Before the pandemic, I was secure in my identity as a freelance education journalist — specifically, a solutions journalist. I wrote about ordinary people striving to find solutions to their everyday problems: a single mother in West Virginia wanting a better life for her son; a young Black teacher in Minneapolis grappling with racial battle fatigue; a middle school social worker in a small Upstate New York city who practiced diversion social work designed to keep students out of jail and in the classroom. I gravitated toward people in poor circumstances, young people who felt unseen or unheard, marginalized people stereotyped in photos, if not in words. I respected them and their stories.
My last published article was in April 2022. I didn’t know it would mark the start of a years-long writing drought. I was blocked.
It wasn’t an immediate realization. I didn’t take assignments during the summer months. That was my Vineyard time. But when that fall arrived, and I procrastinated opening emails or reading text messages inquiring about my availability for fall assignments, I knew something more was happening. In retrospect, I was enjoying being deadline-free. I was spending time with friends and traveling. I took my first bicycle tour — 300-plus miles from Pittsburgh to Washington, D.C. I wasn’t stressed over the winter holiday season. I was fully present in my own life.
All was well until I found myself struggling to reboot. I joined the advisory board of an emerging hyper-local digital newspaper, thinking that would kickstart me. I attended book talks and writing conferences. I accepted an invitation to join the Washashores writing group, talked to friends about their writing. I bought books about writing, as well as new journals, notepads, Dr. Grip pens, and Paper Mate mechanical pencils. I even shared article ideas with my gynecologist, ophthalmologist, and dental hygienist during routine checkups. I did all this in expectation that somehow, they would help me come unstuck. They did not.
I reached the point where I started half-jokingly introducing myself as a writer who wasn’t writing. I gave serious thought to dropping out of my writing group. I felt like an impostor. Then, I learned about Kate Feiffer and the “Morning Pages” workshop at the West Tisbury library on Thursday mornings. I attended just one session last fall. It kickstarted me into writing bite-sized thoughts in response to prompts. I would later have an opportunity to share with Kate my struggle to find my voice as a writer beyond my journalistic writing. She asked if I would write about it. I agreed.
I began writing this piece in October 2025 and was only able to pick it back up after a breakthrough at this year’s Islanders Write conference.
Undaunted and in yet another effort to break through this invisible wall that had me surrounded, I got up early to get a seat at the table at this year’s “Wake Up and Write” session with Judith Hannan at Islanders Write. The first couple of prompts came easily. A third rendered me dumbstruck: eight minutes to write about your safe place. My safe place, I puzzled. I had no words, but a rush of emotions and a jumble of thoughts. Out of nowhere, I thought about my rocking chairs, about the fact that I have had a rocking chair in every space I’ve called home, and how I rocked quietly in my old oak Stickley rocking chair with the creased blue leather seat and well-rubbed wooden arms as my sister calmly and quietly shared how she wanted to die after she’d been diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer. I jotted down words and incomplete thoughts and fragmented sentences on the new, yellow-lined notepad I’d brought with me. The lyrics to “Rocka My Soul in the Bosom of Abraham” played in my head. I became aware that I was gently rocking as I wrote. (Had anyone noticed?) I fought back tears that were welling in my eyes just as the instructor called stop. While others shared their pieces, I silently processed my internal churn. I looked down at the words I’d scribbled and was dumbfounded by the realization that my safe place is within me: I harbored decades of bottled-up feelings and emotions.
I didn’t have writer’s block, but rather I wasn’t asking myself the right questions: Who am I, and what is it that I have been holding within?
I didn’t grow up wanting to be a journalist. A lover of books and libraries, I thought I’d be like Harper Lee, Sylvia Plath, or Margaret Mitchell — a one-book wonder woman who’d publish and fade back into the anonymity, allowing me the freedom to be myself: private, quiet, thoughtful, open to having conversations with anyone without regard to their status or social condition. Instead, I spent three-fourths of my professional career writing for others — drafting their messages and learning their “voice” to sound like them — and being anonymous, but well-compensated. Only when I opted for an early retirement — with myriad options before me — did I decide to return to my first career, journalism, the career that was the foundation of my professional life.
As a journalist, I connected with the vulnerable, asking questions out of genuine interest and concern. They allowed me into their lives and private spaces. And I endeavored to make them feel seen and heard, and to feel safe to engage with me in real, sincere, deep, and honest conversation. My secret sauce was that I empathized with them.
I haven’t written for publication, let alone my own enjoyment, in more than four years. I’ve justified it for a variety of reasons that turned out not to be reasons at all. In reality, I needed the time away to be present in my own story — to sit with and struggle with and get to know who I am. I don’t need to find my voice. I have a voice. There’s always been a story just waiting for me to tell — to write — to give voice to: It is my own story, told in my own voice.
At my first meeting with my writing group after Islanders Write, I shared my experience at the “Wake Up and Write” session and didn’t hide my emotion. Some ten months after starting this piece, I’ve finally finished it. I am unstuck.
Peggy Barmore is a journalist and communications professional with a master’s degree from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, living in Oak Bluffs and Albany, N.Y.
