Let’s Try Dreaming

I tried to start this post from the place of heaviness and pain that has led me back here. However, the words don’t want to come. Most of my creative writing adventures have usually stemmed from some sort of pain and writing has helped to alleviate that pain, helped me to process it and release it. Once I have worked through it I stop writing and move on. I have struggled, really since seminary, with writing consistently because I am unsure of how to create from joy, to create from a wellspring of creative energy—that is not just pain.

I have been quite transparent here that my growing edge is reveling in the joy in this world—finding all those things that truly make life worth living. I live and dwell so much of my life in the dark, often hopeless, anxious, and fearful spaces due to my call to serve as a hospital chaplain. While I glimpse the magic and power of love—it sometimes feels like it gets lost in the intensity of the pain and heaviness I navigate through.

Back in the spring, I started to watercolor for fun, as a lighthearted way to create from a space of joy. I also began working with a creative mentor to help me cultivate a deep wellspring of creative energy and inspiration. My hope has always been to get back into writing, yet, for years I have become increasingly resistant to this gift and calling. The self-critical narrative getting in the way or pressuring myself to create in ways that felt more like work and a heck of a lot less like play. I met with my creative mentor last week who then assigned me the homework of writing a blog post—one post between this session and the next time we meet, a whole month to do the homework. The task has felt overwhelming and I could feel myself locking up creatively; especially as the weeks have been emotionally taxing. I felt that familiar pressure to create from the place of pain—to find words for all the suffering I have experienced. Then I felt, tired.

“I am tired.” That is all I could say and feel for weeks straight. I fell off the routines that help me feel whole and not only like a pastor/chaplain/clergy. And perhaps this professional clergy mode that I have found myself locked in has made writing over the past few weeks, really, years more difficult. It hasn’t felt like my space anymore, it has felt more like pressure to keep working when I so desperately need play and lightness. A chance to be Margaret who is truly a versatile girl (see what I did there?).

I have often joked that I would love to be an influencer. Lately, I have taken the opportunity to actually consider this joke more seriously. I had a friend who would always say “there is a truth in every joke.” The joke I have been making has some level of truth, desire and threads of a dream in it.

I have reflected on what my intentions would be to create content that is not strictly spiritual or faith based in nature. What kind of influencing would I be trying to do? How do I want to show up in this space responsibly and morally? How do I align content with my values and who I am? These reflections, have of course, been laced with a lot of shame talking and self-criticism. I am also quite personally aware of just how harmful blogging/influencer content can be for my own mental and emotional health. So I am dreaming of creating content that I hope and pray will not cause feelings of inadequacy, comparison, self-criticism, or promote excessive consumption.

I am allowing myself to dream up a different type of content and a new way to use this space that I have carried with me throughout so many stages of life. I started this blog initially to be a fashion blog which then morphed into spiritual reflection, a way to lean into my call to ministry before I even understood or had parsed out that call. Now, I think the site or maybe me who is technically The Versatile Girl, is trying to develop a new way to serve my heart and soul. I know the kind of content I want to consume; content that I haven’t fully come across on the internet. A mix of substance and lightheartedness. I am trying to find a way to bring all the different pieces of myself together here—embracing the light and perhaps frivolous side of myself (my love of jewelry, makeup, clothes, hair, and skincare etc.) with my deeper more spiritual and emotional self.

I am scared to admit all of this and invite others into it—sharing it here in this space, has me feeling a lot of pressure to produce and yet, there is a sense of freedom and invitation to create not produce. A freedom to dream and feel uncomfortable in that dreaming and in how I want to show up for myself. I have felt stuck to only create the type of content I always have—but what if I embraced all of me and shared it with intentionality, respect of self and others, and with intentional loving-kindness?

I am not quite sure how this space will transform—but she always has found a way to align with me in different stages of life. I hope she will be a place of joy, of freedom, a place to come as you are—a place where the whole of human experience (joy, lightness, laughter, love, tears, sorrow, grief and heaviness) might be able to exist in harmony without judgment.

I feel deeply uncomfortable and yet, I choose to push through discomfort to choose myself. To honor my desires to create for myself, with hope it might still connect and inspire others—but to simply do what my heart has wanted to for so long and to try to do so without judgment and shame. This post is ultimately a post granting myself permission. I am naming, on my public site—my dreams matter, they are sacred and deserve attention—no matter how silly or frivolous others or even my own self believe them to be.

To those who have been with The Versatile Girl for a long time and to those who might be new —thank you for taking the time to read and care, it means more than you know. My hope, prayer, and intention in this space has always been and will always be that we allow ourselves to accept the invitation to live fully into the beloved ones who God created us to be, to be authentic to ourselves, to love ourselves and one another more wholly, to treat ourselves and others with grace, kindness, respect, care, and above all love.

May peace, love, and comfort find each one of us wherever we might be.

With love,

The Versatile Girl, Margaret