Relax and write. I repeat these words to myself just as they are written on the post-it note beside my keyboard. “Relax & Write”
It’s so easy for me to overthink why I’ve decided to share. Today I asked myself why I continue to have this niggling feeling that I must write. I’ve had it for as long as I can remember, but it really took shape for me when I quite suddenly decided I was going to write a children’s book. I’m a mixed media artist and have expressed myself through various painterly mediums for decades, but writing…well, I couldn’t do that, could I?
My book, “The BIG adventure’s of Little O - A song for the salmon”, was a glorious flow of words that seemed to ooze from my mind into my fingertips. I wrote anywhere I could morning and night despite having a full time, sixty hour a week job in film, a young daughter in elementary school and very little time to spare. This sweet chapter book follows a young orca as it finds its way, sometimes lost and alone but always curious and deeply connected to natural-world wisdom. Impatient to have this published, and naively decided self-publish.
One week after my book was released, COVID hit the world with a hammer of isolation. The two years of writing, editing and illustrating the book, and the work I had undergone to set up book-store signings and author events fell cold. Cases of books had nowhere to go. The book received fantastic reviews, was longlisted for a children’s book award, and I sold a few hundred copies through no-contact social media sales, but the momentum soon fizzled out. As a creator, I needed to keep creating. Selling books fell to the wayside and I got back to work. (See more about the book here.)
Simon Fraser University in British Columbia had an amazing year-long intensive writer’s program, “The Writer’s Studio”, that I’d wanted to enrol in and suddenly, thanks to COVID, I had time and creative space. I was energized and excited when I received news I’d been accepted into the program. My entry was a non-fiction piece about a childhood experience and writing it felt cathartic somehow. I decided this is where I would focus my writing energies, non-fiction.
This new way of writing was hitting a deep cord for me, experiences I had never uttered to another soul were surfacing on the page. I’d find myself sobbing as I typed. Places and people I had mentally buried were now alive. Fear of shame, fear of judgement and a giant dose of self hate ensured my pre-teen years would stay locked away. Now, I wrote about them freely and my class-cohort of eight compassionate mature women gave criticism and feedback on the writing without any judgement. Kindness and empathy was rampant. Suddenly I realized I was not alone in my shame and fear. This year of writing was the best therapy I could have ever received. At forty-three years old, I was becoming an proficient writer and recognizing my gifts for the first time in my life.
Shadows of the past have brought light to my life, and as I am continually discovering, there is no light without darkness. I do my best to consider life’s bumps and joys as part of the whole…I believe this because it brings me peace. That is what I truly desire for myself, and for others.
This is how my writings will take form, in search of peace.
With gratitude;
Leesa
Cedar forest queen
Faerie’s majestic sovereign
Boughs draped like jewels
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