I love writing. I do it a lot and I do it daily. Writing is how I process the world around me. How I find myself and how I can listen to not only my intuition, but also to the messages from the Spirit world. Through writing I understand myself and the Great Without. Writing is my lifeline.
When I am in a creative process, words usually flow freely, and through a medium of keyboard or pen are preserved. I have so many folders saved on my computer, and so many journals that I promised, to my son’s utter horror, for him to inherit. When I write my books, I am truly in the flow. The words come from outside of me and I am the channel to receive them, write them down, and sometimes research further. I usually write my book from the first chapter to the last, and sometimes when the chapter doesn’t flow, I need to wait, as there is probably something that needs to become (be said) before the things I already have in mind. It’s an adventure, and I absolutely love it. But there comes the time when I finish my book, and I find myself in a creative limbo. I struggled with this badly when I finished Dancing with Goddesses: Archetypal Journey through the Menstrual Cycle. It took me months before I could coherently write something and before I felt I was back in the flow and could start my new book. I am in a similar place now, after finishing Alchemising Darkness: The Way of the Bone Woman (coming out 15th September 2026). I am in the void. But not a creative and expansive place. I am in the Big Empty.
I talked about it with a friend of mine and she made me think about writing/creating, as a birthing process. I don’t know why I didn’t come up with that myself – as a birth doula, I’ve witnessed and held my fair share of pregnancies and births.
When I start my projects, I am in the expansion void – in this place of extreme fertility and possibility. I never know where the adventure will take me, but I am always curious and open, and this is the only way I can get into the flow. I soften into the project and without fighting it, let it germinate and gestate for as long as it takes. When I feel called to it, I write. When I feel things need to settle, I wait. I go for a walk, meet with friends, write in my journal instead, as not writing simply isn’t an option for me. I dream. I meditate. I listen. Then I flow again and my fingers are not fast enough to follow the stream of my thoughts. When the writing is finished, this is where labour begins. This is the most difficult part of this process for me. Labour is hard work and I give it my all. This is the time when I think about what and how I would like to go about bringing my creation to the wider world and usually send my manuscript to potential publishers. I am so filled with this process that there is no space for anything else. This is my least favourite moment in each project. I am quite introverted and so I find it very difficult to put myself out there and be subjected to rejections. I’ve heard once that we shouldn’t treat our books like our babies, but writing is such an intimate process for me, and my creativity is so deeply connected to who I am, that each of my books is a precious child to me, and rejections hurt. My grandmother used to say that women today need to have iron backsides, so they can survive being kicked by the world. Well, how true it had proven to be for me. Now during family meetings when somebody tells me Wow, you look gooood (read: gosh, you’ve put on weight) – I say with little head bow to my gran – I’m growing in strength to survive in the world.
And then comes the time when you’ve done your job. You’ve carried your baby to term; you’ve birthed them and someone else takes over. Your baby is checked, measured, and wrapped in a beautiful cover and you are waiting for as long as it takes to have them handed back to you. And during this time, you are in limbo.
What now?
This is when creative postpartum begins.
When I finished labouring Dancing with Goddesses, the limbo hit me hard. I found myself in this awful place where I could not write one sentence. Even my journal entries were short and rather chaotic. I felt like I was going through postnatal depression and I fought it hard. It was the worst thing I could have done, but I didn’t then have this birth analogy I could support myself with yet. I didn’t recognize that I have entered my own void – even though there was a whole chapter about the void in my book. All this time was a huge inner contraction for me. It was a battle I could not win, and to be honest I didn’t even know I was fighting it back then. I suffered profoundly. I felt not only like a failure, but also like a fraud. I couldn’t find a place for myself, and it took a while before my creativity felt free again. At some point I thought it would never return to me and that I am done as a creative creature. I was in despair.
Luckily it has returned and Alchemising Darkness took to seed.
I went again through the familiar process of creating and labouring and found myself yet again at the gate of the void. But this time I was better prepared. I connected this void to the postpartum, where rest and regeneration are the key. This is the time to spend with Alchemisisng Darkness and see her properly into the world. It is not time for new projects yet. This is the time of celebration. Celebration of creative processes, of the courage to voice my deepest and most intimate thoughts for everyone to see, of the hard work that it took to bring this book to existence, of myself for seeing this project through. This is the celebration of fertility, creativity, birth, and life-death-life process I embody daily. This is the time of stillness and breath, of listening deeply within and preparing to invite the world in. This is the time to take a break. This is this beautiful void, a place in between, where I am becoming anew. But to become, to be born anew, I cannot live in constant contraction, I must take a breath in and out and expand as well. I need to allow myself time to properly embody what just had taken place, before I move onto the new. I need to connect with the spirit of this beautiful book and thank her for all the wisdom she has shared with me; for everything I have learnt.
I need to bring this book to you first.
Alchemising Darkness: The Way of the Bone Woman is coming your way very soon.
With love,
Agnieszka