Bridling Fear and Reinstating Passion

All the best writers I know are the best because they take raw emotion and they take real life experiences and they craft their language in such a way that it elicits those emotions in their readers. It evokes something inside of them that makes the reader recommit time and time again to feeling more deeply, to thinking more profoundly, to loving more soulfully.  It reminds them what it is that gets their blood rushing and what it feels like when their soul starts to soar. It's anything but words on a page. It is emotion crafted so carefully and so seamlessly that it forever changes the way the reader thinks and the way he feels.

All I've ever wanted was to be one of those kinds of writers. One that has a knack for taking a ballpoint pen and an empty sheet of paper and turning it into something that changes a life, even if it is only my own.  Powerful people have literally changed the world with their words. I don't know that anything I could say would have the power to change the world, but then again, why couldn't it?

***

It was never my intention to stop writing. It just kind of...happened. The thing is, though, that it was anything but sudden.
I could blame it on a lot of things. I could say that I don't have time or that I don't have anything to write about. I could say that I lack confidence, or that once I start writing something I wonder why anyone would even want to read it. And while all of those things are at least a little bit true some of the time, that's not really it at all. What is it that stops any of us from doing the things that we love?   I guarantee that it's not our love for those things.

I would be willing to say that the number one dream crusher in this world is FEAR. Fear that we'll fail. Fear that we'll fall. Or maybe fear that we won't. People are afraid of all kinds of crazy things.
I wrote once, about my fears. An inventory of sorts, I guess. It was an assignment. An assignment to write down every single thing that I could think of that scared me.
At the end of it, I sat there with literally pages and pages of ink staring back at me, my fears suddenly tangible. And then I realized a new fear. The fear that I'd let all those other fears hold me back.  But the realization of that newest fear also led the way to literally the most freeing moment of my life.  I'll never forget how liberating it felt to expel all of that fear that my being had held captive for all those years.
And then, I started over. I woke up the next day feeling like I could conquer the world. Seriously. I think I was the happiest then that I've ever been. I'm positive that I've never felt more fearless.
Somehow, though, over the last 4-ish years, fear has crept back in, and it has done a great job of just sneaking its little self into my life...again.

So what was it that really made me stop writing? Fear for sure. Fear of feeling too vulnerable. Fear of letting my emotion seep from my fingertips. And yet, it's that emotion that I admire so much in other writers.
They say that passion should be bridled, but I have learned that it should most definitely not be suffocated.  So here I am, declaring my passion over my fear; Reminding myself after far too long that I am stronger than any of those fears.

Disclaimer: (Are these supposed to go at the beginning? oh well...) I'm super happy! Life is peachy and I am #blessed. I'm not letting go of my fears because I'm unhappy with my life. I'm letting go of my fears because I was reminded that I don't need to be afraid. All I really need is a whole lot of faith and a little natural-born passion to carry me in the right direction. Everything else will work itself out. I believe that with all my heart.