The Empath’s Journey turned one today! The past year has been full of ups and downs as I have learned to navigate putting myself out into the world. I thought I would do this post as a remembering of this journey.
The Best Compliments I Have Received.
As creative people creating something out of nothing, we don’t know how our work will be received. So, hearing someone reflect it back to you or praise something you’ve really labored over feels like a touchstone, a way to see that something you’ve done has worked.
I think I am also one of those people who can live a month on just praise! I am definitely a words-of-affirmation kind of person. So, it’s been gratifying whenever someone has reached out and told me they connected with my work. For example: After my talk at East West Bookshop in January, someone reached out to me and told me my work was life-changing.
That felt really good.
Another compliment I really value is the first one I got. It was from my husband Rohit who has been my rock through these past few years. After reading the final manuscript, he told me that he knew that my book was going to be good, but he didn’t expect that it would be this good. The words I had used made the right sounds.
I don’t know if this will make any sense to non-writers. But this very specific compliment meant a whole lot to me. Beautiful language is very important to me, not in a superficial sense, but in the sense that words have music behind them. And to feel that someone else had heard the music that I had been aiming for really meant something to me.
I felt like I had succeeded artistically.
Another beautiful compliment that I received recently was from fellow writer Peg Cheng. In The Empath’s Journey, I talk about dreamwork and working with dreams. One of the dreams I talk about is one in which I am not paying attention to the beautiful amethysts growing on the side of the road. (I have written about it in this post.)
To me, that dream meant that I was ignoring my most precious, pearl-in-the-oyster, amethyst self and instead living my life on automatic. I wasn’t paying attention to my creative impulses. I was spending time on mundane things.
Peg used this metaphor when we were talking recently. She said she was reading the book slowly, chapter by chapter. After each chapter, she wanted to reflect. Sometimes, she wanted to go back and re-read a chapter because she felt as if she might not have gotten everything she could have from it. There were so many layers. It was as if there were amethysts hiding inside the book.
What a beautiful compliment to get.
This is the most beautiful, lyrical compliment I have gotten until now, this sense that someone else felt that there was something beautiful inside this thing I had labored so hard on.
I don’t know if mentioning these compliments makes me sound immodest. I feel a bit teary-eyed as I write this. I feel like I am only now taking Peg’s beautiful words in more fully. Often, it’s hard for me to really receive.
At this moment though, I receive her words. And I am grateful for them.
So, thank you Peg. And thank you so much to all of you who have been part of my journey. Thank you to everyone who has bought the book and supported it. Thank you to everyone who has reached out and told me it resonated with them or meant something to them.
Being a writer can be hard. It’s really words like these that keep me afloat, that give me hope, that help me know that I am connecting. So, thank you for connecting and for seeing me. And I hope that my work will help you see some forgotten, precious parts of you.
With love, Ritu.
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