This Wand Can Do Magic

"This is a wand. The wand can do magic, but what kind of magic can the wand do? Snow magic! Sun magic! Rain magic.... " E.M  Age 5

I was so proud when she wrote this. I thought, how fabulous, what a great story! So forward for a five year old.  I started wondering if she might grow up to be a writer. I entered her into a little children’s writing contest. I died a little more inside.

I used to love to write. When I was a teenager, writing was an escape. I was deep and broody and mature through my writing. I was fantastical, I was elegant and sophisticated. I was someone on paper that I could never be in real life. When I saw her writing, I remembered.  I want to write, I love to write. I always thought I have a book in me, I have a story to tell, I have advice to give.

I have been inspired by my five year old daughter. To write. To put words on a page, to stir some emotion again. It used to mean something to me. I felt deeply, I empathized, I was passionate. People knew I cared.  I was interesting and had interesting things to say, and then this happened. I stopped working, researching, writing and started mummy-ing.  I blamed mummy-brain and pregnancy and nappy-brain. But really I stopped thinking. I stopped caring deeply. I stopped trying hard on anything except mummy-ing, and  in doing this, somehow I missed the point. The next meal, the next point on the route, the next stop on today’s train track to tomorrow – I am the driver, the engineer and the passenger. We can’t possibly go anywhere if I am not focused completely. The slightest oversight or lack of forethought might spell disaster. 

 Her beautiful, clever, simple story made me so proud of her and so ashamed of me.  How did I shrink so small, while expecting her and the rest of my family to grow so big. I have been feeding them from my muscles, cannibalizing myself, my talents, and my skills for their nourishment. I criticize myself so strictly that I don’t even start anything. I blame lack of time or inclination but really I am too scared to think I will never be anything more than what I am in this very moment. I’m afraid to find there is nothing substantial behind this thick facade of mummy-dom.  Mummy doom. I feel a need to put a smiley face or exclamation mark after everything I write – an apology for my lack of creativity and true emotion.

So I am going to put words on a page, to find some creative juice, to grow rather than shrink.  Go on. Start a blog, everyone is doing it these days.  Write about what you know. Share some advice, write something deep and meaningful – I’m not sure – let’s see where we end up. And it doesn’t matter if anyone else reads this. And if they do… what they think doesn’t matter as much as what I think matters.  If I tell myself often enough I will believe it.  Another inspiration has just painted an entire painting in one sitting every day for 100 days. If she can paint…I can write (not every day though - I DO have children!). Something, anything.  Cliché  or boring is better than nothing.  And maybe I might just find a little of myself again. This is a wand, it can do magic.

Do you journal or blog? Why did you start and what is your inspiration to keep going?