How did I get here?
I’m Hayley, and I’m trying.
You want to know my story. It's the thing you need to trust I know what I'm writing about. I could give it to you, but then I’m at risk of losing you before you’ve given me a chance.
First of all, thank you for being here.
This is a commitment to self-authorship. The monologues of my consciousness have a lifetime of teachings for me but I need readers to commit to practice.
This is not just a journal. This is poems, prompts, readings, process, psychology, relational and emotional awareness, short stories, reflections, documentation and life-writing.
Writing isn’t something I do, it’s how I ‘be’ and ‘being’ through writing for you is what I’m doing. Being is the whole point. I honestly do not write enough for the poet I am without you.
Here I share my attempts to make meaning; to make sense through writing.
It’s good to have you here ✌🏼
You will start receiving updates right here in your inbox, secret poems, prompts, personal writings and encouragement to write to make meaning of yourself; to find peace and routes to love.
Enjoy it. Nourish yourself. Cherish life. Its really hard out there, and I am here for you, in service, with gratitude and complete honesty.
What do I do?
I can tell you the theory of what I do but I’m not really sure I’m doing it most of the time because there isn’t a product at the end of my work, I mean there is, there’s some writing and a felt understanding of the thing your writing, there may be a poem, but my work is in the process.
Like many of you, I have a pretty big self critic that postpones my confidence for the day I’ve acquired all knowledge of everything before fully believing in myself. That day won’t come, hate to break it to you, it was hard to break it to myself. Though I have broken open, multiple times, it is hard to know I will never feel completely equipped to do the work I do, yet it’s from this breaking that what I do came about.
I use poetry as a therapeutic medium. The practice is to use creative writing (mainly poetry) to translate emotion.
Therapeutic Poetry
Though I feel this, I haven’t known how to communicate it. What do I mean by translate emotion? In order to translate something you have to understand it.
Emotions control us. They subconsciously react through us. We don’t even know what we’re feeling until we’re halfway through it. They become part of our personality and influence the way we relate to one another and ourselves.
Through poetry, through reading poetry and diagnosing our emotions by writing from them, we feel them, we process them, we experience them with acute awareness.
The process is in the reading and the writing. It’s not new wave or avant-garde. Poetry is everywhere. Song, vows, eulogies, cards, spoken word, adverts, books. It’s common creativity, a way to connect fragmented thought in one container, the poem, and make meaning from this.
Though I’ve often fought with what I do, questioned it constantly, I get what it is I’m trying to do, and that’s to feel, to experience your senses. This practice does make you feel better, but it doesn’t fix a problem, it rather notices the problem as not being a problem at all, but a consequence of experiences and relationships - and I’m afraid even this description of what I do is not conclusive.
Nothing is conclusive until it ends or you finish it, but you can’t finish grief, or end emotion. You could be disappointed at this whim, as you’ve been told that you can end your suffering, however, that sense of instilled joy, peace and acceptance comes from developing a tender relationship with the feelings you want to avoid, or you didn’t even know you were avoiding. The nervous system is clever like that you see. It hides your difficult feelings under thoughts and behaviour. Most of us aren’t aware we’re under the influence of an automatic avoidance technique.
What I do is help you process by making feeling familiar.
What I do is get you into a relationship with your emotions so you know when they arrive and can regulate the way they control you. You cannot control what you don’t know.
What I do is share poems, prescribe poems, set writing prompts and get you to reflect on your writings about a certain topic or feeling and here is where you experience emotion and understand its origin, control, triggers and impact.
What I do is explore the psychology of creative writing.
Why I do what I do.
As awful and embarrassing as this is going to sound, poetry saved me. In profound grief, I could have easily fallen into an addiction, but rather than escape the grief, I went into it through poetry and saved myself. I want to understand the human condition and I get a great sense of purpose sharing this gift.
I am emotionally driven, and this has been the volume of my awareness, but logic and knowing are processes I question automatically, without thinking, so, even though I do what I do, I do it in partnership with the pressures of doubt.
Like you, I grew up in a highly critical environment with a stressed parent who had no time for silly, emotional, playful children. You would think this would strip me of my agency to lead from feeling and give productivity the authority to coerse me into a sleepful existance where I am at the whim of the employment enslaving me. But no, it had the opposite effect.
This newsletter
Is me finding my way through this gift. I keep calling myself a poet and a writer and a therapeutic practitioner, and I do these things but I’m being. This is me being through poetry, self reflection, practice, and trying to cultivate some confidence and a modest income helping others to find and love themselves.
This newsletter is the practice, process and poetry of emotional awareness.
