Going with the flow – how my book is teaching me to trust

I already knew, for a while.

If my book wanted to grow the way I felt it – nourished from my deepest self,
yet still with enough words, sentences, images –
then I didn’t need to do more. I needed to do less.
Trust. Trust.
As if that theme kept returning to my path, gently and patiently, again and again.

Because every time I let go and learn to trust what’s coming,
things begin to flow.
The most beautiful images rise to the surface on their own.
They don’t push. They appear.

Take the walking weekend with friends in Halle.
My old self – dutiful, disciplined – would, knowing I was going away, have tried to ‘make up for lost time’ in advance.
But that’s not how energy works.
That’s not how my book wants to be written.

That weekend, everything unfolded effortlessly.
We “happened” to discover it was Heritage Day – a full tour was ready for us. We got the flyer at check-in, at Villa Servais.
One of us suggested we follow the proposed route.
And so we stepped together into the cathedral of Halle.
A building that fit perfectly within the timespan of my book. I knew that.
But what I didn’t know…

… was that the tour would lead us to a small hall, just opposite the church.
A space under construction – both literally and figuratively – where people who have lost their way for a while can catch their breath again.
A meeting place, soft and open.

And right there, in that room of restoration, once stood the inn where Philip the Bold took his final breath.
I would never have found this hall.
Never known what I know now.
It felt as though I had to be there, in that very moment,
to connect with Philip the Bold – his faith, his silence, his surrender, his everything…
Life had given him so much.
But there, in that inn,
he too had to let go – and trust the unknown. 

                                                                                                             

 

"This building was once part of the original medieval inn "Den Hert". It was here, on April 27, 1404, that Philip the Bold died. Philip was Duke of Burgundy. By marrying Margaret of Male, he became Count of Flanders and thus the founder of the Burgundian dynasty in the Low Countries. At the end of his life, while staying in Brussels, Philip fell gravely ill. He requested to be taken to Halle, to die at the feet of Our Lady of Miracles." 

And then it became truly clear:

my book, too, is asking for that trust.
For images that don’t want to be forced.
For feelings that are just beginning to surface, soft and slow.

Sometimes, one image, one feeling, is enough to write for an entire week.

I no longer try to catch up on time. I no longer write against a deadline.
I follow. I observe. I feel.
I go with the flow.
And suddenly, in the most unexpected place...
everything falls into place.

What might happen if no one had 'to do anything' for a while… and let life speak instead?