I stopped writing years ago. Here are the thoughts that brought me back.

In June, my husband and I left New York to travel for the summer and decide where to move next. He’d been there nearly 10 years, I was coming up on five. On our last day in the city, we wanted to do all of our favorite things: The Met, lunch, wine and jazz. You know, the “New York” thing.

And it was perfect. Part of me had wondered, “why didn’t we do this all the time!?” and “why did we spend so much time rotting on the couch watching the White Lotus!?”

Heading back to the hotel in the car that day, I realized something about New York.

In a way, I had wanted to leave so badly that I didn’t really contemplate what I’d be leaving behind: That one restaurant in the village that had a C rating. (Rats in the kitchen.) Bank Street. Nat’s. Cluny. The place where my husband and I met and walked along the river. Trader Joe’s in Tribeca. Going downtown to morning prayer with my church. Nolita with my girlfriends. It was so weird to feel so sad about something I thought I didn’t want anymore.

I realized that the grief wasn’t actually about leaving, it was about leaving the version of me who had finally started showing up in it. It hit me: New York wasn’t intangible, I just hadn’t chosen it fully. I had been waiting for the right season, the right version of myself or the permission to believe that I belonged there.

The truth is, I felt the same way about a lot of things in my life, even writing.

I stopped writing personally years ago not because I ran out of words to say, but because for a long time, writing was the only place I could feel. It was the only place I could name what couldn’t be named elsewhere. A place of exquisite and utter control even when the world felt like too much, all at once.

Then, big things happened from 2021 to 2025. I started living a life that was objectively fuller. I fell in love and got married, found Jesus, longed for a career with structure and built something steady. In all of that, I felt raw. Open.

So, I started telling myself a little lie: If I wasn’t heartbroken, angry, sad, traumatized, longing for something, alone, ugly or undone, then I had no right to speak. The sadness was my golden ticket to a chocolate factory of other people who had set their dreams aside. That wasn’t necessarily a place I wanted to be forever.

I stopped writing because I knew the next thing I wrote wouldn’t be for an applause or a publication. I knew it would be for me, and other people that had big feelings they didn’t know where to put. By the way and heads up if you’re not a writer, that kind of writing is terrifying. Not because you’re scared someone will read it and critique it, but because it’s truly you. Unfiltered thoughts on a page. You. Naked. Alone. Big, true words = scary.

The truth is, when you’ve spent a lifetime surviving on an image of yourself you’ve created in your head, writing is scary. But here’s the thing: The best writing should be scary, and it’s necessary.

I didn’t run out of words, I just learned I didn’t need to bleed to find them. Now, those words are coming back. Not as some cute performance act, but as a testament that I chose to stay. To think. To write.