The Fear Of Being Judged

I was walking the other day when I noticed the sugar maple sap had stopped flowing. The forest held its breath, waiting for the right moment. I’d been waiting too, for the right moment to send my poetry collection to a small press. For months, I’d polished every line, second-guessing if the rawness of my grief after the divorce was "too much" for readers. I was afraid they’d think I was weak, or worse, that I was still clinging to the past.

I sent it. A week later, the rejection came: "Your work is technically sound but lacks a distinct voice. It reads like a careful imitation of what you think a poet should sound like."

The words stung. I’d spent so long trying to make my voice acceptable that I’d erased the very thing that made it mine. For three months, I didn’t write a single line. I’d sit at my desk, the silence louder than the wind in the pines. I’d walk through the woods, noticing the way a single oak leaf clung stubbornly to a branch, refusing to fall—just like I’d refused to let my own voice be heard.

The real failure wasn’t the rejection. It was the months I’d wasted avoiding the judgment I feared, by becoming someone else. I’d let the fear of being judged become the loudest voice in the room, drowning out my own.

Nature teaches us this: a tree doesn’t bend to the wind to please the sky. It bends because it must. It doesn’t apologize for its shape or its roots. It simply is. My fear had made me try to be a different kind of tree—smooth, silent, unrecognizable.

I’m still learning to let my voice be messy, unpolished, and mine. I’m not trying to be "acceptable" anymore. I’m just trying to be here, in the quiet, with the sap still flowing where it should.

— Ellen Ferguson, patient as the land