In 2018, nine months after our son, Andrew, was born, I started a blog called BrollyBlue. I wrote until 2020, when I transferred my creative energy to saving Tielka through the pandemic.
The day Andrew was born, doctors informed us they believed he had Down syndrome. The diagnosis was confirmed a couple of days later, as he was recovering from surgery on his newborn body.
I felt a strong conviction to share openly my journey through this change in our lives, the lessons I was learning, and to set in stone values over his life and future. It was an important time. I had to write. But I never felt like writing. The feelings of apprehension, the fear of what mediocre thing I might put to paper, were prominent in my thoughts. I could never get away from this. Yet the pattern repeated again and again. First apprehension, then fear, followed by the frustration of inaction, and eventually starting anyway, feeling a little hope that "this just might work", entering into flow, enjoying what I saw, then refining to create something of touching beauty. From a place that always began with uncertainty, something strong evolved through staying with the process.
This week, as I began to download each piece of writing from BrollyBlue, the pictures we had taken, the pages I had formed, in preparation for closing the blog, I felt a sense of grief and connection to a part of me I had somewhat neglected in recent times. The thing that gives meaning, purpose, value to the life I have been entrusted with - my own.
And the neglect has not been due to abandoning the thing entirely, but rather due to my pursuit of creating systems to eliminate the noise of life, with the direct purpose of creating space for the thing to thrive.
The thing is words.
For me, words hold a unique creative power, both spoken and written. Words give life, change direction, create hope, inspire new ideas; they are the power behind connection.
"You need to write", my friend's words this week conveyed a meaning I had not considered before. Her nuance landed differently. It was not because others needed to read my words, although my words may be read, but for something much deeper and essential to my own personal existence. I needed to write. For the blood to keep flowing through my body, for my own deep processing, I need to put words together. To be the person I was uniquely created to be. To multiply the gift I was given. I need to do the thing.
I write all this to say that you, too, have a gift, a thing you must do.
Your life is for it. And when I say your life, I am not talking about simply maintaining a heartbeat; I'm talking about the act of "being alive", of doing the thing and feeling life flow through your veins.
I recently read that the key difference between people who "do the thing" and those who don’t often isn’t natural motivation or even an innate love for doing that thing. Those who do still experience the same apprehension, fear, and lack of motivation that everyone else does — but they act in spite of it. They’ve found a way to do it anyway, perhaps intuitively knowing that the thing has to begin before the heart catches up.
So it's likely that when you think about doing the thing, you will be met with apprehension, fear of starting, or fear of producing or doing something mediocre.
You must do it anyway. You must do the thing.