What I learned from writing every day for 30 days
While this wraps up my 30 days of writing, there is a LOT more I have to say, and a lot more that I have to give. This is just the beginning.
I’ve just returned from nearly a week and a half on the east coast, visiting family, returning to my childhood home for the first time, eating too many biscuits, and spending a lot of quality time in the airport. Upon returning, one of the first orders of business, after sleeping 11 hours and watching Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, was to recap this last month of writing every single day. As I sat down to write, my eyes welled up, and the tears flowed. “I’m so f*cking proud of you,” I told myself, and started writing these words.
Starting this 30 days of writing, like a lot of things I do, was hella impromptu. As June was about to start, I was going to be working part-time over the following couple months. Between that, and taking a social media break for at least the month of June, I wanted to be intentional with my time. I’d emailed one of my best friends, asking what he thought of Substack, and telling him that I was thinking of using it as a jumping off place to start writing again, but after a little digital detox of June.
SPOILER ALERT: Whether this is your first, or 31st time here, while this wraps up the 30 days of writing, this Substack will be CONTINUING. Stay tuned in the next post for what’s coming next. It’s going to be more fun than a barrel of monkeys.
It wasn’t 48 hours later, when feeling a little bored on a Saturday afternoon, that I started this Substack and wrote my first post, which you can read here. I started it with the intention of writing every day for 30 days. Each day would include a story from my childhood that I connected back to what I’d been learning during the last 12 months of a deep dive, or as the same friend put it, an excavation. I thought I may have 10-15 stories.
Fast-forward to today, exactly a month later, and I wrote every single day. 30 posts and what I expect is more than 30,000 words, considering there were only a couple that were less than 1,000 words and several that were about 2,000. Another 30,000 words and I’d have just about enough for a book. But how many posts, or words, I wrote, doesn’t matter.
What matters, more than anything, is the power and profundity it’s been for me. In my last post, I wrote about an instance of physical abuse from my childhood, sharing a story I didn’t think I’d ever share outside of therapy or conversations with a partner or best friend. As I started writing it, my chest all of a sudden tightened up and felt so heavy, like someone lying a stack of bricks on it.
After hitting send, however, it’s like someone came up to me and took the Santa Claus-sized bag full of bricks that I’d unknowingly been carrying for a lifetime, and helped me set it down. As I started writing the following words, I just started balling. It was like I was symbolically setting down the heaviest burden of my life. As I tearily told myself, you don’t have to carry this anymore by yourself.
“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” ― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
For that reason alone, the hours upon hours I spent this last month poking around my family history, asking my family questions, looking at old photo albums, going to my childhood hometown, and writing, was far more worth it than I could ever have imagined. This is the greatest gift that I could give myself, and it’s a gift that’ll keep giving my entire life.
But wait fam, there’s more! I’ve recalled more memories and experiences from my childhood and teenage years over the last month than I’ve recalled in my entire life. Many of them I haven’t recalled in decades. This was coupled with going back to my childhood hometown a few days ago, in which there were so many memories I’d buried, and hadn’t remembered since I was young.
While a lot of the things that I’ve written about the last 30 days are things I’ve written in my journals or shared in therapy, there hadn’t been the storytelling element to those conversations and writing that I’ve done here. It’s been more in the way of expressive writing, which has its place. However, as a storyteller, and born into a family of storytellers, there was a new level of depth, connection, healing, and growth that came from writing this in more of a storytelling format, in which I was sharing stories from my childhood and connecting it to present-day growth, healing, and learning.
“Perhaps some day I'll crawl back home, beaten, defeated. But not as long as I can make stories out of my heartbreak, beauty out of sorrow.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
Last, but certainly not least, this resulted in some really meaningful, powerful, and important conversations with friends and family. The most talked about post was from day 11, when I talked about the invisible labor of women. Others, like my post on whether travel is life changing or life avoiding, resulted in conversations that I’m sure will continue.
Over the last month I wrote 30 posts, and if you’re starting with this post, then I don’t expect you to read all of them. Ain’t no one got time for that in one or even several visits to the bathroom. However, if you want a more abridged version, here are a few that I would recommend:
Finally, I want to thank my sisters. Because of the age difference when I was a kid (I was hella unplanned), they were like moms to me, and they’ve continued that throughout my life. I’m so incredibly grateful for them, and especially this last year, as I’ve asked a lot of questions and dug around our family history and my childhood.
Thanks for tuning in. It really means a lot that you’re reading this. There’s a LOT more to come on this Substack, and I hope you’ll tune in.
