Emily Articulated: Writing and vulnerability

By Emily Erickson
Reader Columnist

I started writing this column in 2017, after moving to Sandpoint during a period of great personal transition. Months before, I left my job, my relationship and my home in search of an inspired life and landed on this little patch between mountains and lake — in a town small enough that I wouldn’t get swallowed up in it, but large enough (I hoped) that I might find what I needed for building a future.

I picked up my laptop like a pickaxe, asking, “People make a living on these things somehow, right?” with romanticized visions of me and a swatch of unknown sky as my office ceiling. So I decided to become a writer — a job title the Reader graciously helped me start to pursue. I tucked into an office with Lyndsie and Ben, delighted and baffled that they were agreeing to print my words. Together, we turned over what would be my column’s point of view, and we landed, as my subtitle reads, on a column, “By and About Millenials.”

Over time, however, as quips about avocado toast and unreachable housing costs wore thin, I wanted to do more than defend and self-deprecatingly poke fun at my generation (and my place within it). The blinking cursor at the top of my Google Doc felt increasingly like an invitation, asking me to start finding my voice, begin sharing truths and develop this craft that I’d brazenly claimed as mine.

Emily Erickson.

Slowly, I began peeling back the protective layers of myself to expose something softer, spongier and more capable of receiving the world around me. I tried pushing beyond simply listening to others and attempted to absorb parts of their lives, all so I could more easily squeeze their experiences through my filter and back onto the page. 

I wanted to learn how to share parts of my life too, pulled toward the honesty of narrative and the vulnerability of storytelling. In the clunkiness of my attempts, I also had to navigate what that sharing opened me up to (like the complete stranger who commented on my first personal story with, “Just another entitled Millennial. This article uses the word ‘I’ 37 times *eye-roll*”).

But for every eye-roll, I’d also receive feedback like, “I really appreciated your last piece,” or “I had a similar experience, thank you for sharing.” And I knew I was on to something. More than punchy lines, well-executed metaphors or flawless grammar (all of which I swear, I’ll never perfect), people responded to my openness.

In the past five years, I’ve written about the loss of both my parents, life after an eating disorder, struggling through a pandemic, my existential dread about the state of the world, searching for and finding love, and building the life I moved here to hope for. So much more than a bi-weekly exercise in writing 700 words for print, is the regular practice of vulnerability and the pursuit of human connection. Writing this column has taught me, time and again, that the experiences that feel so personal — so specific to my life — are often the ones in which people find the most of themselves and their own lives.

It’s one of the few universals of which I’m certain: Someone, somewhere has had, if not our exact set of circumstances, then similar responses to or feelings about theirs. And by sharing, we invite the opportunity for real and meaningful connection.

When it comes to writing, I have a lot left to learn. But I’m grateful for the opportunity to continue to do so. And throughout that learning, I will try to stay vulnerable and perpetually practice engaging with and reflecting the world around me, in a voice I hope to never stop developing. 

Thank you for receiving me, for offering feedback, for reaching out and for allowing me to continue my forever-pursuit of becoming a writer.

Emily Erickson is a writer and business owner with an affinity for black coffee and playing in the mountains. Connect with her online at www.bigbluehat.studio.