“I hope the words on these pages bring you tremendous light & healing. Best Sarah (Ingmanson)”. That was the inscription the author wrote for me in a book called “Word of the Week”. I’ve moved this book from home to home at least a couple times, but to be honest, I don’t remember where I got it, much less have any recollection of meeting the author to get it signed. I’ve been to several conferences over the years where I’ve bought books and had them signed and assume she must have been a speaker at one of them.
Sidebar-I’ve been guilty of keeping books and not reading them for far too long. At the beginning of 2022, I added the books I currently had in my possession to my Bucket List to read by the end of the year, with the goal of not moving them again whenever I buy my forever home, which I hope will be in the next year or two. Over the years, I have pared down my book collection because they are so heavy to move, donating many books that I never finished and probably some I never even started reading! There were a dozen that I had kept because I really wanted to read them. When I unpacked them at my last move, I realized several of the books I kept were signed by their respective authors.
Now back to telling you about the book, I have to admit that I read the preface of this book several times over a few weeks trying to start it. I kept re-reading it because every time I went to continue the book, I couldn’t recall what I had read or what the book was even about. Clearly, the preface was not something that caught my attention. When I first looked at the table of contents, I figured this book would be an extremely quick read because each chapter is barely 5-6 pages and they are not even full text pages, because the pages are illustrated with drawings of angels, painters, and warriors. But after I read the second chapter (titled Truth), despite the low word count, I realized my initial impression was quite wrong. I would not be able to get through this book quickly because the short, simple and to the point sentences were extremely thought provoking in a way that made me take lengthy pauses to ponder and explore my inner thoughts about it, to the point I could not continue reading without taking some time to copy a sentence or two down and writing my reaction to them. So many were screaming at me through the pages to dig deeper within myself.
Maybe it is because I had started my journey of self-introspection that I was much more open to the messages I was reading. Regardless of the circumstances or timing, I found myself compelled and unable to move beyond each short chapter, without getting my reactions out of my head and written out.
As you will read in my future blog post on the second chapter “Truth”, I was immediately driven to crack myself open and reveal my own truth. For the first time, I wanted to push through my ultimate fear, beyond my comfort zone and into a place that terrifies me. That place is simply to be vulnerable by revealing the genuine ME – the raw, unfiltered, open, brutally honest REAL me. The way that came out after reading the chapter was through honestly expressing my thoughts and emotions through writing.
All the while, I couldn’t help but hear the inner voice fighting my gut instinct to be open, shouting worrying fear-based statements at myself, concerned about what people will think if they knew my deepest thoughts that I have never revealed before. I couldn’t help but think back to a time recently when I felt unsupported by others for a decision I made that I felt was best for me and my own future, my true happiness – something that I had been denying myself previously. The sting and hurt I felt from that situation still lingers, even though I don’t regret my choice at all and am actually thankful for that experience.
As others have said many times, with age seems to come an “I-don’t-give-a-F#*&” attitude. Being in my mid-40s and spending my entire life conforming to what society, religion, and familial expectations has resulted in becoming an inauthentic a person who is NOT expressing my true self. I am tired of hiding behind this person I’ve created, someone I am not deep down inside. The cost of acting in a generally acceptable way that goes against my inner me is draining. I wonder if it is worth all the effort to simply make other people comfortable being around me at the cost of making my true self uncomfortable. If I didn’t make it to see tomorrow, I would not be proud of the life I lived, in fact I’d be ashamed of how I wasted my life doing so many things I didn’t want to do.
I started this blog to find passion and happiness in life, but I haven’t been consistently taking actions to find that. I’ve been hiding behind my fears, preconceived notions of what I “should” be doing and probably a few other misconceptions as well. I hope that now I am finally on my true path to enlightenment and that it isn’t to late for me to discover myself and share it with the world, regardless if I will be accepted or not. After all, how will I ever find happiness if I don’t make a concerted effort in being genuine with my thoughts, feelings and actions? I know I can’t be happy if I’m not being true to myself.
Decades ago, I chose “Still Waters Run Deep” for one of my email addresses because I felt it suited me perfectly. I rarely ever showed what was deep within me, staying still on the exterior – in line with what was expected of me. But I am going to attempt to throw my façade and filters out the window, as I use writing as a form of shadow work. So from here on out, I’m going to be blogging and posting unfiltered reactions, thoughts, and feelings of each chapter of this book.
When it comes to Word of the Week related posts, my blog will act as a journal, granted one that is public and available for anyone to read, where I force myself to be vulnerable. I know I have very few readers and I rarely get any comments on my posts. In that sense I do feel a slight sense of in security that. Because while this post is technically out there for the entire world to see, I’d be surprised if a lot of people actually take the time to go through the entire length of it or all that are to follow as part of this series.
I am curious if this will lead me closer to inner healing and becoming my true enlightened version of a better me. It will also be interesting to see if my writing style changes after I finish reading the book and writing my reactions to each chapter. I am very much looking forward to seeing the outcome of my last post after 52 posts, since that is the number of chapters in the book.
That is all I wanted to say as an introduction to this series Word of the Week. I plan to do a new post approximately once a week. This is to help me be accountable for continuing to read the book as well as focus some time on shadow work.
GGibberish 