On relearning how to write — and how to live. 🖋️
When my life fell apart, the blog went quiet too.
I didn’t make a dramatic decision about it. I just stopped. Closed the laptop. Let the drafts sit. For a long time, nearly three years, I didn't write a single word. It wasn’t intentional so much as inevitable. Everything in my life had narrowed to survival, and writing didn’t fit inside that version of living.
Instead, I read.
I devoured other people’s stories: novels, essays, lives that weren’t mine. It was easier to step into someone else’s world than to sit inside my own. Reading kept me occupied. Distracted. Moving just enough to avoid standing still, without actually going anywhere. I stayed alive inside other narratives while my own remained unwritten.
So when I finally decided to try again, I wasn’t trying to write something good. I was just trying to see if I still could.
I wondered if I’d forgotten how. If the part of me that knew how to shape sentences had gone dormant. I hoped writing might be like riding a bike — that my muscles would remember even if my mind hesitated. That I’d wobble at first, maybe feel unsteady, maybe even risk falling on my face, but that once I started moving, something familiar would take over.
Some days it did. Other days it didn’t.
There were moments the words felt stiff, like they didn’t belong to me anymore. Days I reread what I’d written and wondered if it made any sense at all. But I kept going, not because it was good, but because it was happening. Because trying felt different from hiding.
This is what a rough draft looks like. It isn’t graceful. It doesn’t know where it’s headed yet. It just shows up and starts, trusting that clarity comes later.
My life has felt the same way.
Some days I move through it cleanly. Other days I trip over my own sentences. I make plans and cancel them. I say yes and then second-guess myself. I try things that don’t quite work and keep them anyway, just to see what they might become.
There’s no polished version yet. Just attempts.
I used to think rebuilding meant getting it right quickly. Saying the right things. Making the right choices. Having something finished to point to. But this season has taught me that rebuilding is slower than that. It’s made up of revisions you don’t announce and changes no one sees.
Writing became the place where I let that be enough. A space where I didn’t have to know the ending to keep going. Where I could leave things unfinished and trust that I’d come back to them later.
That’s the gift of a rough draft. It doesn’t ask for certainty. It only asks that you stay.
You write. You pause. You cross things out. You come back the next day and try again. Not to perfect it, but to keep it alive.
My life still feels like a rough draft, but I’m finally okay with that. It’s still taking shape. I’m still taking shape. And maybe that’s what matters — that I’m still here, still revising, still writing my way forward.
I don’t have the ending figured out yet. But I’m writing again. And I’m living again. And for now... that’s enough.
This post is part of my New Chapters series — reflections on rebuilding, resilience, and writing new parts of my story.
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