How I Discovered I was a Poet

I didn’t think I had it in me to write poetry. I had read poetry for years and appreciated it, but didn’t feel it was something I could do. I now have three books of poetry and counting.

Everything changed when COVID hit and we went into lockdowns. I had been writing morning pages for a few years, but something about being isolated led me to embrace self-reflection through writing. I would review what I’d written and realize it sounded lyrical. When I rewrote my sentences into stanzas, I realized I’d written a poem.

Once I opened to the process, poems came to me throughout the day and I wrote and wrote and wrote. I accumulated so many, that I posted them on social media as a way of sharing my writing and my feelings. I am not one to express emotion readily and when they emerged in my writing, it was extremely cathartic.

On a deeper level, allowing myself to express emotion brought a great amount of healing to my body. When we hold emotions they show up as aches, pains, and illness. The moment I started to write down my emotions, I released them. As they came out on paper, so did the pain. Writing out what was happening and what I was feeling, helped me be in the moment and allowed emotions to rise. When I opened that door, the floodgates were released. More and more poems came to me.