Soul Talks

"There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed." Ernest Hemingway

I fell in love with writing when I lived in France for a year and a half. I went there as a missionary for my church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, otherwise known as the Mormon Church. I left my family and all my friends behind and went off to live amongst people I had never met but loved already. While a missionary, the only source of contact I had with my family was letter writing. They could be digital or hand-written, but either way I sat down every week and composed letters to my family filled with stories and pictures and everything I was learning. I also didn't want to forget any of the experiences I was having and the beautiful things I was seeing every day, so I became an avid journal keeper. I mean avid. I filled no less than 10 journals in that year and a half. My time in France was mainly spent talking to people, loving everything and everyone, and then writing writing writing, AND I FELL IN LOVE.

Every time I sat down to write I felt like a new section of my heart opened up and everything I had learned and experienced came together in a more meaningful way. It was then that I also realized that writing was a way to have soul talks when I was far from those who truly knew me. Soul talks are what I call those conversations with dear friends that expand your soul and heal your heart. Those conversations that you walk away from wanting to live a more beautiful life and be better than you were before. I discovered that I could write out everything I was learning and walk away with that same soul-expanded, heart-stretched, eyes-opened feeling.



And that brings me to today. It has been 18 months since I returned from France and I still miss it terribly. In that year and a half since being home I have learned and grown and found more and more reasons to be happy to be alive. I started school at a University in Utah and have declared myself a Journalism major, and even landed a job at my school's newspaper. (Woo!) I have dearly missed my written soul talks, and it is for that reason that I have decided to take all of the lessons I am learning and things my soul is bursting to share and send them out into the void. And if I can help even one person out there feel loved and understood, then I think these musings will not have been mused in vain. So, off I go! Soul chat #1: GRATITUDE.