As we wash up on the shores of uncertainty, it’s tempting to look back.

A pile of folded blankets in a wood bookcase. There are a couple of books to the right of the blankets.

Hello beautiful community. It’s Coach Ailsa here.

Ever since I moved to Canada, nine years ago, fall has been my favourite season. I arrived in Toronto at the end of September and fell in love with the city as it blazed with colour.

I know not everyone shares my love of fall. The trees signal a warning, flashing ambers and reds. Change is coming. Cold air nips at our heels. The nights are drawing closer.

Change, even good change, can bring a heaviness with it. We cling to what is gone, fear what is to come. Usually, the autumn leaves are a reminder for me to find the beauty in change, to accept the turning of the wheel.

But... this neverending year and a half. Change has been a series of unrelenting earthquakes and aftershocks, including, for us, the sad decision to let our studio go this fall. It's hard to welcome change when all I long for is steady ground.

*

My writing has been uprooted by the changes and trials of the past 18 months. The pandemic upended the novel I was editing in January/February of 2020 (too much, too sad). It smashed apart my writing routines (no more long, uninterrupted subway rides). It even removed the ways in which I nourish creativity.

But also, in the absence of my familiar routines, I began to try new things. I tried my hand at personal essays. I wrote angsty poems in my journal for the first time since I was a teenager. I got used to the fact that there were long stretches where I didn't want to write at all.

I know I'm not alone. Maybe your writing has slowed waaaaaay down; maybe the words are flowing more urgently. Maybe you feel more deeply connected to your writing than ever before; maybe you struggle to access it at all. Maybe you've switched genres; maybe you've hunkered down in the writing that feels like home.

There's a Welsh word that I love. Hiraeth. It's one of those untranslatable words, but it means something like, “Being homesick for a place that no longer exists” or perhaps never even existed in the first place. As we navigate through changes, big and small, there is, perhaps, an inevitable sense of homesickness, a longing to return to a time when we knew what our writing was, when things just felt easier.

Even if that time, that feeling, never existed as perfectly as we now imagine.

*

As we wash up on the shores of creative uncertainty, it can be tempting to look back. But there is another choice; to let the big questions wash over us, and see what answers rise up from within.

How do I bring our writing back to solid ground in the midst of so much upheaval?

Do I even want to?

Has the change cracked something beautiful open that I want to carry forward?

What do I want my writing to say, here and now?

I don't have the answers to these questions. I do know being in these questions, meeting them with curiosity and courage is a powerful place to me. It's the bravery I witness every day in classes and coaching sessions, as writers say, “I'm not sure what this is, but...” or “This feels really new, and..”

Firefly is a place where you can bring the big messy changes and the tiny hopeful changes and everything in between. We want to make space for you to be in the questions. We want to be in this process with you. We want you to witness the glimpses of something new emerging and support you in bringing that vision to the page.

However you find yourself arriving in this season of change, may you find space and tenderness.

Believing in you, always,