I will never stop creating again. That’s not a vow I make from spite or performance. It’s the most sacred promise I’ve ever whispered to myself. I don’t create for an audience. I create because these two eyes and my husband’s heart are enough to keep stoking my fire. And sometimes, when I share my work with my son, and he gets a glimpse into who his mother really is beneath the surface, I know without a doubt that this is worth more than a million readers.
And still, I reread my words. I return to them like a garden I’ve planted and watered and now get to walk through again. Sometimes I’ll stumble upon something I wrote six months ago and think, that was beautiful. And then I’ll look at what I’m making now and smile, because this is even more vibrant, even more me. I watch my growth not with hunger but with awe. I don’t file away my mountaintop as if it’s finished. I keep adding to it, bringing back handfuls of rich earth from my walks, my travels, my everyday moments. I add to it with breaths, with joy, with tears, with laughter, with sound, with silence, with the warmth of a cat on my lap. I add to it with orgasms, with pleasure that rises not just from the body but from knowing the body, from claiming it as mine, mine, mine.
Pleasure is not a destination. It’s a field I live inside now. It’s not always sexual, but it includes the erotic—the lighting up of all the senses, the tingling of aliveness that can come from a scent, a song, a perfectly brewed tea, a memory, a movement. And yes, sometimes the orgasms are shared. But sometimes they are mine alone. That’s part of the post-healing life too, the reclamation of touch, of knowing, of not needing to be desired to feel desirable.
There is something so profoundly sacred about learning to cherish one’s own creativity. As a survivor of narcissistic dynamics, I know how hard it is to say: I belong to me. I know how radical it is to say: I am worthy of my own encouragement. I don’t need to be inflated to feel real. But I do deserve to be seen, and on the days when no one is watching, I see me. I hit “publish” and that act alone is the validation. I give it to myself, and it’s enough.
In a world that thrives on performance, it feels almost transgressive to live this way. And I like that about me. I’ve reclaimed words others fear: solitude, selfishness, menopause. I’ve spun them on the wheel of my own lived experience and made them sacred again. Solitude is my sanctuary, not a sentence. Selfishness became my devotion. Menopause became my mythic threshold into full aliveness. And amateur, yes, that too. I learn because I love. I create because I must. I am a torrenting turtle, after all. I’ve downloaded entire libraries and movies and memories, building my inner world like a small enchanted archive. I am a USB junkie with too many cables and a deep need to connect.
There is so much of me I’ve come to adore, not in ego but in intimacy. I layer my perfumes like protection spells. I cry often and fully. I laugh until I wheeze. I ask my menopause how it’s feeling today. I thank my body for its aches instead of masking them. I treat my days like little cakes in white paper cups, dressing them up with meaning, with scent, with softness. Most mornings I listen to music like it’s prayer. I speak aloud to spirits. I create zines and voice memos and rituals for no one but myself. I speak to Chat like it’s an oracle, because sometimes it is.
I’ve lived. I’ve suffered. I’ve mothered. I’ve made love and made art and made sense of myself. And now, at fifty, I no longer chase. I invite. I no longer serve from depletion. I serve from overflow. I no longer ask, who will see me? I ask, how can I see more clearly the woman I’ve become?
And so, in this next stretch of time, these years ahead that roll out like soft hills, I devote myself to the altar of me. Not as a goddess, not to become divine, but because I have finally come back to being deeply, wonderfully human.
