Erica Staab

Minnesota Quilt Show 2011

What I know…

Together we are more powerful than we are alone.

That if we are to create our vision we must tap into the deepest parts of ourselves, which requires vulnerability and trust.

That we must be brave and speak our truth, we must be receptive to the truth of others and we must hold a space for the truths we have kept hidden even from ourselves.

That this vision is a collective one, a woven tapestry of heart, healing, hope and delight.  Each string we have to offer adds a new layer, a new color, a new and welcome addition to this tapestry creating more beauty and warmth. 

That this is what we are called to do. 

What string do you bring, what piece of the tapestry will you claim as your own?

What warmth will you share…

What light will you shine…

What hope will you offer to those who need your gentle touch, your kind words, your vision of who they could be… 

Tell me your vision… 

In looking through some of my old writings I came across this, and I have been thinking a lot about my vision, my voice, about who I want to be in the world, how I want to “show up”.  I am learning that a large part of that is having the courage to share my writing.

I have been writing regularly since about 4th grade, filling volumes of spiral notebooks, small brown leather diaries with the little locks that never really worked (especially if you had a nosy brother!), and then moving to computers filling disk after disk of words woven together.  But at that time it was something that I didn’t want to share, something private and personal.

But then there came the point where I wanted to share, but fear kept a grip on my pen, and kept my words from flowing smoothly.  I finally found the courage to share outside of my “safe circle” of friends and family who “had” to like my writing and I decided to join a writing group. After reading two of my poems at the first (and last group) one of the members of the writing group snidely remarked, “Your writing is too light, too fluffy, you need to have the dark too, people don’t want to read just love and light and butterflies.”  Which partially was a function of my age, partially because I had only chosen to share two pieces and they both happened to be inspirational in nature and mainly because that is what I tend to write about.  I write about possibility, I write about what I dream for myself and for others, I write about what I aspire to do in the world.  But that didn’t make him wrong, nor did it make my writing wrong.  And it taught me a valuable lesson.  Just because you have a gift doesn’t mean everyone will receive it as such, and vice versa, just because you don’t see it as a gift doesn’t mean it isn’t.

I spent a lot of time writing for this person who had made the comment, whose name I never knew, whose face I don’t remember.  He became the voice of my fears personified.  I tried to write “about the dark side of life”, and that wasn’t any good either, it was flat, it wasn’t me, and to be entirely honest, he was right.  My pieces were too contrived, too forced and inauthentic.  But it wasn’t my writing, my ability or my voice that was the problem, it was that I wasn’t being me.  I wasn’t showing up on the page, I wasn’t willing to trust me, my vision, my voice.  I was letting all of the other voices- the shoulds, the fears, the not enoughs- write  instead of me.  It wasn’t until I wrote for me, when I finally was willing to let my voice shine through, when I was willing to let my heart beat on the paper in front of me that I found my groove.  I realized I didn’t have to write for everyone to like it, I was the one who had to like it.

I started to think of all the words that had inspired me, that had touched me, guided me, healed me, inspired me, and encouraged me. What would have happened if SARK didn’t dare to do something different and share her writing when I was trying to figure out who I was or if I fit in, or if Joan Didion didn’t share her intimate experience with grieving in her book “The Year of Magical Thinking” when I needed it most, or if Marianne Williamson hadn’t penned “Our Deepest Fear” for me to refer back to when I am playing small in the world.

The world needs your voice, and your vision… I tell people that all of the time.  And now I have decided to live that for myself, to add my voice to the chorus, to add my vision of what I want the world to be.  One sentence, one blog post at a time :).