Thank you, Readers!

I wrote recently in “Recovering My Voice” post that I felt it was time to “write my way back into conversation with you and our culture.” Readers responded. Thank you!

I discovered in your responses that I said in words what I wanted to say, but I didn’t really communicate the actual source of that post. A handful of readers reached out to assure me I had no obligation to write. One reminded me that all of you are going to be just fine and don’t need me to write in order to survive. That same reader wrote, “maybe you could put the guilt of not writing away and just experience your life.”

As soon as I read those words my body completely relaxed, but not for the reason you might expect. This reader and a couple more (people who care deeply about me) were trying to get me to ease up on my expectations so I could just settle into life. Believe me, I appreciate the concern and advice!

But, as I said, as I read words like guilt and obligation, I realized that I had not completely or adequately described what that post, “Recovering My Voice” was all about. I realized that I write not out of a sense of obligation to you, but out of a commitment to myself. I realized that this period where my writing and my voice largely went underground that I had taken a detour away from my life.

It is not guilt that has been gnawing at me. It is this awareness that my most true voice, my most authentic voice had retreated back into its shell. The Ash Wednesday service challenged me, “What are the emotional barriers that I need to remove to get back to claiming my voice again.” It’s not guilt that I need to give up this Lent, but fear.

I know I write in a very vulnerable and transparent style. Over the years I have learned to stand naked in front you. When I am at my best, when I am living into the life that I believe the Universe has called me to, there isn’t much distance between what I am thinking and feeling and the words that show up on the page.

I have to admit that sometimes I wonder whether what my writing is better suited to the therapist’s office. But the whole purpose of that would be to work out my issues in the confidential space of the counselor so that I could show up with a more polished professional presence here. That’s just not me!

This is why my body relaxed when I read some of my readers’ well-intended comments. One thing I know about myself and my calling is that “My Life is My Message.” Some people have commented about how transparent and vulnerable my book “Alone” was and how much my writing reveals a raw vulnerability. Some people really love that and appreciate it. Others find it uncomfortable as if I am violating some unwritten rule.

This is what I know. My calling is not to show up just when I have it altogether. My calling is to be as fully human as I can be exposing my passions, my faults, my insecurities, my loves, my anxieties, my dreams, my failures, my vision, my hurts, and my deepest joy and my most painful grief.

Why do I do is? I do it because I am absolutely convinced that the way to the future is not going to be more professional competence, but more humility, more honesty and more humanity. I am convinced that we don’t need more expertise, analysis and diagnosis. We need more soul.

I have long considered the great Catholic priest, theologian and professor, Henri Nouwen, to be my mentor for how I show up in the world. In a 1986 Catholic News Times article, Nouwen wrote this about his transparent style of writingL

I wanted to know how we could integrate the life of Christ in our daily concerns. I was always trying to articulate what I was dealing with. I thought that if it was very deep, it might also be something other people were struggling with. It was based on the idea that what is most personal might be the more universal.

Another reader wrote me this week after reading my transparent and unvarnished “Rest in Peace, Mom” post. After sharing about her own father’s death she wrote,

Lately, I’ve been thinking how the more we all connect and share our real reality as in what we are experiencing, we help each other heal and grow because we all are connected, but feeling separate.”

I know I expose a lot and sometimes my readers want to fix me and make it all better. It must be hard to watch me struggle. But I expose a lot, not because I don’t know what belongs in the therapist’s office and what belongs in the public. No, I expose a lot because I have discovered repeatedly that what is deeply personal is also fundamentally universal.

My life is my message. It might be raw. But it is also real.