Yesterday I Googled my name. An interesting look in the public mirror - everyone should do it once in a while. What struck me was how differently layered the references were. And then one leaped out at me. A Detective Fiction website that had copies of Motherhunt for sale. This is how they described me:
"An American author who has lived in England most of her adult life. Caused something of a splash with collectors and readers with the publication of her first novel."
My first thought was - "I wish someone would have told me at the time that I'd made a splash." I began to write the novel when I was 29, a time when my emotions were governed by anxiety and confusion. I had a new baby far from home, and no clue as to how to be a Mom and a writer and earn a living at the same time. Two books, two babies, and two miscarriages in the space of four years - that was intense.
There came a time after I'd written Butterfly Eyes when I made a choice. I remember it clearly, sitting on the bottom step of my home in Bedfordshire with my baby daughter in my arms. I so wanted to get upstairs and write. I yearned to write. I yearned to publish, to go on book tours, to attend writing soirees - to lead a full life as a writer. To give myself completely to my craft. But who would raise my babies? A nanny could not give her what I wanted to give her; I had specific values and qualities that I wanted to instill in my children, and only I could do that job.
My frustration at not being able to write was so overpoweringly fierce, I wanted to abandon my job as a mother, to walk away. And that's when I made a key decision.
I'd learned that my books had a shelf-life and a life-cycle. My childrens' life-cycles would be longer than the books'. The books had to come second. That, I knew, would have consequences. I wouldn't be able to write as fully as I needed to write in order to fulfill my potential in my profession. I would have to focus on other, more mundane, things.
Writing time, henceforth, became tucked here and there. It got stuffed in the cracks. I felt confused, my identity as a writer stripped away, piece by piece, until it no longer mattered. What ascended instead was something I didn't value when I viewed myself as purely a writer - the healing work. Ten years of self-healing, then helping others to heal. Like a glass shattered against a marble floor, I picked myself up piece by piece and healed myself back together. Instead of a glass, there is now cut crystal, sparkling with rainbows.
Through it all I've written personally, kept stacks of diaries, this blog on and off, written and published short stories, written another novel, a non-fiction book proposal, had a radio show. And for the last six months, since beginning to teach for Healing in America, I've been on a writing fast, and it's uncomfortable in some ways, and feels exactly right in others. As a person, my largest inner cogs have been turning, re-gearing, to put my personality in a completely different place.
Last week, my son left for a month with his grandparents, and I cried at the airport. University will be coming around so fast. The crack in the cliff-face, that tunnel upwards into a meadow of writing, where I can once again explore the potential I chose against with the baby in my arms - that's within view.
What's really cool? All the healing work I've done for myself and others over the intervening years has put me in a very peaceful, centered, and connected place. Writing now comes from a new well. A very deep, and full aquifer. I see people in a completely different way. I react to stress with peaceful resources. I deal with conflict with strength and clarity. That's the crystal. That's ten years of healing and becoming non-attached to the label of 'writer'.
It's a completely different space.
And the writing that flows from there will be ...
