Tammy Letherer 
I have no idea what to write.
As I was thinking about today’s blog, these were the only words running through my mind. I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.
It made me realize that I’ve been saying this a lot lately. I was at a gathering recently with other She Writes Press authors and one woman asked me how I was feeling about my upcoming book release.
There was a long pause as I tried to sort out an answer. Finally, I had to shrug and say, “I don’t know.”
There is something surreal about finally having others read, for the first time, a story that I am no longer living—one that I am, frankly, happy to put behind me. At times I feel tethered to my past by the very pages I painstakingly crafted. My book represents both my deepest pain and my greatest accomplishment.
So how do I feel?
Excited. Filled with dread. Energized. Exhausted. Confident. Terrified.
I’m living squarely in a place of “I don’t know.”
This morning, not knowing what to write, I abandoned my frustrated starts and stops and headed to my yoga class, the one I’ve been going to regularly for a long time. When I arrived, I was confused to see an empty room. I started to ask if the class had been canceled when it hit me: I was an hour early.
I ducked out and walked to my car, thinking, What’s wrong with me? I’m losing my mind! I don’t know how I feel. I don’t even know where I’m supposed to be.
It made me think of a story I share in my book: my daughter was three years old and she was playing with her brother on the shore of a small lake. I had taken the kids on vacation—-my first one with them on my own, after my divorce. I wasn’t sure how to entertain them or what our new life would look like. I was definitely living in a constant state of “I don’t know.”
Then, as I watched, my daughter ran to the water’s edge, pointed at the ground, and excitedly yelled, “Look guys! It’s a perfectly good hole!”
And who doesn’t love a perfectly good hole?
Being confused and uncertain can feel like being in a hole, but sometimes that’s the perfect place to be. It forces a different perspective. And it occurred to me that “losing my mind” might also be a good thing. My mind doesn’t like living with uncertainties. But if I can turn off my mind and all its limited ideas of what my experiences should be like, I can be open to something I’ve never imagined.
One thing is certain: out of nothing, anything is possible.
