Writing is like wrapping yourself up in words and giving yourself away.

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You wonder what people will think of the gift.

Will they love it? Will they want to keep it? Will they share it with their friends? Being unwrapped is deeply delicate business. So what you all did on Wednesday? How you received me and my book and unwrapped with such delight?

I shall always see January 29 with a bright pink ring around it. Candy nail polish pink.

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Writing makes us brave. And terrified. Often simultaneously.

That’s OK. Write anyway.

This is the beginning of the fourth year of a whole community writing brave together on Fridays.

Here’s how it got started and how to join us. Just remember, the one rule is that you need to read the post of the person who linked up before you. And tenderly unwrap their words and share a note in their comments.

Writing is a gift. Let’s take time to say thank you. Leave a comment for someone today. {click to tweet that little slice of awesome.}

Today’s prompt is HERO.

Go:

She dreads Mondays. And Thursdays. And Saturdays.

She is certain her weeks are the same cycle set on repeat. She tells herself that she should have lost that baby fat years ago. I see her commute to work. I see her pick up the baby at midnight, rock the toddler, soothe the tweener back to sleep.

She sees herself in the mirror and misses what she was. And she misses what is. That tattered and torn cape fluttering from her tired shoulders.

She wonders if mac ‘n cheese is a food group. She cuts carrots. She rinses out sippy cups. Again.

She shows up at the awkward parent-teacher conference. She forgives. She bleeds from a heart cracked wide open with no hope of being band-aided back together.

She goes all in even on the days she wants out.

She bends and picks up sneakers that should have been put up on the shoe shelf. She crawls hand and knee on the carpet looking for the lost tooth that needs to be tooth fairy found.

She cries.

She reads tucked away behind a closed door on top of the toilet seat.

She remembers and she forgets and years later she remembers again.

This new beginning. This breaking up with herself.

This falling in love with someone better, louder, longer, for life.

Stop.