Earlier this week, I received a private message on Instagram from a literary journal. I follow a huge amount of literary journals and other publishers because it fills my Instagram timeline with excerpts, submission opportunities, new lists of books to read, and a whole lot of art. It’s one way I can play a role in the supporting and spreading of creativity. I followed this literary journal and they private messaged me thanking me for the follow.

Then, they invited me to submit to their journal. Not only that, but they had looked at the poetry I post on my Instagram, and they looked at my blog where I have a link to all of the pieces of mine that have been published, and they said based on what they read of my work, they thought I would make a great fit to their publication. That my voice matched the voice they were creating in their journal, and that even though submissions had technically closed for the upcoming issue, I was still invited to submit to it.

Ya’ll…that is not only a huge honor (it’s an honor anytime I’m solicited for my work, which has only happened two other times), but it’s also powerful. Writing is hard. Some people think that writing is easy. Some people don’t see writing as art or as craft, but rather as a hobby. Sometimes even writers see writing as a hobby. And I cannot begin to count how many people I’ve encountered who think all creativity is a waste of time. It is hard to believe in one’s self and really push for your goals when so much seems stacked against you, and this just makes writing even harder.

Most of the time, writers go without recognition. Most of us aren’t Stephen King or Danielle Steel or Pillipa Gregory or George R. R. Martin: we don’t have millions of fans waiting for our next publication. And especially for those of us who have yet to publish a book, it can be even more challenging to believe that we will actually meet that milestone. So when these moments of recognition happen, whether that be an acceptance letter or being a finalist in a contest or being solicited for my work, they reinforce that yes, I am meant to be doing exactly what I’m doing.

And for me, this has been an even more intense struggle because I’ve switched my genre of focus in my M.F.A. I went from focusing on prose, exclusively nonfiction, to focusing on poetry. I’ve spent my whole life writing poetry, but never in an official capacity of my education. I actually stopped writing poetry for a while because I was finding success with my fiction and nonfiction, while I wasn’t finding success with my poetry.

But when poetry is part of you, it cannot be contained.

My grandmother was a poet her entire life. She wrote thousands of poems over the course of her adulthood. She died at the beginning of 2019 and, with her death, something inside me started waking up. Honestly, and this is going to sound cliche, but I felt like Rey in The Last Jedi: when she says, “Something inside me has always been there. And now it’s awake. I don’t know what it is. Or what to do with it. And I’m afraid.” That is, I swear, exactly how I felt after my grandmother passed away. And I realize now it wasn’t just the poetry starting to take over my body, it was also the realization that I needed out of my marriage.

And it’s not that I’m done with prose now. I just have so much poetry inside of me, I can’t focus on the prose. Something about poetry feels urgent. It’s almost like the grief inside me has shapeshifted into something poetic, and now to get the grief out of my body, I have to access the poetry it has become. But it’s more than just internal access, it’s also external experience. Everything around me now feels, smells, tastes, sounds, looks like poetry. Just yesterday I thought of someone I hadn’t seen or talked to in months (a guy I dated earlier this year) and in the moment I thought of him, the lines of a poem started scrolling through my imagination. I had to stop and write them down.

Poetry is powerful. Writing is powerful. But being seen, heard, and valued for your writing is also powerful. Seeing people value your work is powerful, especially in a world that tries so hard to undermine the creative efforts of poets, artists, and activists. So today, if you’re feeling rundown by discouragement, if you’re wondering if the effort you keep putting into your craft is worth it, remember that the answer is a resounding YES. Your art matters. Your voice matters.

You matter. Keep writing. Keep creating. Keep using your voice.