As the end of February approaches, I am eager to connect with you. To share the latest chapter in my story.

I have been pondering why I write, why I love writing, what writing means to me. I was searching in my office for some ‘lost’ important papers last week when I stumbled across a pink folder containing high school memorabilia and some essays, I’d written aged 12 and aged 16!!!

Firstly, I loved that these papers were in a pink folder because I am in a self-declared pink phase. Wearing pink more often, appreciating the softness of pink in nature. It’s a feminine colour, a colour I associate with heart. This pink phase began six months ago so it was heart-warming to listen to the introduction to Brene Brown’s latest book ‘Atlas of the Heart’. https://brenebrown.com/book/atlas-of-the-heart/

I had an epiphany when I recalled that the mind map I drew when I was creating this  ‘Vitalitywithesyltt’ blog because the drawing had a heart at the centre of it – and although it may have been more subconscious than intentional it is true that this is a heart centred blog.

Here I am, in this pink heart centred phase and I discover a treasured pink folder of essays. I read them on the weekend. Bemused that while the teachers had awarded me A’s the need to improve comment was about sentence variety. 40 years later Mailchimp tells me that I could improve on sentence variety. More importantly I was delighted to recall how much I loved taking a creative writing class at Davenport West High School. With my mind firmly fixed on ‘being’ a Chiropractor, a goal that I never wavered from, there was clearly this additional way to express creativity that has surfaced.

I think about the 20000 word thesis I wrote in 2010 for a master’s degree, and the 4000 word essay I completed in 2018 as part of a women in leadership course. I wouldn’t say either of those tasks were easy, however I did find pleasure and fulfillment in them.

In the pink folder were 2 essays that brought the warmest glow to my heart. One was ‘my favourite room in the house’ where I describe our kitchen in the house I grew up in and my Mum’s loving and energetic presence in that space. The other one was ‘my best holiday’ where I describe a vacation in Lake Taupo and connecting with Sally who is a very special and lifelong ‘bestie’. Our mothers were friends. In a ‘truth is stranger than fiction’ turn of events, Sally now lives in Western Australia and visits regularly.

Returning to ‘Atlas of the Heart’, Brene says that connection with self is vital to enable us to effectively connect with others. Remember that connection is part of my living with vitality mantra. She says that naming emotions in a more nuanced fashion is essential to dealing with our emotions, allowing us heightened self-connection. Words are critical because words provide us with a framework, a way of expressing and understanding abstract concepts. Although emotions are very real when we feel them, they are abstract. Onlookers may recognise an angry or sad face; the body language of a jubilant person might be obvious however the emotion itself is felt internally and as such cannot be held or touched.

Right now, I am super excited – can you feel it? Bubbling up inside me, because I have had this post simmering away beneath the surface, yearning for it to emerge and voila! With buoyancy it has risen above the waves of a busy complex life.

May your day be filled with vitality,

Esyltt