how_has_blather_changed_your_life megan please let me know... if you don't mind me quoting you for soemthing i have to do. 030303 ... kerry i probably won't have any idea if has changed my life at all until i stop blathing... 030303 ... lulie I don't know it - but I think it is an inflated jacket. 030303 ... Mandy kerry said just what i was thinking 030304 ... mcdougall Blather has opened up to me a new love for writing and has showed me that writing is, in its own way, a fantastic and amazing form of art. Blather has been a place for me to express the feelings and thoughts that fester in my mind, and a place to see the result of these thoughts and feelings from people who are like and unlike me. Blather has given me the opportunity to see the world through other people’s eyes so that I can reflect new views on everything into my life. Blather and all of its inhabitants are friends to me who have all inspired me to want to learn more and experience more, but most of all write more. 030304 ... yesh Blather let me meet my boyfriend. Blather is just like life to me. It let me learn to accept people's differing opinions and that often the best answer is to just shut up. Blather let me meet many wonderful people and has also affected the lives of those around me. I guess you could say that blather taught me how to love everyone. 030305 ... ghostly presence blather has changed my life in far too many ways to mention. 030426 ... ( ... ) subtly everywhere 030503 ... Pilgrim Cracks appear light seeps in illuminating the Wisdom of the Fool the lonliness of Crowds the Tao of Now. 130321 ... Lovers Lament This is the place that allows me to fully and most freely be me, to share my losses and my triumphs, and to be bound to others by the sharing of theirs as well. 130321 ... raze without it, i would be a different person, and i can't begin to picture who that person might be. there are many songs i never would have written, and i don't know what songs would exist in their place. there are people i never would have known. words i never would have read or written. feelings i never would have felt. dreams i never would have had. i would probably still type with proper punctuation like i used to, instead of in all lowercase letters like i've been doing for the past decade and change. "subtly everywhere"...that's it, isn't it? 130321 ... raze maybe another question is how_has_life_changed_your_blather? 130321 ... raze i still think about this sometimes. i still don't know who i would be without this hidden world of words, and without all of you who swam to me when i was clinging to an anchored float, swallowing more water than i knew my stomach could hold. you breathed so much broken beauty into me. if i can give you back even a whisper of what you've given me, i'll have done something worthwhile. 210921 ... unhinged most of my best friends are skites. i'd hate to think how lonely i'd be without this place 210921 ... tender square i’ve been posting here for eight weeks now and i can’t even begin to describe how much this place has changed my life. i tried to run from this community after i first dipped my toe in; i was scared, i was worried i was letting in a destabilizing energy into my life, something that wanted to destroy what i’d built. i could not have been more wrong about this. writing on blather has initiated a very powerful personal journey for me that i can’t quite wrap my head around; i can’t say what i’m heading for, but a current is carrying me and that current is swift; i am bewildered and terrified, but i am also awe-struck and safe. my mfa experience prior to writing here was isolating and damaging at times, it very nearly wrecked me. writing here has helped me reconnect with self; it has been raising up my feeling senses, ones that i’d been blocking because of past rejections and hurt. i thought i was aware of how i was moving through the world—blather has blown that mistaken notion wide open. in “the presence process,” michael brown talks about how important it is to get in touch with one’s felt-sense again, and how the goal of this work is not to make ourselves feel better but to get better at feeling. writing here is allowing me to undertake that work, to approach the feelings, in all their depth and complexity, without fear or shame. all this increased awareness around vibrational states and feeling has strengthened my intuition to a higher level than it was previously functioning at and i am grateful for this gift because it lets me know that i am supported on this journey, by you all and by invisible forces, too. all of this is so strange for me to talk about, because i fear it makes me sound so woo-woo, but i know i’m a grounded and a logical person; being here is forcing me to surrender to forces that i don’t understand but they are forces that i know i can trust. all this work is preparing me to undertake the next stage that is approaching in my life and i am building the inner strength to take this on. i am encountering many messengers on these threads, all of you, and you are providing me with the opportunity to process experiences from my past that i hadn’t fully reckoned with. these experiences are uncomfortable, but as brown says, i need to recognize that these situations are occurring to liberate me and not to humiliate me. some other benefits i’ve reaped from here: - friendships and a feeling of deep connection with all you lovely people, both in blathes and in email - appreciation and curiosity about all the beautiful things you are writing about and working through yourselves (my god, you are all so fucking talented, it kills me) - learning that success, to me, is about how i feel about my own work, not external barometers like publishing - fostering a discipline that borders on religious zeal with showing up here every damn day and giving what i can (see “everything_is_automatic”) i’m sure much more will be added to this list as i continue to write here. and i just want to close by saying that if anything i’m writing is helpful or is of benefit to anyone else, i am elated. thank you all for being on this journey with me; it’s not one i could have undertaken alone. 210922 ... raze wow, cassie. i don't think there's anything woo-woo in there. just beautiful words that are heartfelt and moving and true. once or twice i've found myself thinking maybe it's silly that a website almost no one knows about has come to mean so much to me. that happened earlier this year when no one was writing anything here at all. i started to wonder what the point was. maybe i was trying to hold onto something that wasn't there anymore. but it wasn't gone. it was just sleeping. now it's awake and alive again. and when i read what you just wrote, i think, "it isn't silly at all (sorry, paul mccartney). it isn't just a website. it's the people here and everything that's in their hearts." the best part is that we're all friends. we get to be a part of one another's lives and support and appreciate one another. we're all bonded by these red words. i feel such a fierce love and gratitude for that gift and the people who stitch it together, i can't begin to express it. (and i know i'm not alone in saying i've been getting an awful lot out of the things you've been sharing.) 210922 ... unhinged i've been processing and journeying on this website for twenty years give or take. i think this place is pretty great myself but i've never heard someone lay it out quite like that cassie 210923 what's it to you? who go blather from