In the end, she says it is about overcoming the fear that can hold you back, and I am the biggest example of how being fearful can lead to procrastination. I have always wanted to start writing, and even to start a blog, but I kept putting it off because I was afraid that it would not be well received. I was afraid to discover that I wasn’t really a writer after all.

According to Oates, I was born damned. In other words, I really don’t have a choice but to write. She asserts that artists struggle throughout their lives to attain redemption by way of creative expression, because of an innate sense of incompleteness driving them to continually create new works of art. Oates believes the physical creations produced by…

My healing lies in a place of self-embrace, where sizes are stretched and words are dressed in colorful tunics embroidered with lace from foreign lands no map can chart. My healing lies in the space between my breath – a place undisturbed by attempts to control and define. My healing lies outside of me, for everything inside pushes order ahead of the unknown. My healing lies in a place I haven’t found, in a direction I’m forgetting to look.

This has been the most difficult book I’ve ever experienced – like watching a car crash and not being able to look away. There were times when I was screaming inside with resistance, hating the truths she was smacking me in the face with, and she knew! She knew exactly when I was about to throw the book in the kitchen sink and douse it with…

What attracted me to it? Well…tricky question, that is. The book had been calling me for quite some time. The day I started reading it was one of the many days when I thought I had completed surrendering to the process. Little did I know…