The 2020 Storm
My word for 2020 was ‘visible’. I wanted to be more visible, make my work more visible. I wanted to gather up all the different parts of me, make them into one, and then pluck up the courage to show them to the world.
Then I woke up to 2020, the isolation, the enforced hiding away, the becoming invisible.
Like everyone else, I took my world online. As a writer, this was in so many ways more comfortable. Being visible online while the real, vulnerable me was safely wrapped up at home with the wall of a computer screen as my defense, was something I could do.
I took courses, and I did somatic work with incredible and inspiring women. When I was ready I joined a writing community and began introducing myself as ‘a writer’. I decided to fill my social media feeds with other writers and female creatives trying to normalize my aspirations and it worked.
I responded to as many writing prompts and challenges as I could find time for, started the most amazing collaborative project with someone who genuinely believes in my ability, and started submitting work, everywhere.
The course of this year stripped me of so much of my faith in humanity. It devastated me time and time again, as through the conduit of social media I felt assaulted by racism, politics, conspiracy, and manipulation. I lost so much of my hope when overwhelm washed over me in a tidal wave of unending demands and restrictions. I was one of the millions all experiencing the same things, all unable to express, process, or manage any of it, other than to just keep moving.
In the moving, in the experience of standing, leaning into the wind, knowing that there is no choice, no option than to go forward however slowly, in that place were the embers.
When we struggle, deep down in some hidden place, we believe. I believed in myself as a writer. The internal dialogue of doubt, and ridicule, was the same as the freezing wind biting into my face as I battled with the onslaught of the 2020 storm. Even when it feels like there is no choice when you keep trying you are refusing to give up, which means you have hope. You have a deep unverbalized belief that things will somehow get better, the embers are fed and within the fire of that fierce determination, things do start to change.
Somehow you manage to reach out and connect. You find others battling alongside you, and you share a grimace of acknowledgment that says, ‘I get it’ and it’s enough to add more fuel.
Right now, I know I’m not alone. I have a physical community and a virtual one. I have made myself visible and I feel seen. I have put my writing out into the world and it has been accepted.
I’ve told so many people for so long, all you have to do is figure out what you want and then go after it. Most of the time life really isn’t that simple or that easy, but it can be. It can be as simple as not giving up on who you truly are and committing to lean into that wind and taking step after step.
Hope is a strange word for me. It feels flimsy and fragile. It feels like something you ask for, plead for from outside yourself. This fierce belief, however, these embers that refuse to go out, they feel strong.
I don’t have hope.
I have certainty that I’ll never give up.
This piece was written thanks to a monthly theme from Illuminate, a writing community from The Kindred Voice.
Read more pieces on “hope” from other Illuminate members:
Stay Hopeful, My Friends by Christi Jeane
hope in the time of 2020. by Eunice Brownlee
Shifting Sands of Hope by Mia Sutton
In It Together by Laci Olivia
Who is your Only Hope? by Amy Rich
Hope Over Survival by Sarah Hartley
Optimist on Purpose by Megan Dellecese
A Story About a Dog by Jenn Norrell
Both Fragile and Enduring by Danni Brigante