By Jackee Holder
In my late twenties and early thirties I travelled the world-seeking spiritual teachers I believed would help save me from myself. I invested in retreats and workshops across the globe, took part in all night shamanic rituals which included sleeping on the bare earth alone in woods at night and paid way too much for one to one sessions so I could hear what I already knew. All the time ignoring the one place where I felt most reverent, the blank page.
I was a sensitive child, courageous, intuitive with a sharp ability to read the non-verbal yet emotionally and psychologically damaged. I grew up in a family that was normal on one hand but full of secrets on the other.
When I was seven years old my world was turned upside down and when those around me could not protect me my defence mechanisms kicked in and I found solace and a place of refuge in books and in my own words on the naked page.
As far back as I could remember I liked to write. Maybe I was eager to expel the words contained inside me. There were unwritten rules in my family, a long list of things not to be spoken of. So my words grew inside me and even at that young age I knew that speaking or telling the truth would mean raking up painful and shameful memories.
I remember an incident at primary school. My best friend Pauline sitting across the table from me was struggling to write her poem. I on the other hand had already finished one, or was it two and was bursting to write more.
Eventually no longer able to tolerate her frustration I leaned over and wrote a poem for her.
Words were an escape for me. They eased the pain and sometimes helped me forget the trauma I’d experienced at seven. Years later this same friend who is still my best friend to this day would tell me how I always got excellent and very good comments from my teacher Mrs Hinds about my writing and my poems but she never understood why. “Because your poems never rhymed, but they were deep.”
Sometimes when we write the very act of writing is of itself a spiritual act. When we sit or stand, pen poised delicately between our thumb and first finger, we slow down. The breath changes, we breathe into the space and in time retrieve words and stories that float beneath the surface waiting to be plucked into the air, given new life and deposited onto the page.
Many of the rituals associated with writing practice lend themselves to writing as a spiritual practice; lighting a candle, starting the writing of a new book on the Spring Equinox as does writer Tom Evans, following the rhythms of the Moon or writing with a special pen. These practices when done in reverence and with ceremony take writing out of the ordinary into the extraordinary.
Not too long ago I sat as part of a panel member on a coaching retreat event and was asked what words of wisdom would I give to other coaches that would grow them as coaches? My reply was, ' to embrace not knowing.’ I believe the same is true of writing. Perhaps it is as I say in an essay I wrote several years ago, ‘ ….. divine that hands which palmists tell us have our lives written all over them guide the pen across the page. Our thoughts may start in our minds, but our hearts are really their authentic resting place.’
The deep mystery of writing can lead to writing about what is not known to you moments before the writing began. Writing is an act of discovery activated by diving deep into the oceans of the unchartered waters of the unconscious. All that writing from way back is and has been a process of unraveling. Nothing we ever write is wasted.
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Jackee holds a Masters degree in creative writing and personal development from Sussex University, and believes wholeheartedly in the healing and therapeutic properties of creative and expressive writing. She’s an established leadership and management executive coach and as a side gig (hint my real work) has been facilitating creative writing workshops and retreats for over fifteen years.
"There were unwritten rules in my family, a long list of things not to be spoken of. So my words grew inside me and even at that young age I knew that speaking or telling the truth would mean raking up painful and shameful memories."
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