(4-5 min read)

I opened a rejection email this morning.

It made me smile.

Last week, I submitted a short narrative “I Let Myself Be a Voice” to a well-known author’s Submittable, after seeing her call for submissions for short personal narratives on Threads.

I had just finished putting out my story workbook, Find Yourself Here, and this was the last story I’d written as a supporting example story for one of the 25 story prompts inside.

I hadn't been ready to write this story last May when my grandmother died. I hadn't been ready to write it last summer, last fall, or this past winter.

But this month, I became ready. And this story emerged in the storytelling safety I’d created within Find Yourself Here – safety I designed for my workbook users to root around, unearth, and love their own voice & stories in ways they may have never done so before.
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Submitting this story to the publisher felt easy, unattached to the outcome. This story had been such a gift to me that sharing it came from a place of joyful generosity.

This morning, I saw the publisher’s email in my inbox in between my yoga practice and making breakfast. I was surprised to have received an answer back so quickly.

The email was brief. A standard, “Thanks for submitting, your piece won’t work for our publication” type of paragraph on top.

But one scroll down was a note of personal feedback. And this line made me smile:

“This is very moving but the pacing is too quick and you're covering too much ground in too short a space.”

My immediate reaction: a feeling of deep acceptance. Resonance. I’ll explain...

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See, I LOVE this story with so much gratitude. This story healed me and freed me as I wrote it.

In this story, I memorialize a moment I spent singing at my grandma’s deathbed. I honor the lesson she embodied about always choosing to do what you love, no matter how good or bad you are at it.

In this story, I also draw connections from that moment to other significant moments in my life where I explore my relationship to my voice– different reflections of the shifting permission I gave myself at different times to exist out loud.

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Yes, this story involves several themes, several vignettes that say something without fully explaining it. It marks multiple moments, explores multiple meanings.

This story holds so many ideas at once. But, so do I as a human being.

I’ve often been told I’m covering too much ground in too short a time.

I’ve often been told I’m too much.

This publisher rejected my piece for the very deliberate artistic choices that I LOVE. A style that reflects my processing of complex, layered, oozing-out-the-mold humanity into an artform that moves.

“Moves” as in goes somewhere with some efficiency.

“Moves” as in evokes feeling.

“Moves” as in compels action & shifts beliefs.

So much of my personal healing has been through movement. Movement has been my remedy to stagnation and self-loathing.

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During years of trauma and depression, movement eluded me. Time dragged out. Every moment felt isolated and obscure. In that unhealed state, each second reminded me that I couldn’t figure out why I existed on earth and I had no idea what to do next. And in that pain, I would stay in bed, stagnant, unmoving.

When I began the work of healing, my healing took on the form of connecting the dots and moving out of stagnation.

So my storytelling, a healing and liberating modality, takes on the same form of movement. ​
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Now, I recognize there are so many ways I could become a more publishable writer. There are also so many ways I can still elevate my storytelling skills. (And those two statements are not the same thing.)

But while I embrace my unfinishedness and continued learning, I simultaneously hold firm to my humanity, artistry, and self-determination as worthy and in-tact just as they are.

The line of feedback offered in the email was such an appreciated token of relationship and resonance.

I all at once understood something of who she was as a reader and saw a reflection of part of who I am as a writer.

Not the whole story of either of us. Just choices.

I wouldn’t change a thing about my story. Not this time at least.

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I share this story of rejection with you, not without a sense of vulnerability. Of course the thought enters my mind, “Does my audience care if I’m publishable or not? Would they trust my teaching less, knowing I’ve been rejected?”

But the answers that come right after the question are more compelling...

Because I know that no one escapes rejection. I know that no single rejection sums up a person’s worth. I know there are many ways to be published (this email is an example of the way I’m choosing to publish today). I know there are so many ways to give ourselves permission to exist out loud (or quietly when it serves us.)

I know that our relationship with our voice, our autonomy, our worth, and our extraordinarily creative, dynamic human potential is more important than anything else.

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So today, I write to you in hope’s of making the experience of rejection more inviting, or at least a little safer.
​I write to remind you that you are your own source of validation, approval, and creative license.

I write to tell you that the power of your storytelling to heal, shift, and create is wildly limitless. And that whatever you tap into in the process of meaning-making with your stories is worth its weight in gold, no matter what outcomes happen in the public.

I write to invite you into this sacred journey.

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P.S. Here’s the link to Find Yourself Here, whenever you feel ready to experience liberation & love through your stories. (You'll find “I Let Myself Be a Voice” and 24 more of my stories in there, too.)

P.P.S If you want a sneak-peek of “I Let Myself Be a Voice”, I’ve chosen to share on my new Substack.