You have a right to write

A good friend of mine is learning Japanese. He studies for about an hour every day and has done for years. Usually he enjoys it, but sometimes he doesn’t. He shows up anyway. He wants to read, write and speak the language with a high degree of fluency. He has no reason to learn Japanese, he just wants to.

Many of the people in his life don’t understand why he spends his time this way, so he doesn’t say much to them about it. He decodes his manga and carefully copies his kanji when they’re out of the house.

I think learning Japanese is just another creative expression of who he is as a person. When he has the time, space and freedom to be who he wants to be, he studies Japanese. Other people would express themselves in other ways. This is how unfolding works. Plant an acorn in a conducive environment and it will become an oak tree, not a rosebush. Both are lovely, and different.

We all need to express ourselves creatively. It’s part of what human beings do. For many of us in Dark Angels, that expression takes the form of writing. For some of the people in our lives, spending our time this way can seem as incomprehensible as trying to master Japanese. We hear things like “you can’t write a memoir” or “that idea will never sell” or “nobody reads poetry these days”.

Whether comments like these are true or not is irrelevant. They cut deep because they deny our sense of who and what we are. We are people who need to express ourselves creatively, in the ways we choose. You don’t have to read my words, or like them, or respond to them in any way – but don’t challenge my right to write them.

It can be hard to hold our ground in this way, especially if it feels like we’re standing on our own. There are times when we need to hear someone else say things like “it’s ok for you to write what you want to write, to have the feelings you are feeling, to have the thoughts you are thinking.”

This isn’t about praise or encouragement, it’s about validation. If you don’t feel it’s valid for you to do what you feel called to do, you can end up hiding who you are and avoiding your creative life. That takes its toll. It’s exhausting.

Validation needs to be handled carefully. It can become addictive. I think over time we need to find ways to validate ourselves, so we’re not always looking to others. We need to give ourselves permission to write what we want to write, how we want to write it.

But we all wobble at times – I know I do. That’s why it’s so wonderful to have someone in your life who is ready and able to say ‘yes, go on, you can’. I’m lucky to have people who do that for me, and to have the opportunity to do it for others. If it’s not something that’s available to you, Dark Angels is here. Remember, we’re in this together.