I was listening to Glennon Doyle’s latest podcast episode around writing and creativity and something struck me.

She mentions something about her dual selves — how there was the Glennon for public persona and the Glennon at home alone. And so often, she masked herself in order to fit within the rules of girlhood: don’t be wild, don’t be hungry, don’t be animalistic. However, in creativity — and when she’s writing — she is true. Honest. Visceral. Her untamed self is calling out to other untamed selves.

She’s reaching for resonance. Her real self, unmasked, untamed, unleashed — is looking for others who understand.

I started writing for this reason. Initially on xanga, and then on MySpace and Blogger and Wordpress, I spilled my thoughts hoping for someone to recognize the words I was forming. But something happens when you do this consistently. You begin to recognize yourself. You begin to live integrated.

You begin to find your voice.

I have never stopped writing from those early days. We’re going on almost 20 years of sharing my thoughts on the internet. And even though I haven’t built a following like Glennon, I’ve come to know myself again and again, through words. Because even though there are hundreds of thousands of words I have written spread far and wide in this corner of the internet, I have just as many I’ve held close to my chest in journal and altered books and Notes on my iPhone that are locked away for safekeeping.

This is the magic — the medicine. It’s not sharing your thoughts and hoping for resonance. It’s sharing your thoughts and finding yourself. It’s being willing to own yourself when you come face-to-face with her in the sentences you’re crafting. It’s taking every imperfect sentence and every paragraph that makes you cry and every moment you’ve uncovered a deeper level of healing through letting yourself speak and merging them together.

The imperfect, the resonant, the intuitive.

A few days ago, I found my Awake the Bones instagram. As I read through the captions of posts I shared four years ago, I laughed to myself because there she was – right there for me to notice — the Elora who is writing these words right now. And maybe I noticed her. Maybe I saw and was afraid because of the wildness I recognized in her words. The audacity of demanding healing and recognizing the need for owning your place in this world. The questions of programming and belief systems that were set in place and rooted deep without any say of whether or not they fit.

She was there waiting, imperfect and resonant and intuitive as fuck.

I’m so glad I found her.