Earlier this week I published an op-ed in our local newspaper the Daily Hampshire Gazette, that had left me feeling pretty raw when I wrote it. So I found myself waiting hungrily for reactions–emails from people who might have seen it, or likes and comments when I shared it on Facebook. At the same time, I was disparaging myself from being too caught up in my ego, as I kept drifting away from what I was doing to check my email and for Facebook reactions. I’m not one of those people who needs constant ego stroking, I reminded myself. I write things, I put them out, and then, there they are. It’s not about me, it’s about the work. 

Yet, even though I never stopped owning that last statement as the truth, I kept on checking–until the likes and comments started whooshing in. At that point, I could finally let it go. Not because my ego had been mollified, but because I’d been heard. In fact, one of the most valuable comments I received that day was one word–heard. No judgment given on whether the reader liked the piece, whether she agreed, whether she thought I was “good” or “talented” (whatever those two words mean). Just that she’d heard what I needed to say.

This is the power of witness, of reading one’s words out loud to an audience, or publishing them somewhere so others can read them. I believe that those of us who are driven to write do so because there are some things that are really important to us that we need to say. And when we share our words with others, we’re often asking them not to critique our structure or language choices, or comment on our writing worthiness. We simply want them to listen.

Of course, I’m touched when people tell me they like my writing. And I’m not immune to negative judgment–especially from the gatekeepers of the writing world: teachers, editors of literary journals, writers with higher celebrity status than I have.  Nor am I immune to to glowing when I receive praise–especially from writers I respect who know how hard all of this is, or from those same literary gatekeepers.

But ultimately what I want to know when I share a piece is that you feel me!

This doesn’t mean it’s okay to sacrifice artfulness or craft just to let go of a cathartic mess. Although there are times when that’s what we need to do to make peace with some aspect of our own life, if we choose to take the next step and make our writing public, we owe our witnesses a writer’s ear for precise and evocative language and an editor’s careful eye for clarity. Though this issue is up for debate in the literary world, I believe that writing can be “sentimental,” but, as this article in Ploughshares explains, it needs to earn the emotions it evokes. But by being brutally honest with yourself, a goal I’ve set that I’m continuing to get closer toward, you can get to the emotional heart of something more easily than you think.

And if you can use your art to touch the emotion in yourself, then it’s likely, your readers will also feel those emotions resonating within themselves.

And hopefully, they’ll take the time to tell you, I feel you. You’ve been heard.

I was trying to hold pain–my own, which was fairly inconsequential when compared with the larger pain of people in Israel and Gaza, whose lives have been upended by the recent violence. I framed the op-ed around my day-to-day life, much of which involves caring for a one-year-old