
(my daughter exploring our blueberry field; imaged by Michelle Lyerly)
Why is there an internal pushback to being creative? The amount of goodness available to capture each day is practically endless, for each day is filled to the brim if only I’ll notice it. In a moment, everything inside of me cries to declare the beauty that I see: the child’s face warming with laughter, the way the lupine cuttings are perfectly lopsided in my secondhand vase, the pure delight in drowning a slice of bread in the best butter I can afford, or the crunch of the snow underfoot as my family treks through a neighbor’s woods in search of animal tracks. That very same moment shares the nudge to reject the telling; who cares anyway? And someone likely did it better.
For years I’ve heard, and ignored, a voice saying “write, Rachel, write…”. Since childhood there has been little doubt in my mind that I would be a writer, a calling even more clear to me than that of being a wife, mother. But the ever-present trance of the “nothing is new under the song” stole my creative impulses time and again. It was only recently that I fully imagined the tragedy of the woman who succumbs to the destiny of stopping her own creative flow. I listened to Elizabeth Gilbert’s non-fiction book “Big Magic” wherein she describes the unintended impact success had on the life of Harper Lee. Surely, Harper Lee had more good ideas than the two she published. But ah, success – it’s lofty peaks are hard to descend in quest for fresh waters of inspiration. It is frightening to start over again, to brush oneself off and re-engage a challenge. A few weeks after the image of Harper Lee was planted in my mind, I rented the Sound of Music for my children to enjoy on a cold December afternoon. The ring of Julie Andrew’s faultless voice purified the air and sent our hearts heavenward. Oh, kingdom come! That voice is like an artisanal spring flowing through the air and upon hearing it one recalls the most beautiful, innocent and soft moments of childhood. But what if she never sang? What a loss we would never have known. How thankful I am that Julie Andrews took her own risk and sang for us all.
I have so many musings that may or may not impact the reader. But how am I to know if I never try? And what will become of me if I simply store everything inside this brain? This often sleep deprived and hungry brain that is as quick to dump my hastily memorized grocery list as it is to dump the epiphany that struck when I saw the moon or held my child.
So, here we go…I started a blog at 22 and I begin again nearly 14 years later. Older, wiser, keenly aware that blogs are as antiquated as the wrinkles on this thoughtful brow. But who cares, really, for creativity is the goal and the medium is just that.