“We have to learn the desperate faith of sleep-
walkers who rise out of their calm beds

and walk through the skin of another life.
We have to drink the stupefying cup of darkness
and wake up to ourselves, nourished and surprised.”

taken from For the Sleepwalkers by Edward Hirsch

Adult life often is about unlearning what we assumed had to be learned while growing up, and walking “through the skin of another life” truly feels like unlearning who we are to embrace “the stupefying cup fo darkness”.

To me, this is what writing is: slowly dismantling ourselves and welcoming the unexpected to feel replenished, “nourished and surprised”. Living and breathing our characters’ awakenings is a new way of seeing things, letting go of our ego and lose ourselves into something new – a new skin, a new quest, a new hope.

The ink on the page may run because of the urge to tell our own version of reality, but it also overflows from the page back into us, to explode with new epiphanies, new beginnings, turning our everyday life into something other, something greater.