Writing as a Ritual

Sunday reads and Cinnamon tea.

Going back to my notebooks, I always find so many things, quotes and notes about myself. Descriptions about the tarot card of the day. Which makes me believe that the most beautiful part of writing is having a testimony of the internal process.

I was reading some notes in my pink notebook and found two important things one of my best friends —who is also one of the luckiest girls I know— has taught me (probably more).

The first thing she told me was that “the best way of being grateful with life is to enjoy it,” while eating hummus & carrots with me and another friend at the beach in Portugal. For me, that was so powerful, there is so much shame in enjoying. I believe we should enjoy life more. I took it as a mantra.

The other thing she said was to “Ritualize everything,” while adding cinnamon sticks to her bottle of water to welcome abundance into her life.

And I swear she is blessed. All good things happen to her, and after listening to hours of interviews with Joe Dispenza, I believe all these things happen to her because of her mindset. Or how else is it possible that she always gets the window seat on the plane?

Anyways, mindset is key, and writing as a ritual is a beautiful experience that every human should have or at least try.

I know not everyone has this special relationship with writing, with having (many) notebooks to write your ideas and thoughts. I guess people fear being boring or honest with themselves. Maybe both.

Luckily for me, I have always loved it. The introspection, going deep. Must be because I’m a Scorpio, and my Mercury is also in Scorpio, that I’m this way...

I love documenting what has happened before the inevitable — forgetting everything that has happened.

Especially when I’m sad, when I’m lost, and almost never when I’m happy.

It’s weird. When I’m having a good time, I kind of postpone the writing, as if leaving a space for living, and then a time for writing.

In the writing is where I can see what I have inside.

Sitting down and writing feels like a way of meditation.

As a creative process, you don’t know what’s going to be the final result. Sometimes I come with a complaint and I end up with a poem, or a death threat.

At the end, my writing is for me, even though there have been moments when my sacred space was violated (I’m still recovering). I learned that the ritual doesn’t work if you’re not able to come back to honest writing.

After the little traumatic event, I ended up writing things I was not really thinking, just in case someone read my diary again. And to be honest, there is no point in that!

When I go back to my notebooks (an activity that I loveeeeee doing with my best friends), I hate reading that condescending Renata saying, “I am so happy, everything is so good.” I can smell the lies. I know there were things going on inside my head, and I was so scared of writing them down, in my diary, my sacred space, that I became a liar. A writer liar.

At the beginning, it wasn’t that easy to spot, but coming back to my notes was when I realized I wasn’t being true to myself in my writing — and that THAT writing was shit.

My favourite diaries to come back to are the ones in which I’m transitioning from a period of sadness to clarity, in which I learned something important about myself or a situation. That’s the content I like: the raw, the delusions, the AHA moments I experience along the journey.

I don’t want to read boring diaries months or years later. I need to be honest, so when I go back, I can understand what was really happening in that moment of my life, and why things are happening the way they are.

When writing as a ritual, everything comes out, the good, the bad, and the things you didn’t know you had inside. And it’s my favourite ritual because it only depends on me, on sitting down and being honest with myself.

Are you taking notes of your life?

Journal Prompt 🕯️

Two questions for you today:

✨ What truths am I avoiding writing about lately?
✨ What small pleasure can I ritualize this week?

As always, light a candle, breathe in, breathe out, and write.

Até já,

Thanks for reading me <3

Besos y Versos,

Rennaacer 💘