On joy and enoughness

Choosing what makes us feel alive

From my debut Burlesque performance, shortly after the zip on my dress malfunctioned. Photo credit: Emily Ophidian

Eighteen months ago, I began to write the wrong book. It would offer burnt-out leaders practical tools and perspectives to create greater ease in their (working) lives. 

The start of the project was promising enough. Most days I churned out a thousand words before my children woke up. On our post-lockdown holiday to the Dorset coast, I crept out of bed as the sun rose, barely glimpsing the view over the bay as I tapped away on my laptop. 

It had taken me a couple of years to commit with such vigour to my long-held dream of becoming an author. I’d been spurred on by one mentor in particular. She owns a publishing house and lives in a mansion, so I figured she must know her stuff. There were case studies galore in her many book-length guides to crafting non-fiction. Countless entrepreneurs with a handful of clients, struggling to pay their bills, who invested in her book-writing programme and achieved six-figure success. 

But those stories were weaved in as secondary detail. What she was at pains to emphasize was the deep fulfilment her authors felt as they opened emails of thanks from their readers. The stories of those who had read their books, gone on to work with the authors (who were all coaches, healers, consultants) and been transformed.

“That’s why you write a book” she said “so you and your business can fulfil your mission. You are here to serve. Your own story is only relevant if it helps your reader relate to the solution you have to their problem.”

I am a porous being, and at times take things on with too little scrutiny. Her words went straight in. I held them as gospel. I resolved to write something practical and expand my impact at the same time. I was done with playing small. I was ready to make a bigger difference. It was time to earn what I was really worth.

When my procrastination appeared, as I had been warned it would, I forged onwards. It was an inevitable part of the process. An obstacle to be outsmarted via word count targets and a strict writing schedule. But despite implementing all the prescribed tips and tricks, the thousand-word spurts became trickles. The snooze button beckoned.

The dullness I felt in my body was because of my limiting beliefs about my creative abilities. It had to be. 

Only, it wasn’t.

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I had dreamt of the book I truly wanted to write, long before starting work on the wrong one, but had dismissed it as self-indulgent and pointless. The content I consumed about writing non-fiction only served to justify my rejection of it and shamed my inner artist into submission. But I don’t wholly blame the guidance I was offered. 

It only activated what already lived inside me. The notion that my worth as a human is intrinsically linked to my career. It aroused the belief that I need more. More success. More credibility. More clients. More impact. More money. More. The belief that I am not enough drove me to compensate through the respectable and familiar vehicle of my work. 

It was only when I finally stopped that my soul began to reveal what she truly desired. She did so quietly and over a number of months. 

She told me to write, but in a hard-backed notebook. She told me to lie down on the sofa rather than sit at my desk. She told me to read more poetry. She told me to tinker with poems buried in folders on my laptop. She told me to dance more. She told me to write a song. She told me to write about my younger days and how they had shaped me. She told me to hold what I was creating close. To choose what I shared and with whom with care. 

More than anything, she told me to write for me. 

I did, and time disappeared. Two hours felt like minutes. I set an alarm each morning to make sure I didn’t miss my first meeting of each day. 

I wanted to feel the way I did when I was writing, in every moment. And then I started to notice that everyday life felt a little more magical. Even loading the dishwasher and sitting in traffic. But still I didn’t know where all this was taking me.

And then one Saturday I started to see. I came across a book I’d read a while ago, hiding under a pile of unfiled papers. Emilie Pine’s Notes to Self, a collection of six personal essays. I had bought it on a trip to Cornwall the summer before the pandemic began. The small handwritten staff recommendation propped up on the shelf enough to persuade me to try a genre I’d never considered.

I re-read it, and this time I devoured it in a day. I read it again over the week that followed. I cried. I laughed. I read passages out loud to my husband whether he wanted to hear them or not.

It is likely that Emile Pine’s book has helped every one of its readers in some way or other, but it is also clear to me that this was not the author’s primary objective. It is first and foremost an exploration of what is true for her. And truth is potent, particularly when shared in the absence of any agenda.

In business, the power of storytelling is often cited as a way to juice up your presentation. To win people over. But her creation transcended any of that commercial rhetoric. Her masterful telling of the stories from her life were themselves a portal for transformation. For her and her readers. 

She was a woman with the courage to say things I had never read anywhere else. Unspeakable things. I felt deeply acknowledged by her words. I felt seen. By showing me what she had been through, and not telling me what to do with it, she provided something far more compelling than any five-part model in a self-help book.

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And so, after dedicating myself so wholeheartedly to writing the wrong book, I am happy to report that I am nine months into writing the right one. This week I completed the second draft.

It is a memoir about finding inner freedom through my journey back to dance. It is about how dancing, and eventually performing Burlesque, has helped release me from the grip of shame and martyrdom and start to experience a different way of living as a woman.

The best days are those that begin with me writing the ass out of that manuscript. It’s like meeting with a secret lover.

My ego still pops up to say hello from time to time. It recently told me that my book could be the next Eat, Pray, Love. And I am learning to smile at that part of me. So that me and my soul can get on with what we are here to do. And what that is may sound illogical. I’m still getting used to it myself, but it is what I have found to be true, again and again.

We are here to do what makes us feel alive.

I can feel the joy in my body as I make this declaration. I can feel the joy each time I sit down at my desk. In every moment I think about the book I am birthing. I have poured more time and energy into this project than any other, and I have never felt more alive. 

And I am trusting that feeling, and wherever it leads, is enough.

With love and shimmies,

Claire

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