I just flew back home on Monday after 16 days with my family in Cleveland. My mother was in the hospital with heart failure, two of my sisters were in the process of moving, and my two-year-old niece had yet to begin daycare (and then came home with croup when she did).
When I initially flew out to Cleveland on my first-ever one-way ticket, I had decided to bring all of my writing materials with me. Family would always come first, but surely at some point in the to-be-determined amount of time I would spend away from home, there would be some kind of lull.
Spoiler alert: There was no lull. And over the course of 16 days, I wrote just two (2) Dear Creators newsletters to you, and three (3) mornings worth of Morning Pages (essentially journal entries).
At first, I felt kind of defensive about it — “I’m here and I’m working so hard! Just… not on anything writing-related!” I remember explaining to Tim over the phone one night, as though afraid he was doubting me.
Then some friends reminded me that I could choose to interpret and respond to my situation in two very different ways:
1.) “Wow. You only wrote three tiny, pathetic journal entries over the course of 16 whole days? Can you really even call yourself a writer anymore?”
2.) “Wow! You managed to write three whole journal entries and two newsletters despite being mired in family chaos, illness, and exhaustion?!”
I remembered the optimism with which I packed my bags for my spinal surgery back in the year 2000, jamming notebooks and pens and idea cards into my backpack. “I’m gonna have entire days where I’ll just be lying in a hospital bed, doing nothing!” I remember thinking with a flash of excitement. “What a great time to get some writing done!”
Expectation… meet reality. Due to a severe case of scoliosis, my spine needed to be rotated and straightened, and fused into one giant piece along with two metal rods and bone grafts from my hips. Despite my purest hopes and best intentions, I did zero (0) writing during my lengthy hospital stay and subsequent recovery.
And afterward, I felt angry and resentful at myself for “wasting all that time”. Even though, in the rare moments when I was awake during my hospital stay, I was struggling to smile at visitors, do my physical therapy, focus on The Princess Bride playing via a VHS tape borrowed from the library, and think even semi-coherently through the haze of painkillers.
Turns out I wasn’t “doing nothing” after all.
Here’s what I want to say about all of this: Be kind to yourself. Be patient and gentle with yourself. You might not get any writing done while you’re in the hospital, or while a loved one is in the hospital, or while you’re caring for your family, or while you’re traveling or sick or under all of the other incredible duress life heaves at us. But you’re still a writer.
Often, we can’t choose our circumstances. But we can choose how we interpret and respond to them. It’s up to us — and only us — whether we come out of an experience saying, “Wow, I really suck,” or “Wow, I really gave it all I could.”
It’s up to us whether we want to focus on blame or grace, and how we move forward into the future from there.
Words & warmth,
Sarah