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Truly fifteen years ago, after writing poetry and fiction most of my life, I stopped. There we many reasons at the time—all of which made sense—but the one that I did not consciously understand then, which I see so clearly now, was that I was afraid. I was afraid of my own voice, afraid of what I might say, and afraid I might—because I had had some true success-be heard. And so I stopped writing poems and stories, wrote only articles and essays, instead, and then, not many years later, left writing to work in technology.
And now, unexpectedly, my writing voice is back. In the past two months, spurred on by a new relationship and talks with a friend, I have written fourteen poems. More tellingly, I am in love with poetry again; during this recent vacation, in Michigan, I spent much of my free time writing, reading and thinking about poems.It feels as though someone else who lived inside me but was asleep woke up, refreshed, and was reborn.
This new person—an aspect o f me, of course—is a very different writer than the one I was before. Most strikingly, I am no longer afraid of saying what I think and feel. Long ago I was the girl who wrote because no one would listen to her, then I became the woman who wrote to say things she was afraid to say out loud, and then sometime later I turned into someone who was afraid to say hard things and then couldn’t (didn’t) write (poetry). In the past few weeks, to my delight, I’ve become a poet once more, and one who is able—and proud—to own her voice. Amazingly, the work I’ve done on maintaining integrity and authenticity in my everyday life, on speaking truth and being accountable, has informed this brand new writing as well.
At the same time, my life as a blogger, digerati, product developer and female tech-geek
has given me a chance to test my beliefs every day as I work in a world full of creativity and innovation that is quickly moving from being mostly male to being much more balanced. Suddenly, writing poetry has joined blogging as a morning discipline—one that is gets me up earlier and earlier—and I find myself thinking of ideas for poems—and possible lines—as I drive to the office.
A walk in the Oakland Hills
