In the words of the immortal Elisabeth Kübler-Ross:

“You will not grow if you sit in a beautiful flower garden, but you will grow if you are sick, if you are in pain, if you experience losses, and if you do not put your head in the sand, but take the pain as a gift to you with a very, very specific purpose.”

Let me add: You will grow, too, if you write it out, all the goods and bads, the uglies and the pretties, if you create characters (fictional or non—it’s up to you) who leap off the page and into the imaginations of readers, or if you craft poems that elicit emotion in those lucky to read them.

Let the pain, yes, and the beauty, too, the miracle of “being alive and knowing it, too” (as writer Tess Slesinger said) fuel you, move you to do what you’ve longed to do, what scares you, what will feed you in the deepest ways imaginable. Take up the pen and leap.

But write it down, as Rumi said, “so others will understand the passage.” No one can tell the tale quite like you, in your own original, authentic voice.

Write it. Down.

(Elisabeth Kübler-Ross quote from http://www.ekrfoundation.org/quotes)