If Your Nerve Deny You...

I want to see this flick...

It's entitled, "Wild," and based on the 2012 New York Times best selling memoir by Cheryl Straydon.  At the age of 26, after having lost her mother, her marriage and most of her will to live, she made a decision to hike thousands of miles on the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington state, alone.  Through her sojourn, she found a way to heal and to ultimately, be the woman she was destined to be.

The movie trailer begins with Reese Witherspoon, the actress playing Cheryl Straydon writing the beginning of a poem by Emily Dickinson in her journal...

"If your nerve deny you

go above your nerve."

I am in love with that message for so very many reasons.  All too often, I don't write what I want to write or say what I want to say or do what I want to do because of what the "right" thing is to do or God forbid, what others will think and how "that" will reflect upon me or my family.

Yet, the other day, I read a passage from one of my favorite authors who said that when she writes, she is simply a vessel...it's as if a freight train is exploding through her being and she must dispel it into the world.  Some of my best writing has come in that fashion...when I feel pressure welling and almost a mandate to get it out of me and into the world.

And most times, my nerves are telling me no and my gut is telling me to ignore them and to birth whatever it is that I've been temporarily inspired to share with the world.

I don't think that we all have to go on an amateur, untrained, risky, soul-searching trek through the vast wilderness to speak our voices more clearly and honestly in the world...but I do think, we have to release those parts of us that hold back and try, even if it's incrementally to share more of the raw, bold, hidden parts of ourselves with each other.

There's nothing better than feeling connected, knowing that you're not alone, recognizing that your voice helped to give voice to another.  What do we really have to lose?