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Identity Issues
While contemplating a couple of projects that are important to me, I suddenly realized that if either of them make it to fruition, they will be presented to the public under names other than the legal name by which I am known in my daily life.
That stopped me cold.
What does it mean that a significant portion (although by no means all) of the work that is closet to my heart feels like something from which I need to distance myself? Not because of shame, but because the voices that rise up inside me insist that there would be unpleasant consequences otherwise.
One of those projects involves erotic writing, and there are issues there that touch the privacy of more than one former partner. But the other project, which involves my work as an underworld priestess, doesn't have those types of constraints. Although yes, there are sexual elements there as well. The underworld path has a great deal to do with sex and death, two loaded and usually unpopular topics for "polite society."
I know the other names which I would put on these projects, alternate names. . . Names that are feeling more and more like my real self than the name which I have carried for more than forty years.
I think that I've mentioned recently that I've been doing a lot of journaling to deal with inner obstacles to my goals that have been powerful but indistinct. I think journaling on this topic will be helpful as well. Those internal voices that are so worried about my reputation -- professional and otherwise -- probably need to be engaged directly, and their fears dealt with head-on. I've been deferring to those fears all my life, accepting that they know better than I do about how to be successful in society. I should stop giving them that power.
That stopped me cold.
What does it mean that a significant portion (although by no means all) of the work that is closet to my heart feels like something from which I need to distance myself? Not because of shame, but because the voices that rise up inside me insist that there would be unpleasant consequences otherwise.
One of those projects involves erotic writing, and there are issues there that touch the privacy of more than one former partner. But the other project, which involves my work as an underworld priestess, doesn't have those types of constraints. Although yes, there are sexual elements there as well. The underworld path has a great deal to do with sex and death, two loaded and usually unpopular topics for "polite society."
I know the other names which I would put on these projects, alternate names. . . Names that are feeling more and more like my real self than the name which I have carried for more than forty years.
I think that I've mentioned recently that I've been doing a lot of journaling to deal with inner obstacles to my goals that have been powerful but indistinct. I think journaling on this topic will be helpful as well. Those internal voices that are so worried about my reputation -- professional and otherwise -- probably need to be engaged directly, and their fears dealt with head-on. I've been deferring to those fears all my life, accepting that they know better than I do about how to be successful in society. I should stop giving them that power.
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On the other hand, since the book is an anthology I suppose I could publish the book itself under my name and attribute the more personal, intimate contributions to one of my psuedonyms. . .