The Way Back to Ourselves is EXCITED to announce our FIRST-EVER workshop, The Cultivate Retreat. Come join us June 22-23 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, for a BEAUTIFUL weekend of learning, healing, community, and creativity.

The Way Back to Ourselves is EXCITED to announce our FIFTH workshop, The Poetry Hour: Get Writing, Get Published! Come join us for a night of learning, community, and creativity. We will be teaching you powerful craft hacks for your writing, along with how to publish independently, traditionally, and in journals/magazines. Join us May 14, 2024, at 8:30 p.m. EST. Register NOW! Seats are limited. Questions? Email us at thewayback2ourselves@gmail.com. We’d love to hear from you! Can’t wait to SEE you again! YOU BELONG HERE.

The Way Back to Ourselves is excited to present our feature series, The Artist’s Interview. Each month, we talk with amazing creatives about life, faith, art, and everything in between. Check out this interview with Alexa Johansen, writer, founder, and publisher at GoldScriptCo.com. Alexa is full of faith, passion, and drive as she pursues her Gold-shaped dream and helps other creatives just like her do the same. You don’t want to miss this interview, where we talk about her journey to founding GoldScriptCo, her doctoral experiences, and practical ways faithful creatives can chase their dreams and honor God’s call in their lives.

Of Wings and Dirt is one woman’s story in poetry, which chronicles her journey through mental and physical illness, infertility and miraculous motherhood, and the wonder and faith that sustained her through it all. In Of Wings and Dirt, Kimberly Phinney intimately and unflinchingly reveals the story of her near-death experiences and survival with the hopes of comforting her readers and pointing them toward the divine—be it in ordinary moments, the natural world, or the nearness of a loving God. We are all made of wings and dirt, and the lines within are a reminder of this holy truth

I’m a big believer in prewriting. Since learning the concept in my junior year of college, I’ve changed how I think about the lifespan of a piece of writing. Is a poem born once the first or final draft is completed? Does the idea count as conception, or is the impetus of the idea the true moment of creation? How much does a changed draft change the piece, and once you’ve reached the final iteration, is that the child finally brought into the world? Before I can answer any of these questions about the beginning of life, I have to stay grounded in prewriting, or in the context of this analogy, pre-birth. “For My Sake” was in the prewriting stage for the last eight years, though I wasn’t aware of that until last fall.

The writing life is just that: a life. So, if you find yourself in the muck and mire of daily living and your wild dreams feel like the rope of time has lassoed itself around them and tamed them, then this post is for you. You write because you are a writer. You write because God made you this way, and quite frankly, he doesn’t make mistakes. Your writing matters—whether 100 or 1,000 or 100,000 people read your words. And because you are a writer, there will be highs and lows. There will be times you toil alone in the dark, and the words you bleed will only be seen by you and God. Other times, they may find a home somewhere out there. And for a blessed group, their writing may find many homes. But writing will always be YOUR HOME, no matter what. So, you must persevere and never stop writing.

The Way Back to Ourselves is excited to present our feature series, The Artist’s Interview. Each month, we talk with amazing creatives about life, faith, art, and everything in between. Check out this interview with Edward Holmes, poet, podcaster, and publisher. Edward is the king of encouragement and hope and uses his many creative talents to cultivate and spread it through a variety of mediums and collaborations. You don’t want to miss this interview, where we deep-dive about his faith, mission, and vision for the world with none other than Steve Veasey, artist, writer, and contributor here at The Way Back to Ourselves.

The Way Back to Ourselves is EXCITED to announce our FOURTH workshop, The Poetry Hour: A Night with Tanner Olson! Come join us for a night of learning, community, and creativity. Tanner will be performing his poetry, chatting about art and faith, and answering your questions. Join us April 2, 2024, at 8:30 p.m. EST. Register NOW! Seats are limited. Questions? Email us at thewayback2ourselves@gmail.com. We’d love to hear from you! Can’t wait to SEE you again! YOU BELONG HERE.

Somedays I feel like a pile of dry bones. Do you ever feel like that? Do you ever look in the mirror and wonder if you have the strength to make it through the next season of life, the next day, the next hour? I think if we are honest, we all have moments like those. Life can be overwhelming and sometimes it doesn’t take a lot for our heart and soul to become dry. We live life at such a frenetic pace and are often rushing from one thing to the next, we don’t prioritize our own soul care and inner spiritual formation. Sometimes the storm rages in us, and sometimes it rages all around us.

The best part of being a poet is that discomfort and difficulty needn’t ever go unused. In that sense, we can face even the hardest things with the comfort of knowing, “At least I’ll get a poem out of this.” And so I wrote my debut chapbook The Shape I Take as a sort of consolation prize in the final days of my third pregnancy (as I experienced the purgatory called prodromal labor), at the hospital between contractions, and at home in the weeks that followed, pressing my lips to the baby on my chest and pondering mortality, my changed body, and the various shapes that we all take in the course of a day, a night, a life.

