The world is upside down right now because of COVID-19. I confess I was already struggling with high anxiety before this virus became a thing anyone anywhere knew anything about, but this new reality of lockdown orders and pandemic fallout has ratcheted the anxiety up to scary levels. And please know that when I say scary, I do not mean that I am afraid for my own safety or survival. Let me put your fears to rest: I am fine, and I will weather this season of anxiety just as I have weathered all the seasons before it. But the anxiety is overwhelmingly high, and that is scary because it has me in a headspace that is chaotic and outside my powers of control. It means weathering mental and emotional hurricanes and typhoons that toss my little raft violently and threaten to drown me, and I never know what will set off a storm. Nor when they will come. Nor how long they will last.

I was already living in a state of internal uncertainty, but now this virus is tearing down all the solid, dependable structures of my life and days so that my external world is also now nothing but uncertainty. It is exhausting and overwhelming, and I know I am not the only one feeling this. And the uncertainty and anxiety have stolen my words, and I have felt myself being buried deeper and deeper somewhere inside myself that I feel increasingly incapable of accessing. And that is what scares me the most.

So when I stumbled on an Instagram post the other day that told of a free month-long free-writing program called Writing Through Uncertainty, I immediately signed up. I began yesterday with an introduction post in the forum. But today the daily prompts began in earnest. We are given a new prompt every day and are instructed to write by hand in a notebook for exactly 10 minutes. No self-editing at all. Then we are free to transcribe what we wrote and share it in the day’s forum, or not, and to respond to others’ posts, or not. And the goal is just to write words, to access words and, by doing so, ourselves. If you think you might like to try it, here is the Instagram post:

I will post some of these writing exercises here on the blog in a series I’m titling { uncertain reflections }. The title will also include the day number of the prompt, so even if I don’t post them all (I’ll decide day-by-day), the progression of the writing will still be clear.

I wrote in my last post that I lost my words in 2018, and I have lost them before for even longer stretches of time. I don’t want to lose them like that again. I’m praying this will be the lifeline I need to stay connected to the words. And to myself.

I’m hoping this time I will be able to write my way through.