Writing - by Darylynn Starr Rank
January, 2006

I had a dream a while ago, during the summer actually. I was very busy with the courses I was teaching and the clients I was working with, activities that give me great joy and intense creative and intellectual challenge. But I was also overloaded with a tremendous amount of  “busy work” that gave me no joy at all. But of course had to be done. 

Since it was during the summer break I wasn’t writing my columns. And since I was so overloaded, I wasn’t doing any other writing at all. None. Zero. 

I wasn’t happy. Oh, the summer was great. The sun and the play. The flowers. But somewhere I wasn’t happy. Didn’t understand why.

Then I had a dream: I was a tiny baby, not a newborn because I was sitting upright, arms waving in the air, crying my lungs out. Just wailing away. Then I realized I had a rattle in each hand which I was – well, rattling – as hard as I could.  Wailing and rattling, thrashing my arms fiercely, my whole little body rocking violently with the effort.

Abruptly a wall appeared in front of me. Since I was still thrashing, the two rattles crashed into the wall, and shattered into a thousand shards. But it wasn’t the thousand shards that caught my attention. What was fascinating was the contents of the rattles that came pouring out. The internal bits that were making the din I was working so hard to produce.

They were letters! Like little dice or scrabble pieces. Letters that started moving on the floor, cascading along, flowing and forming into words, then phrases, then finally sentences. 

And the baby stopped crying. (I stopped crying.) And she started to smile. Then giggle. Then she started laughing gleefully, the happiest little grin on her face. And when I woke I could feel the grin on my face too.

That grin reminded me. Made me notice what I wasn’t doing. What deep inside I wanted to be doing. Needed to be doing actually.  

I needed to be writing.

So I sat down and forced myself to write a story that day. Part of a book about the sea I’m collaborating on with a wildlife painter. And I was right. That was it: I instantly felt happier.

Just like now actually. There’s a smile on my face as I write this column. And inside me too. (It’s been a busy holiday season. No columns. No stories. No writing...)

It’s nice to be back. More than nice, though. It’s important. Nurturing. Soul satisfying. For me, vital. 

There are people who are just plain supposed to be writing (or painting or sculpting or dancing or “fill in the blank” here).  One of those people is probably you. Whether it’s something you do all the time, or something you used to do, or something you just think about once in a while (in the back of your mind, like a tiny echo that just won’t go away). It may actually be something you’ve always dreamt about doing but haven’t been able to,  

For people like you this isn’t optional, and it often isn’t even fun – it’s as important as breathing. It fills you up, nurtures you, completes you. Without it things just aren’t right. With it. . . well, there’s that grin. That special smile.

Take care, all.

Darylynn Starr Rank (psychologist/writer) works part-time for Family Services of Greater Vancouver as a group facilitator. Her articles appear bi-weekly in The Record (New Westminster) and the Richmond Review.

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