Breathe Deep…When You’re Ready
I despise being told to take a deep breath. Outside of the context of a cardiologist checking my lungs, I am most often inclined to meet that suggestion with an eye roll and minutes of spiteful shallow breathing. I resist the invitation because I see it as a judgement - as someone else telling me how I feel and what I need.
Over the years, my relationship to deep breathing has evolved, but I still only like to engage with it when it is my idea. When it is on my terms. When I choose to acknowledge, in full exercise of my own free will, that I need a moment.
That break lasted longer than I had planned
You may have noticed that my intended one month break extended into 4 months. May, June, and July have now also come and gone without a new Cutting the Strings piece.
I have spent much of the last few months resisting the deep breath that I have long known that I needed, but didn’t feel ready to take. This summer break has been a long inhale; a decision to run on fumes because I wasn’t yet ready to admit that my best laid plans weren’t working. That I needed a change of pace. That I couldn’t handle all that I had taken on and that it was time to make adjustments.
Once I let go of that long inhale - an event that is more recent than I would care to admit - I found the clarity that I knew would be on the other end. And when it came, I was ready for it.
Malin Head, Co. Donegal, Ireland.
Here’s Why
My life has changed in a few significant ways over the last few months, and the time away from my self-imposed publication schedule has helped me to get clarity on the changes that I want to make to Cutting the Strings to ensure that I can continue to write reflective and meaningful pieces in this new season.
Writing Cutting the Strings has been incredibly fulfilling and encouraging. It has helped me to develop my voice, practice the vulnerability that sharing writing requires, and see how to incorporate a regular writing practice into my life.
I have discovered that I have more to say. Much more than I ever anticipated. And over the past few months, I have had the time and space to explore other expressions of some of the same themes that I explore in Cutting the Strings. Specifically, through fiction. It has been terrifying, stretching, and really fulfilling. I am enjoying exploring this new forum for creativity, and want to give myself the time and space that I need to explore it more fully. And so, given the way that my writing has evolved, I think it is important that this project evolves too.
These notebooks are filled with ideas; for future pieces, short stories, and potential novels. I thought it only fair that I show you the evidence that I indeed have so much more to say.
I have loved writing and releasing pieces fortnightly. Producing regular content on a publication schedule motivated me to write even when I didn’t feel like it. I mostly loved the regularity of messages that I received from readers sharing how they related to the piece and how it made them reflect on patterns in their own lives. For me, this is what it is all about. Feeling less alone as we navigate the fear of disrupting long-standing ideas or patterns.
And over the last few months, with some distance from this project, I have realised that, in the months leading up to the break, I had lost sight of that. I had become too focused on metrics and lost sight of the intangible value of connection that I sought to foster when I began writing in the first place. I became too focused on the growth, and when it didn’t come at my desired pace, I became frustrated. With my exhale came the clarity that I had wandered away from the intention behind this project.
Members of this community know that, over the last 9 months, I have also found myself writing a number of apology posts to you when I haven’t been able to stick to those bi-weekly deadlines, or when I have needed to take breaks. And now that I find myself writing yet another one, for not abiding by the terms of the break that I had previously announced, I think it is time to re-adjust my expectations of myself and to re-define what you can fairly expect from me.
So, we’re going to loosen things up.
What to Expect Moving Forward
The content will be the same, but the publication schedule will be more flexible. I will endeavour to share at least one long-form piece a month, but, if that doesn’t happen, I won’t make an announcement about it, I’ll simply publish it as soon as I can.
I will also be spending less energy on promoting each post. Over the course of this project, I have learned that it is promotion, not writing that feels laborious for me. So I’m going to do less of it and trust that the people who are looking for this community will find it. So, if you’re not already a subscriber, I would encourage you to consider subscribing now - it will enable you to have direct access to each post as it is released.
Thank you for sticking with me through the silences and the apology tour of 2025. I hope that I can offer you writing worth waiting slightly longer for as I continue to learn how to make this all work alongside life’s other gifts, which, though beautiful, also require dedicated time and energy.
This is a reset. A confident step forward. One that I could only take because I gave myself the time that I needed before taking my deep breath. A moment of clarity and peace can only follow a fulsome and timely exhale. And I will be diligent to reset over and over again, until I’ve cut every string, no matter its thickness, length, or how many times it may re-emerge.
In the spirit of loosening things up, you’ll hear from me soon, and we’ll leave it at that.
