EXTERNALISING: MY OUTSIDE VOICE

I’m actively working on existing more outside of my head, on giving myself space to actively be a person and do things that I enjoy without pre- meditating all of those ways I tangibly exist. One of the ways, I’m struggling with this is by challenging myself to externalise more. This applies to everything from thinking a couple of things around something I’ve watched, read or seen on social media and vocalising, when I feel safe to, my thoughts around it. This has been especially important for me to learn how valid my thoughts are, even before they are complete, or I deem them ready for another. It is important for me to be creating space for myself to be heard. I also value being able to more readily take up the space all my loves offer me in the various ways we relate. I am working on believing I am worth of this physical room to exist, to speak, to share, be held and be loved, and part of this inner work extends beyond saying this to myself. It includes sharing the thought, expressing my desires and needs even when I’m steeped in discomfort, sometimes catching myself right before it overcomes me.

Another way I am solidifying this practice of externalisation is by being a lot more deliberate about turning the things I want into things that happen, ensuring that there is more doing and being than wanting, wishing and hoping. This has been greatly inspired my twin sister, Sharon, who has such effective systems in place for her living. She’s shared a ton of resources with me around how much routine and ritual enable us more latitude for the life we want to experience more of. A great perspective shift that’s stayed with me is the practice of seeing ‘your day as your life’ and so, ensuring your days are constantly becoming more like you’d ideally like them to be. While I’m still far from my ideal routine, I’ve become more intentional about how importance it is for me to trust myself, to trust that I am able to keep promises to myself. To take my wants, my dreams and needs as earnestly as I would ordinarily take the other things I deem ‘urgent’.

Compassionate people ask for what they need. They say no when they need to, and when they say yes, they mean it. They’re compassionate because their boundaries keep them out resentment.

– Brené Brown

With my writing, the struggle has shown up as giving myself a voice in my head. I often started with a rough draft that exists in my mind based on what I thought I ‘should’ sound like and sometimes, that was conflated with what I thought ‘good writing’ reads like. At the beginning, this wasn’t too difficult to keep up with but soon after doing this for a little longer, my voice started to leak into the writing. While this wasn’t intentional, on the off chance that I shared something that felt more personal, I received so much more valuable feedback. My loves that read the work I post here begun to send me comments that my writing sounded a lot like me and even sometimes, exactly like me. These remarks continue to warm my heart and I’ve found that I have considerably less filters in my writing here and generally now. Recently though, I have embarked on two new and distinct writing journeys where I find myself back at square one. Here, I am fighting redoing the same steep curve to my voice in these styles of writing. I am working on getting all the writing done first, full of doubt without filtering all the ways it leaves my mind and only then, editing through the drafts.

As I continue to give more tangible existence to my living, I am certain that this will bring more writing here and the unearthing of several other parts of my selves that will make for an even richer reading experience.