The Pain of Writing

When I look at this picture I want to cry.  I want to be back there.  On Pueblo land in Taos, New Mexico.  I want to stand on the mesa and stare at Taos Mountain.  I want to climb Her slopes and dive into her secret lake because I know that at Her center is God.  Not God the Father, distant and frightening, but God the Mother.  Comforting, loving, nurturing, safe.  I know that in the center of that sacred mountain I would be able to write.  At home, on my couch, I am so distracted.  My pen feels like a snake in my hand, ready to strike.  My heart refuses to open up, afraid of the memories lurking inside.  I do not want to put them on the page, but I do not have a choice.  I became a Divinity student because I knew it would force me to write my life.  I have been afraid to tell my truth.  Afraid to write about adoption, anorexia, abuse.  Those are not safe topics.  My monkey mind starts up before the pen even touches the page, "Don't write that.  No one will love you if you write that.  Everyone will abandon you if you tell the truth.  Don't do it.  No. No. No."  And I drop my pen for a chocolate chip cookie or a 16 oz peppermint mocha or a pint of beer.  What am I doing?  When did writing become so hard?  When did my thoughts move from joy to despair?  When did I go from writing fairy tales and love poems to the hard truth of my life?  And why, now that I am paying an obscene amount of money for a graduate degree, am I unable to write?  The truth is I have been unable to write for a long time.  When I began writing about divorce and the death of my birth mother I wanted to quit.  Every time I pick up my pen it is these words that fall out:  Karen died three days before her 47th birthday.  She had been diagnosed with lung cancer only ten days previous.  In the hospital, while she was being kept unconscious with morphine, I saw for the first time that we had the same hair, the same fingers and toes, the same shoulders.  See what I mean?  This is why writing is hard.