Am I Okay?

a confession and a reminder

Photo by Chris Montgomery on Unsplash

Before each writing workshop, I panic, just a little. What if I forget? I have nothing? I don’t hear correctly? What if my prompts fall flat? What if I write crap? Blah blah… When I once expressed my imposter syndrome concerns with my AWA mentor and confidant, Sue Reynolds, she said, “Just lean on the method.” Oh, hallelujah for the method. All you really need to be a good facilitator, she reminds me, is to be a good listener.

When I first attended Sue’s Sanctuary Sundays, I was astounded at her ability to not only give back to the writer exact phrasings that had power, but to identify the shape, structure, and literary devices employed. Over the course of many workshops, it dawned on me that listening to how she listened taught me to listen with the same sort of attention. And listening with that depth of attention taught me craft. Organically. Relatively painlessly. One of the precepts of the Amherst method states: The teaching of craft can be done without damage to a writer's original voice or artistic self-esteem. Bingo.

Still.

In a recent workshop, I gave the warm-up prompt: Begin with “In this moment…” or “This is the moment when…”

That’s when I wrote, “I start to panic, just a little.” Which made me question, why exactly do I panic, “just a little?”

It may be a universal truth that under all our strivings, our questions, our offers, and our apologies, lies the question, “Am I okay?”

Photo by Jay Castor on Unsplash

In yoga and other meditation practices, we are encouraged to enter what is referred to as beginner’s mind. With a sense of open wonder. Sometimes, I succeed. Other times, I enter like a child wondering, Am I okay?

Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash

Considering this past week of acknowledging women and all that women have contributed to the world without being acknowledged, it’s not news that we have become accustomed to believing that we are not okay. We are too loud, too proud, too stupid, too emotional, too weak, and god knows, too fat to be of any worth or consequence. Without even having that chorus in our conscious minds, it seems we are constantly pushing shit uphill.

Most writers in my workshops are women, although I’m always thrilled when men show up, and almost without exception, they precede their reading of freshly generated writing with an apology. It’s like a shield, just in case. Just in case you think I’m proud. Just in case my work is the banal/prosaic/dull garbage I think it is. Just in case I’m not okay. Forgive me for wasting your time.

Even though. Even though. The truth is that no piece written in seven, ten, or twenty minutes is completely and entirely perfect and ready to submit, trust me, but there is always a phrase, an image, or a novel way dialogue or repetition has been used that shimmers and shines. There is always a pearl in that damn oyster. Always. The beauty of the method is that when we read aloud, we hear our work differently than when we’re despising the way it looks on the page or screen. As we read aloud, there’s an interesting phenomenon happening—we’re hearing it ourselves in a new way but we are also hearing the way it may be landing with the listeners. Then, there is this third way or fourth way of experiencing our own work, and that is in the mouths of others. Nuggets you didn’t even know you’d unearthed. Symbolism you hadn’t realized your deep, wise, self had used. Other brilliant stuff you were certain sucked.

So, let me tell you, in life as in writing, nothing you could ever do or say would make you unworthy of love. I write this to remind you of what lies underneath all that crap that tells you otherwise. I write this to myself because if every rejection in my inbox, every fallen cake or friend who’s stopped calling has a tendency to insist that I am not okay, I need to remind myself of the error, that it’s bullshit put in place to keep me small. And quiet. And I am big and sometimes loud.

Even though I panic, just a little, pretty much without fail, the workshops go off without a hitch. Writers write breathtakingly evocative pieces—honest, vulnerable, clever, heart-breaking, memorable work. The prompts are in place to provide a kind of diving board but it strikes me that it’s the community; the sense of being together that is the real inspiration and the glue that binds us so sweetly together. It happens so quickly even on screen, even with only two hours to share. We are safe here. And we are definitely okay.