"Finding my way home"


by Mari L. McCarthy



Thanks to another MS episode, I’ve learned how to live the life I want as the healthy, creative woman I truly am.


In March, 1998, based on a stellar performance review, I got approval for transferring from my company’s high pressured customer service area to the really-where-I-wanted-to-be marketing department. But management kept delaying the move telling me that I was needed in customer service “just a little while longer, just a little while longer, just a little while longer. . .. ” At that point, I had been living with MS for seven years and was getting better at paying attention to my body’s messages. I knew I was beginning an exacerbation and as an extra added distraction, my hormones were providing me an unending menstrual period. Rather than use my remaining energy to change their minds, I quit.


Now what was I going to do with my life? What could I do? Most importantly, what did I want to do? One day, driving into the post office parking lot, wondering what my next career move would be, I heard a voice say “well, you could always write.” Hmmm, I thought. When I unlocked my post office box, there was a chartreuse postcard announcing a Freelance Writing Seminar.


Then, after a holiday party talk with a hypnotherapist, I bought Julia Cameron’s book “The Artist’s Way.” A book about discovering and recovering creativity. At first, I wasn’t sure its writing exercises were going to work since I didn’t own any creativity. But my left-brained businesswoman thought the book’s “Morning Pages” writing routine would help me learn how to write with my left hand since my right hand had never returned from this latest MS event.


The daily “Morning Pages” process entailed three handwritten pages of whatever. No thinking, no topic sentence, no outline, no spell and/or grammar checking. Just writing. So each early morning, after doing my stretching exercises so I could safely get out of bed, I headed downstairs to my dining room table. And I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. For weeks and weeks and weeks.


Within the first month, strange things started happening. Interesting words, phrases, sentences just appeared. Like the name of my eighth grade boyfriend, Bob Page, and my childhood amusement park, Kennywood. These “messages” prompted me to explore my childhood memorabilia box that my parents gave me. It contained my essays, report cards, letters, first diary, prize ribbons, all the way up to and including clippings from my first real job as a weekly newspaper editor. So making a new career out of writing wasn’t so far off. But what to do next? I needed to develop a plan so I contacted my pages for some guidance.


I modified my “Morning Pages” practice, making it more a dialog and less a straight data dump. I asked my pages questions: "Where did these feelings come from?" "Who told me that?" "How did I ever think that?" Not only did my pages help me find answers but it helped me solve problems.


Like writer’s block. As I was reconnecting with my inner writer, bizarre entries like “Writing is so selfish,” “You have nothing to say that people would pay to read,” and “Writing is just for creative people” showed up. I was scared, frustrated and confused. I couldn’t figure out why doing something I loved was so emotionally agonizing. I got my answers in Emily Hanlon’s book, “The Art of Fiction Writing" where I learned about inner critics. Since I can deal with anything once I’ve identified it, I gave it a name – Mic (My Inner Critic.) Many Mic writing discussions later, I know myself better and have adjusted the way I manage myself. By starting and staying positive, I successfully deal with my daily physical challenges.


Today, I invent different types of writing methods, like ten or twenty minute missives and gift myself with new-fangled papers and pens. I keep a computerized dear diary journal which I write in looking only at the keyboard. No matter what routine I use, I write every day.


Writing helps me make sense of my personal universe. It helps me accomplish all my goals. And I live happily edit after savoring the truth in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s quote, "What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”

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