Writing My Way Out of the Sunken Place
A Mid-lifeline on art, imitation, and finding my way back to myself.
I’ve always been able to write my way out
—Florence and the Machine
I’ve had that line stuck in my head for the last six months. Me too, Florence.
In all my years of writing, I had never heard of copywork until recently. I was scrolling on LinkedIn and came across a post that mentioned it. A man gave a few references for writing that had been useful in his copywork. What is that? According to Google, copywork is
the practice of transcribing a piece of text, either by hand or typing it out, to improve writing skills, handwriting, and attention to detail.
It involves carefully copying a passage from a high-quality source to learn about sentence structure, vocabulary, grammar, and punctuation by imitation.
…the slow, deliberate process can improve concentration and attention to detail.
…by focusing on spelling conventions and grammar rules, a writer can internalize them through imitation.
Something immediately clicked for me. Is singing along to lyrics in a sense also copywork? If I’m imitating song lyrics, do I also internalize the voice, the meaning, the essence of the songwriter? This has been true in my life. I find often that my writing reflects the cadence and the energy of whatever artist is on repeat on my Spotify.
Besides convention and grammar, what else do we internalize through imitation?
For weeks after the 2025 Super Bowl, I shuffled around my house to Not Like Us. My writing held the sharpness, the boundaries, the naming that is reflective of Kendrick Lamar’s writing. Not long before, in the months after The Tortured Poets Department dropped, my writing reflected the allegory, mythicism, and storytelling that is often portrayed in Taylor Swift’s writing.
All of this influence and imitation collided this last spring, when I came across a post on Substack that mentioned The Artist’s Way. I’d never heard of it either, but after reading the comments, it felt like I was the only writer who hadn’t. One comment read:
I’m not entirely convinced that this isn’t a sentient book that lands on our radar when we are ready.
It’s me. Hi. I’m ready, a little internalized voice whispered to me. So I started my first morning journal. As I wrote my first pages—rarely in the morning, but whenever I could squeeze them in—I was also looking up the lyrics to songs I was listening to. I’d spent hours in my adolescence taping songs off the radio so I could play them back and write down the lyrics. Nothing felt as good as rapping along to every verse. Now again, I felt an appetite for reciting and memorizing, a childhood interest calling me back.
Something was changing in my consciousness. This was also a time when the world just felt so fucking awful—I needed art to soothe and distract my sensitive spirit. So I got to writing with the sentient, and I got to driving—while shouting, rapping, and singing my way through drive, reverse, and park.
Aggressive, Punchy, Sonnets
It feels like no coincidence that it was GNX and TTPD playing on repeat while I wrote my way out of places, people, projects, and patterns. At the time, my interest in these two artists felt like a departure from the music I’d consumed in the last decade. They were two opposite extremes in their own genres.
Kendrick Lamar’s writing feels like the embodied masculine—authority and leadership—and Taylor Swift’s, on the other end of the spectrum, soft, flowy, and feminine. As a Libra, I’m inclined to balance, and as I’d softened all my edges, my musical interests had become more gray, more balanced, and remarkably unmemorable. But something about this timeline was calling me back to a place that reflected the contrast in my writing from my earlier years.
As a teen, my writing was often aggressive, punchy, raps or sonnets, and storytelling. In adulthood, I’d become more palatable and harmonious—a suffering chameleon. But in a way, I felt the siren call of Taylor, and Kendrick felt like the voice of a father. It was a time when I needed both. I’ve always been able to write my way out.
It’s Not the Hormones, Babe
Over the last year, I’ve initiated more change and more disruption to preconceived commitments and notions that I’ve held since my twenties. But no more. I don’t think it’s uncommon for middle-aged women to experience a shattering of programming, conditioning, and checklists. I’d heard the lore of the spiritual side of perimenopause and the much-mocked midlife crisis. But living through it felt liberating, splintering. I felt dumbfounded, unshackled, and embarrassed.
You’re such a cliche.
Is it the hormones?
I don’t think it is, my crone whispered back.
I’ve always been able to write my way out. In the writing, reciting, singing, and naming, it felt like one day I woke up and the lights were back on. I was disenchanted with my choices. I felt irresponsible for other grownups’ feelings. I felt alarmed at how I’d erased myself, and disgusted at how my erasure had been exploited by certain people and projects. I felt outraged by certain places that demanded it. I felt reassured, solid, and curious—was this perhaps a psychotic break? But then I’d get in my car, and the mantras, the affirmations, would shout and sing back.
The Sunken Place
I once heard someone say that anybody can be your mentor, and they don’t even need to know it. Just by looking up to an individual and imitating their actions and energy, we can be mentored by them. I’d been through it all, and Kendrick was the father figure I needed.
The love and hate is definite without a cure
All this talk is bitch-made, that’s on my Lord
I’ll kill ‘em all before I let ‘em kill my joy
I done been through it all, what you endure?
