Head & Heart

The other week one of my favourite bloggers started a post with this quote:

What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? 

The world would split open." - Muriel Rukeyser

That blogger was Eden Riley of Edenland.  She is what we might call a "big blogger" meaning she's been around a while, gained a large audience and been on the telly. She even interviewed the PM, when the PM was a chick.  So you've probably heard of her.  

But if you haven't heard of her make it your business to hear of her.  For she speaketh the truth.  And her truth is radical.  Not radical in the sense of 'Like, rad, dude' (although that too) but radical in the sense that her writing grabs to buy the throat.  And then kicks you in the nuts.  

It makes you think.  No.  Scratch that. Eden Riley doesn't make me think.  Eden Riley makes me feel  And not in the feely feels, like how I tear up at school assembly when the Grade Five band sing Riptide because they are so damn cute and full of promise and optimism and talent and because one day that will be my kid and I promise then I won't be tearing up I will be a freaking bubbling mess and I don't even know why.  What is that feeling?  Love?  Pride?  Joy?  Because if it is those things where does the pain come from? 

No.  Not like that.

No.  Eden Riley makes me feel like....like....like there is no air and no words, probably because she took all the words, only she didn't take the words, she split her heart open and poured those words out, right there in front of me, and that is so confronting and so real, and so vulnerable and so painful and she does it so well.

So often I get to the end of an Edenland post and I'm just like:

*insert picture of gormless, wordless, gape-mouth here*

Kinda like this only if Homer Simpson wasn't a comic genius.

I read Eden's blog for quite a while before I could even comment there, because so often I would get to the comments section and I just had nothing left.  She'd taken it all.  Except she's not a taker, she's a giver.

She's a warrior.

But hey, this wasn't actually supposed to be a goddamn love letter to Eden Riley.  It was supposed to be an attempt to acknowledge what I need to do with my own writing.  What I have always wanted to do.  What I try to do.  But what I mostly feel like I don't quite do.  And that is to write from the heart.  To tell the truth about my life.  To split the world open.  To split myself open and spill it all out on the page.

That was always my intention when I started this blog.  To speak the truth.  And I do do that. I try to be as real and honest as I can. I have no interest in making my life look prettier or more together than anyone else's, that is so not why I am here.

And yet, getting to the real truth is harder than I imagined.  That is why I respect Eden's writing so much, to really tell that truth is not easy.  And it's not for the reasons you might imagine.  It's not because the idea of putting all that out there is scary (although, yes), it's not because the truth is somehow hidden and unknowable (I am getting better at knowing my own truth). 

It's because the truth, the real truth is so hard to articulate.  The real truth is so knowable and yet somehow defies knowing, defies defining, defies words.  Or maybe I just haven't found the right words for me yet.

I am beginning to think I am too much a head person.  So much of my life happens in my head.  How do I tap into the words of the heart?  How do I find the language for that?  And what would happen if I did?  Would the world really split open?

Or would I just split myself apart only to find a husk, dry and dusty.  Because who am I?  Who am I to believe I have anything worth sharing, anything heartfelt, anything of value?  I am just a somewhat invisible, 40 year old, mother of two who has enough of everything to not need anything who occupies this space like a billion others with nothing unique or interesting to say.

And all that is true.  And all that is okay.

But there is another truth too.  A truth that I have to hold on to.  A truth I have to trust.  And that truth is that I have seen the universe inside myself.  I know it is there.  The vastness of the ocean, and the power of it too.  A wisdom that perhaps I tap into all too infrequently.  And love, so much love.  All that is within me.  The still, vast depths beneath the rip.

It's there within all of us, I know that.  I just have to work out how to say so.

Do you find it easy to get to the heart of things?

Listen to Vance Joy Riptide

Images Licensed Under Creative Commons