What can't we see?

Mirror workings and what we don't see

We all have blind spots — things we don’t see about ourselves. We all need someone to be a mirror sometimes, to bring our attention beyond what we normally see, beyond what our eyes and minds tell us to focus on.

Sometimes, we need to see The Rest.

Since I began working with clients on soul portraits, I’ve realised more and more that I am just a mirror. That is often the role of the artist/writer/musician/etc — to be the mirrors for the society they inhabit:

To see, and reflect back.

To hear, and reflect back.

To notice, and reflect back.

To distil and create.

A few months ago,

Julie Hester

asked me to contribute a writing prompt for her Substack newsletter, Writing in Company. I used the opportunity to explore this idea of mirroring in a little more detail and wrote about an exercise that I often share with my clients.

You can read the full post here. I’d love to hear your reflections on what the exercise brings up for you.

“These things may be “invisible” but they are present — in my view, they are as tangible and real as the physical body you see before you.”

What Julie had to say:

I was reminded of that reflexive groan—and also the rich and revealing writing that came later—when I read today’s guest prompt using the idea of a mirror, from the Irish artist and writer Tamzin Merivale.

I first encountered Tamzin in her guest post on The Isolation Journals. From a hospital bed, she wrote about a series of beds she had slept in and then invited us to write about the beds in our own histories. It is the kind of generative idea that I know my writing community loves, so when she responded to an invitation to provide a prompt for Writing in Company, I was delighted.

~ Julie Hester, Writing in Company

If you’re feeling sticky, heavy and miserable right now, I’m with you and I’m sending you love.

Until next week,

Tamzin xx

P.S. If you’re interested in working together, you can head over here.