Your Full Self Matters. Full Stop.
Our little rescues, Winnie and Junie.
I recently invited my subscribers to identify their biggest question about uncovering their full self on the page.
I wasn’t expecting this response: “No one would be interested in my story unless it was a means to an end, i.e. me writing a description of an adoptable dog or cat!”
At first I chuckled at this silly notion we’ve been saddled with, culturally, that writing matters only when it’s utilitarian, that unless our words leave the reader driving home with a couple of ball of fur they didn’t even know they needed, our musings are nothing more than self-serving naval gazing.
But I haven’t been able to stop thinking about that reader’s reply and its implications. And I know exactly where the sentiment comes from. I remember a senior administrator at one of my schools telling me that it’s “poor form” to write about yourself.
Better to take an interest in others, he said. And I believed that for a long time.
But every time I assigned my students to write about their lives, they experienced a transformational shift in their relationship with themselves and with their classmates. There’s nothing more important than finding your whole self, and not judging it, on the page.
I’m interested in you for one reason: because I’m selfish.
I need to know how your experiences–your joys and losses, your frustrations and forgivenesses, your justifications and realizations–can inform my own. I want to know that I’m not alone, that others have felt this same gnawing in their chest, the same desire to run away from it all or to shout from the rooftops.
I need you to share your laughter and your heartache, your vulnerabilities and your victories, so that I can walk through this spinning rock we call home a little less lonely.
So, yeah. Your whole self matters. And I don’t need a cat or a dog to go with it, though that would be lovely.
Meet Jen
I find nothing more rewarding than inspiring people to value their stories and the fullness of their journey.
