~the pull to purpose~

I'm very much an intuitive writer, meaning I don't sit down and "think up" characters or storylines. The stories are already there, waiting to be told as though something bigger than me decided I was the one to tell them.

A few years ago I found myself feeling a pull towards this 'thing' that I was supposed to do but not fully understanding what exactly it was. I took a deep dive into mindfulness, slowing down, practicing meditation, taking photos, and spending a lot of time outdoors in nature, trying to figure it out. In those moments of stillness it started to become clearer, the initial vision from a decade before, ' the man on the boat' was back but with it a whole story, floating through my mind like movie clips on a screen.

I started paying attention to signs to help me see if I was on the right track. The first came to me during an outdoor meditation: a voice as clear as day stated: the answer I was looking for was in my grandmother's journal. At first, I ignored it, thinking maybe I was losing my mind but it kept on so I finally listened and took out the journal. Upon opening it, something fell out, an old menu to a restaurant in Shelburne county, Nova Scotia.

Suddenly the story made more sense, the fictional seaside town, the island, the lighthouse, the characters. As the invisible dots began connecting, I knew more than ever I was meant to bring this story to life, it was the pull to purpose I was looking for. And as it turned out, the start of a strange string of coincidences that landed me right in the south shore, the exact same 'imaginary' setting as the novel....