The Writer I Thought I Lost

Doubt and I have a tricky relationship.

There have been so many times in my life where I thought I had a handle on it – where I was all in.

This is one of them.

I record for the visibility challenge.

I write a blog to go with it every day.

And I post them.

No matter what.

That was a big deal, especially when I started.

Back then, I was wracked with doubt, and it kept me frozen.

I would write something, record it… and then delete it.

Or I’d leave it sitting in a folder forever, slowly fading away.

By the time I pulled it back out, all I could see were the problems.

“I’ve grown past this.”

“This is too messy.”

“This is too vulnerable.”

Eventually, I’d convince myself I’d never use it.

So I’d delete it to make room for something new.

But the pattern never changed.

Until I started the visibility challenge.

When I started, I hit a ton of snags.

Formatting.

Vulnerability.

Judging myself.

Energy swings.

There were plenty of days I simply didn’t want to do it.

But eventually, I found my groove.

The snags that once felt impossible became part of the process instead of reasons to quit.

Then I decided to add a daily reflection.

Whatever I was talking about in the video, I was also writing about.

Because writing is my first love.

Somewhere along the way, I had stopped sharing my words like this.

And I missed it more than I realized.

Every day I didn’t write felt like I was drifting farther away from myself.

At first, I hit snags with that too.

Nothing flowed.

Everything felt jumbled, confusing, and honestly… unimportant.

Who is even going to read this?

Then I remembered something.

When I started this challenge, it was never about anybody else.

It was for me.

A birthday gift to myself.

Because I knew that if I could show up consistently for a year, something inside me would change.

Not just my habits.

Me.

On a deep, fundamental level.

I knew it would reconnect me with pieces of myself I’d been searching for.

Pieces that had been tucked away…

from hurt.

from pain.

from surviving.

I wasn’t just surviving anymore.

It was time.

If I wanted to set myself free, I needed to bring back the love of my life.

Writing.

I am a writer before anything else.

It is my favorite way to express myself.

The place where I understand myself most clearly.

But difficult seasons slowly changed my relationship with it.

I stopped writing with my heart.

I started writing from my anger…

until I only wrote when I was angry.

Every time I read those words, they pulled me right back into the pain.

The hurt.

The sorrow.

So I burned the pages.

I didn’t want that to be how I was remembered if someone ever found them.

Because it wasn’t the whole truth.

I just wasn’t writing down the good parts.

Something about that Breealization broke my heart.

Because I wasn’t being completely honest with myself about what was holding me back.

I kept blaming my circumstances for my choices.

My circumstances were valid.

But they weren’t the whole truth.

When life felt hard, I wrote because I needed saving.

Writing helped me make sense of everything.

It helped me breathe again.

But when life felt beautiful…

I didn’t think I needed it.

I was too busy living it.

I never stopped to imagine how beautiful it would be to return to those moments later through my own words.

Somewhere along the way, writing became medicine instead of love.

I forgot it could be both.

Writing isn’t just for surviving.

It’s for remembering.

It’s for celebrating.

It’s for noticing.

It’s for becoming.

All I really needed was to make space for both versions of my life to exist on the page.

The difficult moments.

And the beautiful ones.

To let them blend together.

To tell the whole truth.

Without overthinking.

Without unnecessary pressure.

Without needing every sentence to lead somewhere profound.

To flow, I must relax.

To flow, I have to quiet the part of me that wants to know the whole story before I’ve written the first sentence.

Maybe flow was never something I had to find.

Maybe it was something I kept interrupting.

With pressure.

With perfection.

With doubt.

Writing doesn’t ask me to know where it’s going.

It asks me to trust it.

Maybe that’s what I’ve been practicing all along.

Not consistency.

Trust.

Reflection Questions: 

• When did something you love quietly become something you only turned to when you were struggling?
• Where does doubt still get the final say?
• Where are you still waiting to feel “ready” before you begin?
• What would it look like to reconnect with something simply because you love it?