With writing, if you remember that being scared is normal, if you are going to be scared anyways, you might as well do so radiantly. Michaela Coale was luminescent in yellow at the Emmy’s as she described this in detail. Her history-making win as the first Black woman with an Emmy for limited series writing was magnificent. But it’s her sterling speech that I am keeping here today. Not only did she dedicate it to survivors of sexual assault, she used the opportunity to remind us to crave our God given spaces for ourselves, claim it and own it too. Not with being visible as society demands these days, but with being invisible, disappearing for awhile to tend to you, to see too what comes to you in silence. But her reminder that, ‘writers, should write what scares them,’ has me saying Amen and Amen like I just entered a moving sermon led by God himself.

The idea of how writing scares me personifies this entire blog. I have no idea why I write here sometimes. Sometimes, I tell myself that it’s for a memoir or a story worth telling and so this is all preparation for it. Truth is, I have no idea what to say even if it was a memoir as the very idea of saying a book is complete or the story ends scares me. That’s why I keep this list. It never ends and I like it that way. I also like that I am moved by words that come right after the next even as I type this sentence. Sometimes, the words keep flowing and I keep writing as if there is a quest to complete, a long rain of thought to finish up through words that string themselves together, sometimes all on their own. Other times there are no words and that is fine as well. I say one or two sentences and close that train of thought for the dead end it brings. Other times I am moved by simple phrases or sentences that just come for no reason except to make me sit and ponder what comes next. Like yesterday afternoon, my 4 year old and I lay on a soft bed of green grass at the back of our home and looked up to the blue skies above. I felt the urge to remind him that if he ever needed me or looked for me and he couldn’t find me, guess where he would find me, he said well next to him. I said of course, I will always be right next to you. But if there ever was a moment and you couldn’t find me, know that I will always be up in the blue skies, behind the white clouds in the sky. As I said these words to him, it was as if my life flashed before my eyes and I wondered what if such a day ever comes. That’s what I mean by writing what scares you.

Death scares the crap out of me for it’s finality. I keep wondering is this how it really ends whenever I think of my sister-in law. She was just here. I feel like calling her, just to say hello and hear her voice just one more time, just to be told this was all a bad dream. This is what I mean by writing a train of thought with words that line themselves up neatly as if by design. Then the words move me back to a previous thought. I realize with Angie that it isn’t a dream and yes death is truly at our doorstep. All this made me feel the need to remind my 4 year old that I would always be up in the skies, behind the clouds and he simply nodded his head as he looked up to the sky.

The words, like so many others, come on their own, with their own agenda, and a demand to be still and let them flow. I listen and do so diligently and move at times too down a rabbit hole of putting more words together, like with discussing where else my son would find me if he ever looked for me. Laying on a soft bed of green grass. Climbing up tall banana trees with monkeys swinging back and forth. He loves bananas. Anything in nature too, flowers that blossom in spring. My favorite these days, Dahlias. Butterflies that flutter their wings and fly. So too, would I fly when I write what scares me, when I write about me and all that matters, all I intend to keep with this thing called life. I am convinced that I am not meant to shrink my God given space on earth and if words are what he has in mind for me, then I am ready. Use me. Nothing you are reading now was planned. The words came on their own. A simple image, a win and an acceptance speech, triggered them too and I am loving this phase of my life, one word at a time. Though tomorrow may be uncertain, for today, and always, I intent to fully write what scares me.