My life revolves around words. Not only do I write this blog, but I also keep a journal, a dream journal, an idea book, and a book with drawings and daily connections. Somehow I can find endless ways to categorize what I think and how I feel. Then there are poems, lists, random thoughts, titles, snippets, and fleeting emotions that grab me. I write down memories from the past that inform my current days and long forgotten experiences that now make more sense. Writing lets me circle back around and see things in a larger context and I do a lot of it. That’s because for me words are more than just words, they are a road into the deepest inner reaches.

But writing is not exactly life, it is merely a way to make sense of life. Anais Nin said it’s a way to taste life a second time. But sometimes words that are on the page stay stuck on the page, locked up tight, with no power to reach inside and transform us. Transformation only happens when we are willing to let them in, otherwise they stay stuffed in old books of our forgotten selves and never given a second thought. I think of the poet Anna Akhmatova who wrote revolutionary poetry in the Soviet Union during a very treacherous time. In fact her thoughts were so dangerous she had to burn her poetry to keep herself and her loved ones safe. Her solution was to memorize all of her words and carry them in the last safe place, within herself. Letting her words burn brought them to life inside of her, what she thought and how she lived was no longer separate. Her words took up residence within her and she spent her days walking around with her words on fire inside her soul.

This is where writing becomes a deeper kind of living, when our words are alive within us all the time. There is no separation between what we think and who we are, it’s then the life inside of us and the life we lead become the same thing. This is where the words come off the page and create a deeper experience of life and a deeper connection to our truest self. Finally our words have the power to transform everything we are.

I have all my journals since I began keeping one in the fifth grade. Recently I discovered an important one was lost. All the things I transfigured and transformed during that time, the delicate insights and inspirations are forever gone. It leveled me. It felt like everything I am was lost too. But then it dawned on me that all of those words originated from deep within me and I realized they still live inside even though the writing is gone. Deep down these words are always alive.

There is another step, there always is. A step that frightens me a little more than I admit, and that’s letting those words finally come fully to life. Letting all the lessons and insights live and work within and through us every moment of every day. This is the process of reclamation. This is where the words don’t just sit on the cold page waiting to be remembered in order to create a momentary spark of understanding, instead they are an internal bonfire blazing all the time. This is letting the things we really believe find their life in our lives. We don’t write for the words to be lost, we write in order to learn how to fully enter into life. These words are meant to be lived day in and day out, they are the words that become a subtle mantra underscoring our lives. These words resuscitate us.

So this is my New Year’s wish to all; that the hard won words don’t just stay stuck inside a notebook but that they come to life and live within us every day of the year.

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