But Meridian, if you really want to write, if you really want to speak through your writing, to communicate anything of value, anything worth saying--well, you have to be fearless.~Elizabeth J. Church (From The Atomic Weight of Love)

It was so cold yesterday, the Carolinas frosted over. Ice and sleet. All I wanted to do was hunker down and read. And I'd discovered a book at the library. Or perhaps more accurately, the book found me. I decided to check one more aisle before I left the library. I wasn't entirely satisfied with the stash of titles in my book bag. None of them intrigued me much. Then I saw it. Some dear librarian must have believed the book deserved to be on display. The Atomic Weight of Love by Elizabeth J. Church. The cover was filled with different species of birds. The heroine's name was Meridian. That name! How glorious! I felt satisfied I'd have at least one book that triggered my curiosity.

I spent the whole of the frigid day warmed by brilliant writing. Even with punctured dreams and abundant regret, Meridian did not stop pursuing her passions. She returned day after day to the location of the crows she researched. She not only recorded their behaviors, but also began to sketch them. Write poetry. The alchemy of science and art brought healing. Enabled courage.

Almost daily, I take a walk around the pathways in the community where I live. One family has two rocking chairs on the porch. A plastic skeleton sits in one of the chairs. I've wondered why they haven't removed its bony frame, Halloween long over. Each time I pass the house, that skeleton seems to represent some sort of symbol for me. A metaphor regarding some aspect of my life. "What could it be?" I've questioned. After reading The Atomic Weight of Love, I think the skeleton may symbolize my own devaluation of myself and my art. I haven't worked on my novel in weeks, thinking it just not very good. "Why bother?" Yet I know cognitively that getting back to the page is the healing place, the location where I can eat a decent meal and preserve myself, where I can satisfy the artistic hunger pangs. Slay fear. Like Meridian, I need to keep going back to the "bird habitat" where there is beauty and intellect and new discoveries.

Meridian's friend goes on...My advice is don't anticipate what people will or will not think about what you've said, how it might alter their perspective of you. Define yourself--don't let the imagined reader define you. Say what you have to say. Or, you are wasting your gift.