Your writing has improved, she said.
And I agree. I can feel it, experience it, as I write. But also as I go back a year, two, three, to revisit what I wrote back then. My writing has definitely improved, it’s getting better and better, and what I notice is how it’s taking on it’s very own tone and voice. My tone and voice, something that has never before been expressed and explored like it is now. Taking shape before my eyes, the lines, colors, texture of it gradually coming into being, letter by letter, word by word.
The tone and voice of the books I read (and I am an avid reader!), is something I give thought to. If the tone doesn’t reverberate within me, I put the book down (something which I never allowed myself to do before when I was still oh so harsh against myself. If I’d started to read it, I couldn’t be a quitter…. Oh Helena, how harsh you were…). Pick another. Start to read. Going for a book that vibrates in tune with me.
That vibration doesn’t have anything to do with the topic, or whether or not it’s fiction or non-fiction, No, it’s the use of words, how they are placed on the paper, the pace of it, sometimes who the speaker is, and how he/she speaks to me. There are writers whose tone I love, and those that I just cannot get myself to read.
And my tone is slowly growing, with each word I pen, with every blog post I publish (as well as those I don’t…), slow and steady, a blog piece a day, I am honing my skill at writing. The beauty of blogging is that it’s visible, my journey as a writer is there for all to witness, including me.
As I’ve revisited my blog posts of years gone past, I’m getting the feeling there are topics I’d like to get back to, write about, again, to see what I might be able to do with the same topic today, as a slightly better writer than before.
Better and better….
Don’t misinterpret me, to think I am judging what I used to do, as no good. I’m not. I am merely stating facts. There has been a shift, and hence, what I write today is, in my view, most often of a higher quality than before. But I am not judging myself for having been a bad writer before. No. I merely rejoice at the progression I notice, and take pride in it. Patting myself on the back, for sticking with it, for growing, developing, finetuning and honing my craft.
We all have to start from the beginning, learing the alphabet, to read and write…. and then, gradually, as we learn more and more, as we receive formative feedback, what we produce when writing evolves.
I am happy I’ve rediscovered writing, so that my writing also started it’s very own expansion journey. My writing was at a stand-still for many many years, hibernating, in a state of being neither here nor there, neither alive or dead.
But now. It’s alive again.
Out of hibernation. Expanding.
It’s the most wonderful feeling.
You know it too?
Lush greenery, old gravestones, where the writing is all but impossible to read, tipped over gravestones, broken ones, in all manner of disarray. Hundreds of years old graves with a fresh bouquet of flowers and a burning candle on it. Some clearly forgotten. Birds chirping away, the dapples of the sun through the branches of a tree, insects buzzing, a dog barking in the distance.
Experiencing such peace and calmness, my soul settling down into the bosom of my heart, taking it in, all of it. I sense love in the air at cemeteries. Perhaps that seems strange, but then again, grief is love with a twist of sadness to it, right? Looking at myself, I cry for those I’ve lost in this world, because I love them and miss having them around in the form I’ve grown used to. Walking around on a cemetery I feel closer to those who are no longer here physically. Memories of times gone by sweep through me, of laughter, conversations, smells and sounds of my childhood tickle my senses, making me believe, for a split second, that I am sitting at the kitchen table of my Momo, drinking a glass of her homemade pink saft…
When I listened to this 
This near miss – a gift. Reminding me to make the most of what I’ve got, here, now, today, in this very moment. Enjoy what I have, and remember to take pleasures in the small things of life. Such as a look shared between hubby and wife, in the rearview mirror, as the car speeds ahead again, albeight a bit slower than before. The realization, in that shared look, that life is both precious and gorgeous, and we’d better make the most of it, because it can end, in an instant. And it will. Sometime. Until then, I’ll take this near miss as a gift of life, a reminder to 
But as I’ve recently been in 
Yawn.
HERO - the coach 