Underestimating My Power

This morning, I woke up from an odd dream with looming sense of anxiety within me. Not ideally how I envisioned my Saturday off work to start. You'd think that with the winter fog and frost nipping at all of the trees, it brings an odd sense of stillness into the atmosphere. You would think that my brain would match those same energies. Wrong. I woke up anxious and with a racing heart. Why? I can't tell the exact reasoning why. But as I began to toss the warm covers off my body, I thought to myself, "What a better way to ease this anxiety than writing out all that my brain has to say". Hence why I am here before you, writing for all to read.

I can't fully tell if it is the dream that made me feel anxious. It wasn't fully the concept of the dream freaking me out. But there is something buried deep inside of my chest which is the source to all of this. I unfortunately can't seem to find the source. So maybe if I continue to pour my heart into this little blog post, maybe I will find the source, or at least some clarity.

Welcome to 2024. A new year has already began and millions are working to attempt that 2024 will be a better year than 2023. I am one of those people. To keep myself aligned, I spent many weeks of 2023, drawing and crafting myself a bullet journal. For those who don't quite know what a bullet journal is, let me explain. A bullet journal can almost be anything you want it to be. A monthly and daily calendar, a highlights of the day journal, a habit tracker, a budget tracker, a gratitude journal, a cleaning schedule, a step counter, you name it. The possibilities are endless. As I have spent all of those hours drawing and creating something more useful than a planner, I am vowing to myself that I will use my bullet journal every day. And despite it being only the 6th of January, I have being keeping my vow. In the habit tracker, I have numerous things like: writing, skincare, work, reading, or gaming. Every night before I go to bed, I get to fill in what I have done in the day and take a moment to reflect. And I have been greatly looking forward to when I get to reflect on 2024 with my moods and my progress in my mental and physical health.

Moving on from my bullet journal, I want to discuss about writing. There was one random late night, I found myself working on a puzzle while watching a movie. When suddenly, my phone buzzed from a text message. I peer over and notice it was my sister. Seeing the beginning of the text start with, "don't mind the late text but. . ." I had to know more about why she was messaging me so late in the night. Opening the message, I continued to read.

". . .I finally understand why you write poetry and why you do it so much." Continuing down the paragraph, she proceeded to tell me that she (who is not a writer like I am) took the time to write a little paragraph. Nothing long or extravagant, but it was something all from her heart and she was incredibly proud of what she wrote. "I wasn't expecting it to be such a healing process to do that. I can only imagine what it has done for you." Then our conversation on it began.

But when she sent me that, I couldn't help but reflect on my own work and what the root is about me writing. Take my debut book, Keep Me Sane, for example. Every single piece of poetry in that book is all pouring from my heart. It is all true events and raw emotions that I write about. And my sister brought up a good point, that really made me reflect on my roots and why I do what I do. I write because all of my emotions need to come out of my head. I often get overwhelmed with the stresses of life or have a hard time processing extremely traumatic events in life (in my case, things like heartbreak or my housefire I went through when I was fourteen years old). When I find myself typing at a computer or writing in my journal, all of my thoughts are oozing from my mind and gracefully creating a piece of art with my life experiences.

Art is meant to provoke emotion. Calm the disturbed and to disturb the calm. With visual drawings and artworks, many can admire the techniques and stand within art museums, admiring all of the masterpieces. But there isn't such a thing as a writing museum. Where all of the best poetry or paragraphs are on display in frames for passers to read. So with that in mind, considering I am also incredibly harsh on myself and my writing capabilities, I have never considered myself the new Steven King for my novels or the new Rupi Kaur with my poetry. I have always seen myself as a kid writing. Despite me going to university walking out with a full English degree that is sitting on my shelf, I still see myself as a little girl who is just simply writing my feelings. Little have I been aware, I truly do underestimate my power. But realistically, yes I am a woman who has been writing my feelings. But because of the fact that I am human, I create relatable content. Keep Me Sane is a prime example.

I wrote about my heartbreak, I wrote about healing, I wrote about falling in love. Everything that a human feels. I have allowed my heart and soul to be poured onto those pages and I am allowing the world to read it. At one point in time, I feared it was too much. That I was being too vulnerable. Because someone who does know me well will read every single page and know exactly who or what I am referring to. But some stranger on the street who will pick up my book won't know what part of my personal life this is referring to, therefore possibly learning too much about me. But in the process of me organizing my poems to be published all over the world, I had a little realization. Writing has been a passion for me for years. Long before I knew I wanted to be a writer, I found myself creating little three page stories in an old black binder my mom had laying around. As I got older, and when I knew I wanted to be an author, I knew that I wanted to make my impact on the world. And I can't make my impact on the world by continuing to live in my comfort zone. I needed to be vulnerable. Take the risk. Yeah my heart is on the line, but I had the vision that me being vulnerable will make more people connect with me. And I think that is exactly what happened.

Because think about it. Imagine my poetry book was filled with the kind of poetry my English teacher would want to read. Containing all kinds of rhyme schemes, Haikus, Epics, and Sonnets. Something that would get me an A+ on my assignment. But no one would want to read that, unless you're a teacher of course. I don't know about you all, but I pick up and read a poetry book because I want to feel. Feel healing, feel love, feel something. Last time I checked, writing a Haiku about the ocean won't pass the test and it certainly won't make a reader connect with the author on a more personal level. I would rather create emotions and write what I want, even if it is all free verse.

As I find myself writing about all my true events and emotions in my poetry, I didn't realize how much writing does for me. It does heal my heart. It does make me feel something just as much (if not more) than it makes my audience feel something.

Writing is my art. Writing is my therapy. Though I am guilty of underestimating my power, I still continue to heal one book at a time.

S.Cowan

If you haven't purchased my debut poetry book, Keep Me Sane, please click here to purchase your copy today!

Keep Me Sane Book Cover