…Fuck apologies, I wanna see y’all geeked up
Don’t acknowledge me then maybe we can say it’s fair
Take it to the internet and I’ma take it there
His words resonated in the slumbering part of my soul. I’d been suppressing for so long, but my chanting took my feelings from internalized shame to externalized anger. I was sick of the performative behavior.
Why did I care if the people I didn’t respect respected me? What would it take for me to stop being complicit in my own suffering? I had been projecting goodness, absorbing silence, and complicit in a pattern that was making me sick. Oh shit, I’d been in the sunken place. I knew it was time to speak up and get out.
They not like us, they not like us.
I had spent so much time centering powerful men, and women who had internalized the patriarchy, that my energy had been lost on trying to understand them.
What had they been thinking? Why would they do that? Maybe they didn’t realize it was hurtful? That it was a betrayal? Am I being too sensitive? How could he?
But in a moment, I was done with those questions. Because the bottom line was—we were fundamentally different. The character was different. The values were different. The actions were different. Because they are not like us. I was swimming in a pool that couldn’t hold me or what I cared about. It was time to get out the fucking pool.
I Look in People’s Windows
Then, on other days, as I was pulling into my neighborhood and up to my house, I knew I needed to channel a softer side. My changes were a long game, and while the masculine lyrics were energizing my boundary setting, I had to go at the speed of my nervous system. So I’d switch to Taylor Swift.
Much like a kaleidoscope holds the same elements but changes shape as it turns, Taylor Swift’s lyrics were changing my perspective and allowing me to look into my home from a different window.
I saw in my mind fairy lights through the mist
I kept calm and carried the weight of the rift
Pulled him in tighter each time he was drifting away
My spine split from carrying us up the hill
Wet through my clothes, weary bones caught the chill
I sung along until I was slack-jawed. The postpartum depression. The autoimmune disease. The job that had to work around the provider’s hours. The traditional framework. My people-pleasing. My perfectionism. The things he never had to say because I’d been so quick to perform. The loneliness. The striving. I was gutted, and I couldn’t unsee it.
So how much sad did you think I had,
Did you think I had in me?
How much tragedy?
Just how low did you think I’d go?
Before I’d self-implode
Before I’d have to go be free
Take it to the Internet
I was done asking questions (see: they not like us) and I was done being life support. Sometimes I have stayed to save face. But when I’ve left, it’s always been to save self. I’m still processing the changes that have left me reeling and delighted this year. I’ve avoided my own pain, instinctively trying to spare my kids from theirs. I know that moving across state lines and other moments of change have been hard for them. But I know their nervous system will always reflect mine, and representation matters—how I live is the most important mirror for them.
Time isn’t enough to process grief; we need a container, representation, and community support. To this list, I’m adding copywork—either verbal or written. Together, we can always write our way out. I’ve always been able to write my way out.
I wrote the poem below in all of this. While it still feels weird to take it to the internet, I’ma take it there. I wrote it as the unreliable narration that is programming and conditioning was falling away; the messy middle that is imperfection and embodied decision-making. This part—this writer—she’s new to this, and it feels like extending loving kindness to self to let her write a new story.
My Field Notes, below:
Goodbye to all the plans we wrote on paper napkins Goodbye to dry pillow cases Good bye to all the places, all the dreams, all the fantasies that felt so sweet Goodbye to my heart, she’s broken. I am shattering Goodbye to all the pieces, sea glass Goodbye to all the hands held I felt you first—it was electric I knew I wouldn’t bounce back My friend says it was a Soul contract Goodbye to all the softness All the soft sheets We raised each other We found boundaries But I found more I found a limit You found the floor I found a voice I found perspective In your noise I found a fence You didn’t like it I was surprised, I thought the point was to love, but you were threatened by my Wild eyes My big ideas But you like to tie me tight So, goodbye. Goodbye to the life I would have written it for Both ways I’d pencil in my dreams With your whispers in the hallway I’d pen another version but Your aversion to consent Was the reason for the leaving I'm leaving nothing Left unsaid Goodbye—don’t leave me lying I’d be lying if I said I never loved you like You were my only love I loved you so. I couldn’t See through “the little death” La petit mort Goodbye to every illusion My solution was suppression In my love for you I found all my projection So goodbye to the lessons, all the limits that I found I lay her down—the one committed Goodbye to perfection It’s goodbye to the Mrs.
I’d love to know if you’re familiar with copywork. How has it helped you?
Sources
Florence + The Machine. Dance Fever. Island Records, 2022.
Google. “Copywork: Definition and Benefits.” Accessed October 2025. https://www.google.com
Kendrick Lamar. GNX. Top Dawg Entertainment, 2022.
Taylor Swift. The Tortured Poets Department (album). Republic Records, 2024.
Cameron, Julia. The Artist’s Way. Penguin, 1992.