Poetry is when...

According to Robert Frost, “Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.”  I really love this; of course, what don't I love from Mr. Frost? What a beautifully concise description of the process of creating poetry... especially the poems that, when completed, we read back to ourselves and wonder "where did that just come from?"  I don't feel like "I" have written those. It's like whatever the emotion was that stirred in my soul grabbed onto its thought, quite independent of any conscious doing on my part, and together they discovered their words... and I am responsible only for putting them to paper. It's beautiful when a poem is born that way! 

Perfect Imperfection

With the release of my first book of poems (you can purchase it here!) I'm also re-introducing my blog... and it's very much a work in progress, just like me. So, off we go!

Okay. So it's no big secret that I am a believer in talk therapy (a devotee, as my wonderful therapist recently anointed me). It has quite honestly been the best gift I could have ever given to myself; and I encourage anyone who has ever thought about embarking on the immensely rewarding adventure of self-knowledge to just go for it!

Now to the point of this post... after much stalling on my part (read: being a big chicken) I finally put together a selection of my most recent poems to self-publish, and submitted my little book to the independent publisher I had chosen to use. Submitted, reviewed, made changes; resubmitted, reviewed, made more changes; resubmitted, reviewed... well, you get the idea. After doing this numerous times I decided that if I continued to make changes until I thought it was perfect, I would likely never click on that scary "approve" button. I would remain stuck in the land of "big fat chicken" for the rest of my life. So, I took a deep breath and approved my book.

Yes folks, some of you have already guessed what comes next. The following morning, I looked at my proof again and discovered that I had submitted the wrong contents page. Eek!! So, it's out there now on Amazon, just as imperfect as I am....

Oh, I could probably jump through a few hoops with the publisher and try to do a last-minute correction. But if there's one thing I've learned in my therapy process, it's that I'm never going to be perfect - what I want to be, instead, is whole. Leaving my book out there "imperfect" is to me a testament to my acceptance of being imperfectly human; a promise to myself that I will never again let the fear of not being "perfect" keep me from realizing a dream.

I don't mean to advocate carelessness, or being lazy, or anything along those lines. That's not what this is about. This is about loving ourselves enough to accept that we will never be perfect and that it is "perfectly okay" to go out and make our dreams come true anyway!!

And, next time, just maybe get the contents page right....