Growing Pains

on changing, failing, and trying to do it all

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Detail from Apollo and Daphne by René-Antoine Houasse (1677)

Hello, dear ones.

It’s been a short while since I last flipped open your letter box and nestled myself in. In fairness, it has only been a month or so and Ruminations once found its legs in month-long strides. This letter has grown in the space between then and now, though; we are well acquainted with the exchange of soft, stabbing musings. They’ve become our shared language. All this is to say that the letters are piling up on my desk and I haven’t yet found the right envelopes to send them off in.

I just finished the fifth week of my Masters in Creative Writing. Midsem break has arrived lush and warm and long overdue. It’s been…an adjustment, to say the least.

The humdrum of my Life Before is no longer, and I’m still looking for a new tune to dance to. I keep tripping over my feet, you see. Forgetting where I’m supposed to be and when. Turning up to things a week early, over an hour late, and sometimes not at all.

I feel lost.

And yet, so very in love. I’m in love with creating, with arranging my words differently, with turning ideas over in my head like folds of dribbling honey. My mind feels so alive! It runs rampant into the wee hours of the morning (much to my body’s dismay) and there’s not an off button in sight. I’m overpouring with ideas and can barely sort them out into legible pieces of work. It’s as wonderful as it is frustrating.

A few months ago, I would have scolded myself — what do you mean, “too many” ideas?? — but I suppose every blessing can be its own strange curse. This is the way I prefer things, though. I’d rather be chasing at tails than scratching my head.

I’m exhausted, though. I’ve never been very good at balance and rest and already this Achilles Heel is threatening to bring this whirlwind to a halt. Sometimes, my ambition still gets the better of me — we’re forever learning how to negotiate fairly.

Alas, the growing pains will always be part of the growth. I find comfort in knowing they are there. It feels like pressing on a bruise and remembering ah yes, I am clumsy for I am trying.

Growing Pains, from my poetry collection Worm Food and Bone Sand

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I’m still learning about myself

and how best to navigate change. I think it’s impossible to come out unscathed but, let it be known, a liiittle less chaos would be nice. A few things I am doing to keep myself afloat:

• returning to my vision board & making time to girl moss

• many a tea & coffee

• testing out new ways to organise myself (additional tips received with thanks xx)

• learning to prioritise sleep

• spending time with my nearest and dearest

• this poem by Mary Oliver

  

• and, most importantly, remembering my Why (!!)

what small rituals have you been practising lately?

If you, too, are in a season of growing, I wish you my best.

I know your efforts.

I know your aches.

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There is something in this final moment to be said for failing. It’s inevitable. A necessary evil, if you will. Failing has taught me so much in my life: how to forgive myself, how to learn from my mistakes, how to be kinder when I feel my worst, and how to start again. These are valuable lessons. Pearls of wisdom. I never would have learnt them if I hadn’t first failed.

Next time you poke at that bruise, feel the throb of pain and defeat welling up in your gut, remember that you were brave enough to fail.

You were brave enough to fail.

Now, you must be brave enough to grow.

“When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.”

—Audre Lorde

Yours in Rumination,

Caitlin ❧

In case you missed it…

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