We Need Your Aquifer Stories

Aq-ui-fer/
noun
An aquifer is an underground layer of water-bearing permeable rock, rock fractures or unconsolidated materials (gravel, sand, or silt). Groundwater can be extracted using a water well. 

Whether you are writer or not, I bet there’s a book inside you. A story dying to be flung into the world, released for all to read. In the pages they will meet parts of themselves. They will resonate with your words, the way you’ve woven your sorrows and struggles into a song. You will give them back their voice, bring dignity to their humanity, and walk with them through the hallowed wilderness.

This book inside you doesn’t need clear chapters, a certain climatic experience, or even a happy ending. Forget about a captivating title or a specific theme too. We are not trying to attract the attention of a publisher or score a book deal because we want to be storytellers not merely tell good stories.

There’s a book inside me I’m afraid to start writing.

To see the words on paper would mean shedding light on the wrestle within, revealing the raw and rough edges I can’t seem to smooth out, admitting to the struggles I know exist, and giving credit to my current reality.

You have multiple volumes of stories sitting on the shelves of your soul. What are the books you’re afraid to share with someone, the books you’ve stuffed behind those with more attractive covers?

Those are the ones you need to find and open up, be it with pen and paper, a brush and paint, the intricately woven lyrics of a poem, or around a campfire under the stars.

The unedited stories you’re still working out, the stories still evolving- tell those.

You will find them as you pay attention to the pulls you feel towards the intimidating, yet terrifyingly intimate aspects of who you are and your experiences. Most of us are afraid to go there. We think the power of such a place will break us asunder.

The tears might never stop.    

But the best stories flow from these deep, damp, dark places beneath the surface, the aquifer stories, let them spill forth in all their disorderly directions.

Therein lies the difference between those who merely tell stories and those who are storytellers.

People who tell stories flutter around on the surface of things without breaking through to the wellsprings.

But storytellers stay in the well and offer free sips of pure life. We can’t help but scoot up closer. Courage is instilled with every swig and a legitimacy to our unique journey. We leave with a renewed urgency to write the book, dig our well, and let it flow.