Connections

elizabetholdhamMusings6 Comments

It’s pretty brazen to create a website featuring my writing when I’m scarcely a published author or even a creative writer by trade. It’s a bit scary, honestly, to put creative work out there, writing that puts heart before mind. But hey, what do I have to lose?  

At a time in our world when it seems people are drawing into themselves, retreating from the world at large, maybe my words or the stories I tell can help draw some of them back out. Stories make people laugh.  They make people cry. They create connections.

I used to think that some connections were immutable. That they would stand the test of time. Connection to faith. Connection to family. Connection to self. Yet at the dawn of this new decade, I find myself detached from those grounding elements in my life in ways that I’ve never experienced. Faith. Family. Identity. Some of these core connections have either eroded gradually or been blasted apart in the past few years.

It’s not always an easy place to be. In fact, sometimes it sucks. Without these connections, I question who I am. I question the world I’ve created, the beliefs I’ve held. I question the existence of God. It’s as if I’m spinning in circles, twisting around and around so fast that I can’t reach out to stop myself or grab hold of anything to slow me down. It’s dizzying.

So what do I do now? I can’t crawl into a hole and wait for the questions to stop. They won’t go away, and my beliefs certainly won’t suddenly revert back to what they were. Some have irrevocably changed. Others are stretched thin, and only time will tell if they strengthen and rebound or simply snap.

Having the ground shift out from under me gives me the chance to repair or replace those connections that have broken. I’ve got an opening to change what isn’t serving me. The definition of an existential crisis, it is also an existential opportunity. An opportunity to look at the world differently. To live without certainty. To explore new futures. And to connect to them.

And that’s where the website comes in. I want to connect. I want to create a new future. I want to reach people and get my voice out there, my stories and the ideas that make me laugh or cry. My life has been amazingly full and incredibly packed with people and places and crazy-assed adventures. And the narratives of these experiences I’ve lived are inside me, waiting to be told, waiting for me to lend them my voice. I don’t expect that my site itself will be groundbreaking. It may be full of errors. It may be juvenile. I’ll be putting myself out there publicly — for fun, for ridicule, for inspection or speculation – and maybe I’ll be the only one reading it.  But it will give me satisfaction, knowing that I’ve finally put my heart out there and am taking the risk to make new connections.

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6 Comments on “Connections”

  1. I love it… really LOVE it. Brave and steadfast to your commitment to live fully, you are an inspiration, Beth. Nicely done. Lean hard into what you want.
    She says Yes. She shows up. She walks another mile .. You! =D

  2. Love this Beth! And relate to it in a number of ways. I’m looking forward to diving into your words. 💜

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