior design and I distinctly remember her describing how she had no clue what she was doing but had decided to show up and pretend like she did. She initially did start to do a qualification (see above ‘permission’ list) but hasn’t finished it. She hasn’t finished it because once she began just ‘doing the thing’ (which btw she is SO DAMN GOOD at), the momentum built so fast she didn’t have time to tick that box. I mean, how cool is that. Momentum, delicious.
One thing I will say for peri-menopause (and I must add that I am at the start of what I realise will be a pretty long journey - I feel this some days and other days the exact opposite, like, SO far the opposite that I get a bit ragey at those brilliant women who are all “now I don’t give any fucks,” “well I do, alright, I can’t think straight and my hair is falling out and I give ALL the fucks.”) What I will say though is, I do sense the tide turning on not holding back. And I am very grateful for these women leading the way.
And I am trying, oh my goodness I am trying, to lean into the ambiguity. That feeling of complete uncertainty. Whether it’s about the seemingly lighter stuff like, ‘what do I wear to not resemble a 44 year old trying to look like a teenager?’ through to the more worrying, ‘am I actually making any difference by dragging three bags of soft plastics to the supermarket recycling every week?’
I’m trying to see this stage of my life, this period we are in with the world, this time of unease when it comes to ‘work’, with women’s rights, AI and the rest, I’m trying to sit within that unknown and keep asking questions. Remembering that with this amount of flux comes the opportunity for something entirely new, not just a slight iteration of the crappy old. Keep being present. Not hiding away. I keep trying to get less uncomfortable with unfinished. Less scared of unknown.
I didn’t write this piece to encourage anyone to do anything before they were ready. Or to say that jumping in headfirst is always a good idea. Or that checking ourselves isn’t good practise. But rather, that I hear SO many women around me holding on to stuff - new ideas, pieces of writing, job opportunities, passion projects, hobbies, creative dreams, all just held back for ‘another day.’ For when things feel ‘a bit more stable’ but honestly, right now I can’t see when that happens.
For me personally, one of the biggest reasons I have been holding back with my poetry (and another project I’ve been working on for FAR TOO LONG), is because of that uncertainty. Is the not knowing. Is thinking I need to have all the answers. Thinking I need to be the ‘guru’. Thinking that the only way one can contribute to the world is from a place of perfection or wholeness or whatever you wanna call it. When actually, we are so gorgeously whole because of our imperfections. They are often our point of difference (especially to AI). We are on the journey, always. And ironically, we connect with each other and the world so much better (which is the bit that I know I long for) when we reveal this, when we welcome this.
So, yeah, I’ve written the book. It is pretty much finished. There’s not just one book, there’s actually two. I’m probably more nervous about sharing the second one (hence me not mentioning it until the end of this post, ha). The second one is evolving and shifting into more than just a book. The second one ventures into the waters of ‘this wild ride’ we find ourselves on as women who want to go someplace new. More on this to come but if you’re tempted to know more sooner, let me know.
I can see myself on that stage reading some of these poems, I believe in them, I believe they work and I am so excited to share them. I finally sent it to some publishers this summer. The right publisher hasn’t seen it…yet but I know it will find a home. There have been other wonderful successes that I am proud of (three poems in anthologies that will come out in due course and six weeks off work with my gorgeous kids!) And the best still to come, always.
And so I could wait.
I could try and improve my writing (nothing wrong with that). I could keep comparing it to some of the greatest poetry books of all time and then feel shitty about myself (a well-practised habit of mine, less positive). I could get despondent and put this book back with all the other writing I’ve waited to share over the last two years until ‘I was ready’ (boring).
OR, I could see what might happen if I just started moving myself towards the end goal with an open heart and an ‘unfinished’ soul. I could do some more spoken word, videos etc!!! I could recognise that every time I am a little bit more honest and open, things improve and evolve (by the end of summer a few new poems landed that I’m pretty pleased with). It was actually only through a conversation with a friend in August (I could remember that the Universe is always working ‘for us’ and so to keep my eyes open and ready) that I realised one of the main themes of the book is in fact, ironically, this chapter in your life, post young children, where you have to grapple with feelings of ‘invisibility’ and identity all over again, in a whole new way. I could stop holding myself back and I could stop waiting and start trusting.
Because we don’t have to have all the answers. We don’t have to have it all figured out.
We just have to be willing to ask the questions.
Nelly x
A few Journal Prompts:
“If the path before you is clear, you are probably on someone else’s” - Joseph Campbell. How does this quote make you feel?
Is there anything in your life right now that you are ‘holding back’ on until you have all the answers / it all figured out?
If so, what might be a small next step to move towards the unknown?
A few pieces I’ve enjoyed over the last few weeks:
The collapse of men and women by
(as mentioned above)
“Men need a mass, healthy “masculinist” movement (their version of the feminist movement) that works to expose and deconstruct the system’s hold on them, and that will fight as a powerful collective for better conditions for all men and boys. Indeed, for all humans. Heck, for all of life!”
‘The Futile Search for the Bullsh*t less Job’ by
- speaks for itself.- writes a beautiful piece here about why AI will never stand a chance against creativity.
“This is what art, what creativity is, isn’t it? Sculpting all these feelings of awe, ache, frustration, protest, joy, wonder, fear, love, into some sort of shape that will never adequately hold it all and yet holds just a little, just enough (and also, never enough).”
“Transformation is painful” -
writes about badass women in history (enough said) and this post about a ‘midlife glow up’ reminds us of the women who went before us and lead the way.
I love the intimacy and honesty of your writing. Thank you so much for sharing this. 🩵
Mate. I can’t enunciate the feelings this just brought up so instead can we virtually have one of our long hugs which would be awkward with anyone else but have never been for us? Cool, thanks. Also, I’m beyond excited for your 2nd and 3rd book - beyond! Xx