It’s hard sometimes to decide what to write. Or rather, it’s hard to decide what not to write. I write all day long in my head, a stream of stories that only I hear. Some get put on paper, some become a quick Facebook status. Some get told only to my husband or a close friend. Some make their way all the way to a blog post or a magazine article or my books. But sometimes it’s hard determining what makes it where.

Do I write about my family? My marriage? My feeling on politics? Religion? Just how honest and forthcoming do I want to be? I struggled with this conundrum once before and a writer friend told me that I should write the truth, that the rest would work itself out. And I believe that, but there is more to it than just the truth.

I read a quote once that said something along the lines of, “If people didn’t want me to write what I did, then they should probably have been nicer to me.” And I believe in that as well. However, if I’d attach my heart and myself to any religion at all, it’d be Buddhism because of how it speaks to me. And the main rule in Buddhism is the practice of Ahimsa, or non-harming. Which means I don’t have it in me for going around poking people with white hot rods of truth in the form of words, whether they are true and justified or not. And as for politics or my position on guns or poverty? Well, that just sets me up to get poked with white hot rods of other people’s opinions. And I’m a sensitive soul. I don’t like being barked at. And my Catholic upbringing is engrained so deeply that it’s hard for me to ruffle any feathers.

But here is what I’ve come to see as my own truth in my 40 years on this planet. There is growth and progress in the ruffling of the feathers. Even in the white hot rods of truth in the form of words, regardless of which direction they come from. Change can be violent or harsh and hard to swallow. In fact, it is most often all of those things. But change is the only constant anyway so we might as well make it productive, right?

So, what I’m saying is, there may be some ruffling of feathers. Some white hot pokers of truth. Some things that people just plain don’t like. And that’s okay. I’m going to try to keep things civil, and I hope that’s what I get back. But mostly, I just want honesty. To be able to lay my heart and my words out there into the abyss because I feel like that’s what I’m supposed to do. And because really, freedom and honesty go hand in hand. And we all want to live like that.