So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say - Virginia Woolf
Today is Virginia Woolf’s Birthday and a day I thought fitting to pen a little something. I have long had a literary love of Virginia Woolf (like everyone ever really).
I have always been a terribly internal being; caught up in my reflections, thoughts, and silent observations of life which I often poured out into words or sailed away on the tides of music. I’ve gotten better over the years but I’m often “stuck in my head” as friends affectionately tell me. My great big bleeding heart gets caught up in musings on the universe - or equally so - on the snail I couldn’t rescue from the sidewalk in the rain.
Virginia Woolf’s words stole me away. Like a heard of blazing horses that race past you on a great plain and suddenly you’ve been grabbed as you watch; flung onto the back of one. I don’t remember how I first came to read anything of hers but I do know I was probably to young - or perhaps I was just the right age.
There was such honesty in her observations. I think she might have been one of the firsts to reveal to me my own heart - the beautiful in the ordinary. There is a magic in life, just being present for life. The messy, the breathtaking…there is a balance in holding both simultaneously. Her prose broke the mold in her day; a free form stream of consciousness that challenged the boxes her society had on its people. The mundane, the fictitious, or the brutal reality of life; with each phrase she laid bare everything. Like my previous post title - she became raw, repeatedly - a steady recrudescence in her words.
I was a young wounded little girl with the whole world on my mind and I found a kindred soul in a brave woman who was not afraid to fight against what others thought she should do or be. A woman who wrote about whatever she wanted whenever she felt like it. A woman who did and pursued what she wanted, when she wanted, and how she wanted and as a result - has been inspiring and empowering women every since.
I related to her depression and in it found the strength to face my own. As the seasons drift back and forth throughout my life; as my grief, loss, pain and memories all age along with me - I’m still beholden to her musings.
I still see a kindred heart looking back at me and I am always left feeling empowered.
So thanks Virginia Woolf - and may you continue to empower and inspire countless more.