Writer Wednesday - The Woman in the Mirror

Window Over The Sink 

By Liz Flaherty 

The Woman in the Mirror 

Do you ever feel as if you lost yourself somewhere along the way? If you've had a bad time or an extraordinarily good one, do you ever look in the mirror and wonder exactly who's looking back at you? Because you've changed, and you're not sure what to do with the person who's there.

I'm feeling thoughty here--can you tell? I'm always, always whining about how much I hate change, yet when I look back--over bad times and extraordinarily good ones, it's an ongoing cycle, isn't it? It's what keeps life new and interesting. And, yeah, sometimes awful.

But if it weren't for change, and my kicking-and-screaming caving to it, I would:

Never have changed jobs and I'd have been stuck with working one I hated.

• Never have married the man I did because he wasn't the first person I loved.
• I'd never have had a third child.
• I'd have given up the first time a publisher said Nope.
• Or maybe the second.
• For sure by the twenty-third.
• I'd have kept my hair short.
• And let it go gray.
• I'd still be writing longhand on lined paper and thinking I wasn't good enough.
• For anything,

So, no, I don't always know the woman in the mirror, or, for that matter, the man I'm married to. I don't always like either of us. There are days when I do feel like I've lost the person I was. Because I have. Because every re-invention in every time of life is change, it's often hard, and it's always necessary. I think maybe I like it.

The post above isn't new. I found it when I was out cruising around trying to avoid the place in the scene I'm writing when I realize I turned the wrong way at the last corner. I thought maybe I shouldn't use it here because this is, after all, a writing blog.

But what is writing if not the recording of change? What we write--including fiction--wouldn't have much purpose if the story didn't start where something changes. I love knowing this. It feels almost like that "secret handshake" we used to laugh about published authors having.

©2021 Liz Flaherty All Rights Reserved
Retired from the post office and married to Duane for…a really long time, USA Today bestselling author Liz Flaherty has had a heart-shaped adult life, populated with kids and grands and wonderful friends. She admits she can be boring, but hopes her curiosity about everyone and everything around her keeps her from it. She likes traveling and quilting and reading. And she loves writing. http://lizflaherty.net/