Last week an essay I wrote was published on The Isolation Journals, a community creativity project founded by Suleika Jaouad. If you haven’t read her New York Times best-selling memoir, Between Two Kingdoms, I highly recommend it.
The Isolation Journals has featured writers and creatives such as Elizabeth Gilbert, LaTonya Yvette, Lena Dunham, Oscar-winner Jon Batiste, Imbolo Mbue, Nikita Gill, and so many more. But alongside the well-known artists, she also features people like Quintin Jones, a prisoner on death row who was sadly executed on the 19th of May 2021, or a six-year-old cancer patient who prompted the community to close our eyes and look inwards.
The Isolation Journals has over 100,000 subscribers — but it’s so much more than those numbers, it’s a truly nourishing community of creative souls all over the world, who support each other from afar.
Naturally, my first instinct to being read by so many people was to hide. I didn’t post about it or share it in last week’s newsletter. Even on Instagram, I only shared what others posted about it, which took the pressure off. This is partly because I’ve been busy over the last few weeks so I have no time or desire to be online, but there is another reason. Fears can still come up around ‘being seen’ — what if it seems like I’m showing off? What if this isn’t really an achievement worth sharing? What if everyone has already seen it?
Luckily I know this game well enough by now to not give too much weight to those fears, and to give myself the space to share my work when I feel like it.
“Today, we have a gorgeously evocative essay and prompt from the artist and writer Tamzin Merivale, where she recounts all the beds she can remember, and in doing so, traces a life’s trajectory,” Suleika Jaouad.
If you would like to read the creative prompt that went alongside ‘From My Bed’, or read the memories that have filled the comment section, click here.
Congratulations on this beautiful piece! So evocative. I also have trouble sharing/posting about my work. I started my substack last week, and have told close friends and strangers, but am still holding off on the "big announcement" post across my communities. The fear of being seen is so, so relatable. Thank you for this.
Well done Tamzin! You wrote an exceptional piece that the world needed to see. It stirs up so much.
It is so hard to put it out into the world yourself rather than have it posted elsewhere. If you hadn't posted about it here though, I would not have ever been able to read it and I'm sure some of your other readers are the same. Keep putting it out there and know that it will land where it is supposed to land.