Gracefully Spoken - The First Chapter.
Write about what you know.
That is the well-known advice right?
And it makes perfect sense really.
You write about what you know primarily because you understand it.
Enough to translate it out of your brain and into words and onto a page.
Writing about what you know may be easy, fluid and well constructed.
But, what if we try and write about that which we don’t know, or rather that which we are trying to figure out.
Wellbeing. The Self. Health & Happiness.
This list compiles things I feel I understand and don’t understand sometimes in equal measure.
I experience moments of clarity, where everything is so clear to me.
Moments where I feel connected to myself and those that I love.
Then there are those moments where it all feels like a foreign language or I have a puzzle to solve with several of the pieces missing.
This observation, I must make clear, is not something I see as a short coming in me but rather an integral part of what makes me human.
When confronting that which we do not fully understand we have the perfect opportunity to be curious, to explore the unknown.
A lack of understanding provides us with the endless possibility to question and this is one of the motivators for writing this to you now:
Curiosity.
Introductions
Taking a bit of a step back before we go further. I believe that it is probably customary
(and polite) to firstly introduce myself.
I can tell you my name and age but undoubtedly this will offer little insight into who I am.
Who I am is better depicted through my words of which, hopefully, you will continue to read.
Nevertheless.
I am Grace.
I am 32.
Born in the UK.
I run my own fitness business, in which I combine Pilates and weight training to improve the strength, mobility and overall wellbeing of my clients.
I am a nature lover at heart. Not uncomfortable in the city but I find my freedom by the sea with my feet in the sand.
At the start of the Covid pandemic I discovered that journalling was the best way to keep myself grounded in times of uncertainty and it became a way for me to express myself and clear all of the open tabs in my mind.
Since then, the notes section on my phone has become full of thoughts, feelings, images. Anything and everything that I need to communicate out from my brain and onto paper. Predominantly to lighten the load and work towards understanding myself better.
Some of these journal entries I never look at again and others I check back in with to help me organise my thoughts and offer perspective.
Today as I sit here with my coffee, feeling the sun streaming in through the window and onto my face, I am inspired to change the purpose of my writing from inward to outward.
To open up the conversations that I have with myself, to you, with the hope that I have something you may find of value to read.
My intention is to use this new space to share my thoughts and conversations around the topics of:
Wellbeing. The Self. Health & Happiness.
Firstly, I intend to give you something interesting and engaging to read.
Beyond that my goal is simple:
To Share, Be Open and Connect.
Past that, I am happy to let the future decide.
LOVE & LANGUAGE
A word that we may hear and use on a regular basis but whose meaning can be translated as many ways as there are people on this planet.
Language is something that is hugely fascinating to me.
Having learnt over the years that there numerous intricacies within language, some of which have the potential to completely redefine what it is you are trying to say and how it is that you are going to be understood.
In my work in the fitness industry I am conscious of the language that I use when interacting with clients.
I make an effort to opt for more positive and supportive language rather than language that gives off an air of doubt or negatively.
I use my language to connect with my clients and I rely on it to ensure that they understand me.
It is relatively simple: I speak clearly and concisely to minimise the risk of misinterpretation.
Making use of a plethora of different words and phrases to communicate my instructions in an engaging way.
Doing this I have found helps to establish an environment of mutual understanding and encourages my clients to engage.
But love,
the word,
its meaning and its communication,
that is nowhere near as simple.
A common tool for labelling and describing words, as you well know, is the Dictionary.
Something that has been used for centuries to give an understanding and frame of reference for the words we use to communicate with those around us.
I remember being sat in my English class with a small English dictionary on the corner of my desk.
Scanning through it when constructing a piece of creative writing for obscure words, that I did not understand but could plausibly use, to intersect in my writing to impress my teacher! (This rarely worked by the way).
Anyway I digress, to bring me back to my point.
Upon a quick Google search the dictionary definition of love is:
‘an intense feeling of deep affection.’
OVER TO YOU
An intense feeling of deep affection: if only it were that simple.
This is the perfect time, in my view, to ask you to engage with this post.
Wherever you are and however you are reading this, grab a paper and pen or come to the notes in your phone and in one sentence describe love.
Tricky, right?
Firstly to define something so broad and conceptual in one sentence and, indeed, secondly to define it at all.
To place words on a feeling/ experience is complicated.
Love is something that is subjective, complicated and changeable.
Your perception, how you see and feel love in this exact moment in time may be different from 5 years previous to 5 months in the future. As such I believe this observation makes it very difficult to define ‘love’ in one sentence at any given moment.
CURIOSITY
I have read books on how to find love, how to let go of love and how to be open tolove.
But something that I have found to be missing in this space is, what is love?
Perhaps the answer to why this question isn’t so regularly depicted is because of its ambiguity.
Circling back to my intro ‘write about what you know.’ this is challenging underrtaking if what you are trying to write about varies so much person to person and can be so conceptual.
I do not claim to have all, or indeed, any of the answers but I am curious and I believe that using this space to explore that curiosity can be a mutually beneficial task.
So for now, and in the spirit of not running before I can walk I will wrap up this first blog post here with that question to you:
