Words are everything to me. A hyperlexic, preschool reader, they were my first source of connection and escape. Books fascinated me with the amount of knowledge they held dormant within them, just needing someone’s brain to come along and unlock them. I devoured Anne of Green Gables, everything by Roald Dahl and almost the entire contents of the school library, fiction or non-fiction.

This was after a memorable afternoon spent with my normally prickly teacher when I was perhaps 6 years old, reading my way through the rainbow reading book cupboard until we found a level that challenged me in terms of content and comprehension. Those metallic spined books at the end of the rainbow normally reserved for children at the other end of the school were like a prize to me.

Forty years later and words fill me so full that they spill from me every moment of every day, bubbling up before I open my eyes in the morning, listening to guided meditations to help shape my thoughts, podcasts as I walk my dogs and then a day of writing for work – communicating, shaping and reporting. And I’ve never been happier. In my free time I’m writing my journal, planning my weeks in my planner and undertaking some sort of deep dive into who I am and the direction of my life. I couldn’t do this without language and I’m so grateful for all the wise women who have helped shape my thoughts by giving me words to wrap around my amorphous, tumbling thoughts. Writing slows my brain which can bounce around like a pinball machine (always with annoying background music on too!) and distracting flashing lights.

My wise women

Brene Brown

Glennon Doyle

Martha Beck

Katherine May

Diane in Denmark

Alex Elle

Sue Monk Kidd

Libby DeLana

Gemma Bray

Elizabeth Gilbert

I’m sure there are more…

And some less public figures, a professional learning leader and a headteacher at work, a coaching colleague.

And I am left with the question… What am I to do with all these words? Martha Beck says the opposite of stress is creativity and now that I have been able to get my stress levels under control I am riven to write and create like never before. It’s not a passing adhd hyperfocus either. It’s in my bones and I know I have to do it. I just don’t know how. But I’ll find out. And this seemed a good place to start.