Magdalena, I think you've identified something many people experience but rarely articulate: we often mistake inherited narratives for our own inner voice. What especially resonated with me was your distinction between thinking a thought and writing it down. Once a belief is externalized, it becomes something we can evaluate rather than simply obey. That's true far beyond writing. Leaders, organizations, and even cultures often operate from stories that were handed to them years earlier, long after the original circumstances have changed. The real work isn't simply replacing limiting beliefs with positive ones; it's developing the awareness to ask, Whose story am I living, and does it still deserve to shape my decisions? That question has the power to transform not only how we see ourselves, but also the futures we believe are possible.
Dear DM Burgess: thank you so much for your kind words! and I totally agree with you when you say: "That question has the power to transform not only how we see ourselves, but also the futures we believe are possible." that's so true!
The sentence I keep coming back to recently seems to be “Nobody hears me and no one is interested in what I have to say”. I think this probably stems from being the baby In a large family of half siblings. They still seem to have the are affect on me on mass even now - I feel like I am not really heard.
Dear Midlife.Mayhem.Meaning. thank you so much for your open and honest share! It is a very hard sentence to be and live with - so my heart goes out to you! I am so glad that you are writing here on Substack, because, I hope that via your interactions with readers you will have and start collecting "evidence" of being heard! Cheering you on! M
Dear Patricia: thank you so much for sharing so authentically! My heart is with you! And it's so interesting to me how the "hurtful/critical comments" stay with us for the rest of our lives and how discovering them can be freeing! I'm so glad to see you here and writing! Cheering you on! M
Magdalena - Love this! Working with the negative resistance and finding a way to keep moving forward with our dreams, writing or otherwise. To not let someone else get in the way of finding our own voice and writing it down in the course of our lives.
Dear Bronce: thank you for your kind words, and I'm so glad that you loved it! to your point we get to find a way to keep moving forward with our dreams and we get to do it using various tools - one of them can be writing!
Dear Gayla: thank you for sharing. Reading this sentence gave me chills - it's so deterministic - you never...it's sounds like such a final verdict. And yet, I am sure you have finished million impactful things in your life!
Magdalena, I think you've identified something many people experience but rarely articulate: we often mistake inherited narratives for our own inner voice. What especially resonated with me was your distinction between thinking a thought and writing it down. Once a belief is externalized, it becomes something we can evaluate rather than simply obey. That's true far beyond writing. Leaders, organizations, and even cultures often operate from stories that were handed to them years earlier, long after the original circumstances have changed. The real work isn't simply replacing limiting beliefs with positive ones; it's developing the awareness to ask, Whose story am I living, and does it still deserve to shape my decisions? That question has the power to transform not only how we see ourselves, but also the futures we believe are possible.
Dear DM Burgess: thank you so much for your kind words! and I totally agree with you when you say: "That question has the power to transform not only how we see ourselves, but also the futures we believe are possible." that's so true!
The sentence I keep coming back to recently seems to be “Nobody hears me and no one is interested in what I have to say”. I think this probably stems from being the baby In a large family of half siblings. They still seem to have the are affect on me on mass even now - I feel like I am not really heard.
Dear Midlife.Mayhem.Meaning. thank you so much for your open and honest share! It is a very hard sentence to be and live with - so my heart goes out to you! I am so glad that you are writing here on Substack, because, I hope that via your interactions with readers you will have and start collecting "evidence" of being heard! Cheering you on! M
I was in college when the words were delivered to me by two different professors.
The first one was after she read an essay: “I know where your background and you’ll never be more than that.” (We came from the same town.)
The second one two years later in Creative Writing: “You’ll never be a good writer, you can’t organize a paragraph.”
Both stopped me from writing. They were “authority figures” they would know.
It has taken years for me to write for myself and to allow anyone to read it. Thank you for this piece. My heart was right there with you.
Dear Patricia: thank you so much for sharing so authentically! My heart is with you! And it's so interesting to me how the "hurtful/critical comments" stay with us for the rest of our lives and how discovering them can be freeing! I'm so glad to see you here and writing! Cheering you on! M
Magdalena - Love this! Working with the negative resistance and finding a way to keep moving forward with our dreams, writing or otherwise. To not let someone else get in the way of finding our own voice and writing it down in the course of our lives.
Thank you!
Dear Bronce: thank you for your kind words, and I'm so glad that you loved it! to your point we get to find a way to keep moving forward with our dreams and we get to do it using various tools - one of them can be writing!
Well said Magdalena! Well said indeed :)
Thank you, Bronce!
You have never fished anything.
Dear Gayla: thank you for sharing. Reading this sentence gave me chills - it's so deterministic - you never...it's sounds like such a final verdict. And yet, I am sure you have finished million impactful things in your life!