On grief, losing myself, and finding my way back to the woman who always wanted to write.
For the longest time, I lost my ability to write. I lost my passion, my creativity, and, somewhere along the way, I lost myself.
It did not happen overnight. It was a gradual process, a quiet fading of the things that once made me feel alive. Life happened, and with it came experiences that left wounds I did not always know how to heal.
I lost my father. I experienced the pain of betrayal by someone I had treated as family. I endured a toxic relationship and remained in a work environment where I felt stuck, as though I was no longer growing into the person I wanted to become.
Perhaps it was not the experiences themselves alone, but the accumulation of grief, disappointment, and pain that slowly wore me down.
I kept going, though.
I learned to carry my pain quietly. Life did not stop simply because I was hurting. I went to work, fulfilled my responsibilities, and socialized with the people around me. I could laugh, hold conversations, and appear perfectly fine.
From the outside, I seemed to be doing well.
But deep inside, I was struggling.
I could function, but functioning was not the same as feeling whole. There was a part of me that felt disconnected from the person I used to be, and no matter how hard I tried, I could not seem to find my way back.
I have come to understand this experience through the lens of high-functioning depression. I continued to show up for life even when, internally, I was carrying a weight that few people could see.
I was surviving, but I was not entirely living.
And one of the things I lost along the way was my creativity.
When I Could No Longer Find My Way Back to Writing
Writing had always been a part of me.
For fifteen years, I had been writing journal entries on Penzu, a private space where I could pour my thoughts, feelings, and imagination into words. I wrote about life, about the things I experienced, and about the emotions I could not always express aloud.
I wrote because I loved it. I loved playing with words, exploring ideas, and turning thoughts into something meaningful. Deep down, I had always wanted to become an author.
But those words remained hidden. The dream of publishing a book stayed somewhere in the background, untouched and unfulfilled.
Then, as life became heavier, even writing began to feel distant.
I tried to find inspiration, but it felt as though something inside me had gone quiet. The words were not entirely gone, perhaps, but the connection I once had with them seemed to have disappeared.
For years, I felt as though I had lost my muse.
Looking back, I sometimes wonder how much of me was buried beneath the things I was trying so hard to survive. How much of my creativity had been overshadowed by the energy it took to keep going?
Choosing to Leave What Was Keeping Me Stuck
Eventually, I realized that something in my life needed to change.
I had spent so much time enduring difficult circumstances that I had begun to accept feeling stuck as part of my everyday existence. But there came a point when I knew I could not continue living that way.
I made the decision to leave a work environment where I no longer felt I was growing. It required courage, especially when stepping away from something familiar meant facing uncertainty.
Slowly, I found my way into a company where I felt that my worth was recognized, my efforts were fairly compensated, and the work I did brought me satisfaction.
It made a difference.
I found myself enjoying my tasks, connecting with people, and experiencing moments of genuine happiness. In my work with students, there were great conversations and genuine laughter. I could share my knowledge, exchange ideas, and enjoy the simple pleasure of helping others learn.
Those moments reminded me that happiness had not completely disappeared from my life.
Yet, even as my circumstances improved, there was one part of myself I had not fully reclaimed.
My writing.
Until one day, a student asked me a simple question.
The Question That Made Me Freeze
One day, a student asked me what I loved doing.
What made me happy?
It was the kind of question we might ask during an ordinary conversation without realizing how deeply it could reach into another person’s life.
But when he asked me, I froze.
I found myself lost in thought, almost as if I had been transported to a place inside me that I had not visited for years.
The truth was, deep down, I knew exactly what I loved doing.
I loved writing.
I loved putting my thoughts into sentences, exploring emotions through language, and creating something out of the things that lived inside my mind. I wanted to write a book. I wanted to become an author.
That dream had never been a stranger to me. It had been with me for years, quietly waiting in the pages of my private journals.
So when I finally told my student that I loved writing and wanted to publish a book, he asked me another question:
“Why haven’t you published it?”
