I feel so comfortable shouting my love from the rooftops. I’ve shared it on the local billboard, made heart shaped pancakes at breakfasts with friends (okay, maybe that one’s a little embarrassing in retrospect), and have published four articles on a popular online magazine about how deeply I love my partner. Writing about our relationship is effortless and fluid. It sounds cheesy, but so much feels poetic in the life we create, that writing prose feels like a gimme. I am so proud of our imperfect, sometimes messy, always rewarding relationship.
After I published the most recent essay about Jake on Adventure Journal, so many people in Lander told me I was brave—to publicly share something so personal, to be vulnerable in front of strangers, to attach my name to something that can feel beautiful and fragile. Really, I’m not. This isn't false humility or trying to feign an air of modesty. My love feels like the most rooted and certain part of my life, as sure as the sun’s rising. I process and work through everything by writing about it. Writing about Jake makes me feel connected to him even when we’re not directly in one another’s lives. It’s not brave. It’s essential, indispensable.
Writing about rock climbing, on the other hand, is terrifying. While being published by Rock and Ice Online is exciting, I am experiencing strong imposter syndrome. What the hell do I know? I'm a writer, a woman who dabbles in twelve different sports and has expertise in none. I have a hard time calling myself a climber. What I do know intimately well is my own experience, so that's what I can share.
Agreeing to be published by Rock and Ice is vulnerable because of my self perception. Sharing it with people in my community who rock climb is extra-extra-extra terrifying. I re-read that last edit 38 times to be sure it felt like me. Even as I write this blog post, I wonder if I'd be brave enough to show my Lander community another rock climbing essay again. Holy smokes that feels so uncomfortable.
But I think that's where growth happens, right? Right. Right?