It was supposed to be one of the most exciting times of my life, but I was paralyzed with fear. After graduating from a Christian university with a degree in English that emphasized creative writing, I couldn’t bring myself to write. Already pregnant a month after graduation, I began looking for a job where I could “put my degree to work.” But we were moving in two short months for my husband to attend graduate school, so applying to jobs out of state with the added complication of impending motherhood made things impossible.

The Way Back to Ourselves is excited to present our feature series, The Artist’s Interview. Each month, we talk with amazing creatives about life, faith, art, and everything in between. Check out this interview with Seth Coulter of Saint Brigand, artist and writer of www.SaintBrigand.com and the popular Instagram @saintbrigand. Seth is a faithful creative who explores philosophy, theology, and the deeper meanings of the human experience—all with the intent of facilitating meaningful conversations and connections about faith. You don’t want to miss this interview, where we deep-dive about these complexities and the meaning behind his stunning art.

The Way Back to Ourselves Literary Journal is proud to announce that our SUBMISSIONS ARE OPEN for the Spring Collection 2024: RENAISSANCE, which will be published in April. Come learn all about our theme, details, and submission window. Questions? Email us at thewayback2ourselves@gmail.com. We’d love to hear from you! Please be sure to submit to our new email: editor.twbto@gmail.com.

For years, I craved a new life. Over and over, I’d pray, "God, please give me peace and a new way of life." At times, I wondered if he even heard me. In childhood, I remember the inklings of anxiety and the darkness of depression. I didn't possess an ounce of confidence because I always felt different. I never felt good enough; in fact, I always felt like the ugliest and dumbest—and most certainly the one with the most annoying personality and voice. I still remember the sheer emptiness that enveloped me in every room of confident and cheerful people I encountered. Even today, as I pen these words, I am haunted by those heavy feelings…

Between Good Friday and Easter Sunday of 2023, I wrote the first draft of my poem “After the Last Supper.” The poem changed very little in ensuing drafts, with only slight additions. This poem presents a very real “human” Jesus of Nazareth, stepping outside in a twilit Jerusalem after his final meal with his closest companions, prior to his capture in the Garden of Gethsemane. In “After the Last Supper,” readers witness Jesus struggling with the relatable emotions of doubt, uncertainty, and fear, as he knows the suffering and sacrifice soon to come.

Everyone is asleep after such an intense journey. Walking the last few miles in total darkness exhausted them. So, when the sun finally peeked out over the eastern mountains, it warmed the young mother and father. They left their home and community in anticipation of a new chapter of life—not knowing who would oppress them on their path or which government official would require some payment from them for simply existing. I am not describing Joseph and Mary coming to Bethlehem to birth their baby Jesus, as you may have first thought. I am painting a picture of many people’s stories…

The sun dipped past the horizon and the evening glow filtered through my windows. I sat in stillness on the side of my bed watching the evening light fade and listening to birds chirp and chatter away. Their cheery conversations distracted from the lingering sadness weighing heavy in my soul that night. Through years of suffering, birds had become a reminder to me of God’s presence in my life — that his eye is on those sparrows, and I know he sees me, too. But did he, really?

The Way Back to Ourselves is excited to present our feature series, The Artist’s Interview. Each month, we talk with amazing creatives about life, faith, art, and everything in between. Check out this interview with Steve Veasey, writer and illustrator of www.SteveCanDraw.com. Steve is a faithful creative who explores doubt, mental health, and his personal mantra of “created to create”—all with the hopes of helping others feel like they aren’t alone! You don’t want to miss this interview, where we deep-dive about all things creativity, mental health, and the complexities of faith. Steve is also a contributor here at The Way Back to Ourselves.

I stand in the doorway leading to my kitchen, old tears streaming fresh down my face. I think of the tasks of the day, the smiles I will have to dig out, the “how are you’s?” that will demonstrate I am a mutually benefiting member of society… I have lived through a trauma, though I don’t know it yet. I don’t have words for the abuse I have experienced, and I hadn’t had a word for the spiraling that keeps happening in my heart—until yesterday.

Where to start? That’s often the question that plagues a writer. The blank screen can be the last thing you want to face. When Kimberly, the founder here at The Way Back to Ourselves, invited me to write a post about belonging, I created multiple introductions—starting and stopping with each one—thinking the next one would be the right one. Maybe you can relate to this desire to show up. But then folks look at you and say, that “so-and-so” has it “going on” (and you do not). Maybe that same desire to be accepted—maybe even revered… and maybe even cheered—is the same cry of most of our hearts. We all want to belong—to be enough.