I had no answer.
It confronted me with something I had avoided for a long time. I had spent years writing privately, yet I had never taken that next step toward sharing my work with the world.
Why hadn’t I?
Was it fear? Was it a lack of confidence? Had life become so overwhelming that I had forgotten to make room for my own dreams?
Perhaps it was a little of everything.
My student had unknowingly challenged me to stop treating my dream as something that belonged only to my private world. He had reminded me that wanting to write a book was not enough if I never gave myself permission to try.
And for the first time in a long while, I felt something stirring inside me.
Not pressure. Not an obligation.
But inspiration.
Rediscovering the Woman in My Old Journals
After that conversation, I began thinking about all the things I had written over the years.
I revisited my Penzu journals, the hundreds of entries I had accumulated over fifteen years, and found myself rediscovering a part of me I thought I had lost.
There were words that surprised me. Thoughts that reminded me of how deeply I could reflect on life. Passages that revealed an imagination I had once expressed so freely.
I saw the creativity that had lived within me all along.
Perhaps I had not truly lost my ability to write. Perhaps I had simply become so consumed by surviving life that I no longer had the emotional space to nurture the part of me that loved creating.
My old journals became a reminder that the woman who dreamed of becoming an author had existed long before the pain, the disappointments, and the years of feeling lost.
She had been there all along, writing quietly, even when no one else was reading.
And perhaps she was still there, waiting for me to return.
Learning to Close Doors and Choose Myself
Healing also meant making difficult decisions about the people and environments I allowed into my life.
Slowly, I began closing the doors to those that had contributed to my pain. Some of those relationships had once meant so much to me. Some people had occupied places in my life that I thought they would hold forever.
Letting go was not easy.
When you have loved deeply, trusted sincerely, and treated people as family, it can be painful to accept that some relationships are no longer healthy for you.
But I began to understand that I could not keep sacrificing my peace just to preserve connections that were hurting me.
I needed space to breathe. I needed room to heal. I needed to stop carrying every disappointment as though it were mine to hold forever.
Choosing myself did not erase what happened, and it did not mean that I had all the answers. It meant that I was finally willing to acknowledge my own needs.
I wanted to make room for the things I loved, the dreams I had postponed, and the parts of myself I had neglected.
I wanted to write.
And this time, I did not want my words to remain hidden forever.
Taking Back the Muse I Once Lost
Looking back, I realize that my journey has never been just about writing.
It has been about finding my way back to myself after years of carrying grief, disappointment, and pain. It has been about recognizing that I am more than the things I have endured.
Perhaps reclaiming myself does not mean becoming exactly who I was before everything happened. Perhaps it means allowing myself to grow into someone new while carrying the wisdom of everything I have experienced.
I am no longer the same person who wrote those journal entries fifteen years ago. I have experienced loss. I have been hurt. I have walked away from things that no longer served me and learned lessons I never asked to learn.
But I am also someone who has continued to dream.
Someone who still finds joy in words.
Someone who, despite the years of silence, still wants to write a book.
I do not know exactly where this path will lead or how long it will take. But I know that I no longer want to hide behind the fear of not being good enough.
My student may have asked a simple question, but it awakened something I had almost forgotten. Sometimes, a dream waits quietly until we are ready to acknowledge it again.
I spent years believing I had lost my muse. Today, I am beginning to understand that perhaps she was never entirely gone. Perhaps she was waiting beneath the grief, the fear, and the responsibilities I had carried for so long, waiting for me to make room for her again.
So here I am, writing once more.
Not because I have figured everything out. Not because I have completely healed. But because I am finally willing to listen to the part of me that has been waiting to be heard.
I am taking back my voice.
I am taking back my creativity.
I am taking back the dream I once kept hidden.
And, perhaps most importantly, I am taking back myself.
This is my journey of healing. This is my return to writing. This is me, taking back the muse I once lost.
With love and hope,
Sheng
