Sometimes the thing you love needs to transition too

One of the biggest throughlines of my life has been a love of reading and writing. These have been enormous gifts that have brought so much richness, so much meaning, so much company along the way. When I was nine my neighbor taught me to make books with folded printer paper and masking tape and I wrote and illustrated these with pride. I wrote books like “The Girl Who Hated Cleanness,” and “The Girl Who Loved Horses,” using my life for inspiration.

Books to escape into and writing poetry in my journal can be credited for helping me survive high school.

And once I encountered my first creative writing workshop in undergrad there was no going back. No matter what else didn’t make sense in life, writing and reading were always there for me. Naturally, I assumed my life trajectory would include authoring bestsellers eventually. I finished one master’s degree that was rich in friendships and life-changing extracurriculars (including therapy), but that didn’t make a lot of sense otherwise, and found myself admitting that all I’d ever wanted to do was write so maybe I’d go study that next. I was so blissed-out by my MFA in Creative Writing program.

photo by Melissa Officer

The next twelve-ish years I wrote several novels and many short stories, while working in leadership development to pay the bills. A few of the short stories found homes in the larger world, but the novels didn’t. Over those years writing became more and more of my identity. It was growing in how important it was to me, but the joy of it was way less present with each passing year. Instead of finding myself in and through writing (a healthy relationship), my sense of identity started to become fused with it (an unhealthy relationship). If I wrote, I could feel good about myself. If I didn’t, I couldn’t. If I got something published I was amazing. But there were so many more days when things weren’t getting published, and it was an ever-increasing challenge to not get discouraged. The fun of making stories got choked by my very narrow definition of success—bestseller or bust.

Then I started my coach training in 2021. And I fell in love with coaching. More in love than with writing (!) And that rocked my tenderly-held writer-identity more than a little bit. Coaching felt easy and joyful, just like writing had when I was a child. It lit me up. But that felt like a betrayal of something I’d held so dear for so many decades.

It took a while (I’ll spare you the inner resistance swirl, but it was big) but I finally realized I needed to change my relationship with writing. Well, first I had to realize I COULD change my relationship with writing. Then I realized I wanted to and was willing to. I didn’t have to choose whether I was a coach or a writer. I didn’t have to worry about which one I loved more on any given day. I could use what I was learning from coaching and apply it to my relationship with writing.

Which meant for a while I didn’t write At All. After decades of writing every week, I let myself stop. Now, obviously, I was writing emails and all that. But I wasn’t working on any creative writing projects – no stories, no novels, no mini-memoir. The writing I do for a blog like this or to share ideas with others may be creative-writing-adjacent, but it feels so different that it might as well be in another language.

Sometimes the things we love so passionately, and that once served us well, also must transition to grow into what we need next. It doesn’t mean it goes away, but it may need to change form. It may need enough of a break to heal burnout. It may need stepping away to get a bigger perspective. It may need us to release our tight grasp on what we think we are to find more of what we are capable of.

This is all getting stirred these days because I’ve stepped back into the stream of a couple writing projects that are dear to me. And I’m trying to approach them differently. With just as much passion but a looser grip on perfectionism. With more play and possibility than identity-affirming requirements. Just like any new relationship, I’m still finding my footing. But it’s feeling good to be in the stream again.

Have anything in life right now that you used to love that could benefit from a changed relationship with it?

Here’s how to get started:

First, name it. Name the thing you love (whether that’s a person, a hobby, an object, a passion project, what-have-you). And no matter what feelings and thoughts come from that, know that naming it is the first step toward getting to a place where it can be in your life in the way you want and need it to be.

Second, give yourself permission to change your relationship to the thing. Recognize that you are allowed to change your relationship. That’s it’s possible to change your relationship. That you can make that choice.

Third, ask yourself Am I willing to change my relationship to this thing I loved that’s no longer working? This could kick up a lot of thoughts and feelings too, and that’s okay. Sometimes you need to sit with these, sometimes you need to listen to what they want to teach you, and sometimes they are trying to protect you from something that you are now brave enough to face.

Next, change one little thing. Interrupt the pattern. Take one small step, even if that step is taking a break. Be willing to embrace the YOU that you are with or without that thing. YOU have always been enough, just as you are, no matter how hard your mind or the world might try to convince you otherwise.