Into the Hiding Place

Maybe life was not meant to feel so bright

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I am reading “LifeLines,” by the famous co-founder of Melissa & Doug- Melissa Bernstein. I am barely through the first 25 pages of her book. I am enamored enough by the profound vulnerability and beauty shared in this book that I am already suggesting that if you have ever struggled with the “Am I enough?” question in your life to grab a copy and be ready to take notes.

I do not promote books like this regularly because I often find pushing products of any kind to be overtly daunting, but I am too overcome not to share this with you for this one realization: You are not messed up and life did not simply inherit a hardwired mess of trauma from your family, but the darkness can be a safe place to explore, and you do not have to feel an ounce of shame for regularly questioning the existential nuances of being too much for questioning life so deep and dark.

And as you read the long run-on sentence of my mind running wild, it is opening up a bridge that I did not expect to find warm and comforting. The dark can be a safe place to play if you will let it.

For years I have struggled with trying to brighten up my work thinking no one will want to see day in and day out the struggles of what makes life worth living and being distraught when no answers come. In fact that is where the beauty of creativity can become most compelling, so in this new year, here is what I promise you. A life unafraid of the shadows.

Much like Edgar Allen Poe, Vincent Van Gogh, Ernest Hemingway or Sylvia Plath, instead of trying always to brighten up the heaviness of how I often feel, you will start to see the unabridged versions of me that can often go off the deep end because these works are longing to be shared and no longer hidden by the brightness of the light.

Love always,

Jessica