Sweet sweet nectar of surrender
Of arriving home
Of peace
Of a nervous system coming to rest
Of hot tears that anoint and wash clean
That hold close the little one
Serious in her purple jacket
Beautiful
And so alone
Never inside
But outside
In a barren land
Of not being understood
Those big eyes
Taking it all in
Those big serious soulful eyes
That can now rest
Can now turn within
She could not stand the harshness
The discord
The loudness
The ugliness
The vulgarity
She wanted to vanish
From those lunch tables
It disgusted every part of her
That needed beauty
Harmony
Quiet
She needed peaceful gentle holding and seeing
For her sensitivity to be noticed
To be cupped like a butter cup
Softly, gently
Allowing the sun to bathe her in its golden rays
Her life has been a journey to those rays
Those nourishing rays
The warmth of the sun
The simplicity of alone
Of peaceful quiet and sweet surrender
Yes darling yes
Her exile was her becoming

...thoughts and feelings are soulless soldiers
bleeding my blackness like ink
leading the cracks to the brim
And do they dip deep, indeed...
they come out the other side thinning
and thinning still
and thinning
and seething my fabric
as my quietness parallels the tempo of serration
the wanting of you:
to flow and embrace
my every erasure
with the renewal
the slow violent blossoming
flowing and growing
into our fragrance
Our one world

How can you remember anything
when you’ve turned off your mind
How can you experience anything
when your heart is silenced?

How can you know who you are
when you’re a people pleaser
Smiling fasley
Averting your eyes to conceal your truth deep within

My words pour through me like clashing symbols
Desperately trying to make a statement
Seeking to grab my attention
But I’m elsewhere
I’m never here
Sometimes I subsist in reveries,
But mostly I suffer through nightmares
with eyes wide open

There is a sickness growing silently within me
But I’m not here to tend to it
I sometimes peel back my armor
and re-enter my body
when I’m with another person
whom I believe might be able to receive me fully,
Someone who could possibly see me and love me
But I’m left stranded
After courageously revealing my tender soul
I guess they were simply too blind to see
My pure, childlike beauty
So I stuff my real self down again,
Down underneath my false representative
Below the surface of my fake identity
Is the only place my real self will ever belong

But I can’t accept that,
It’s not my truth
Maybe social conditioning
tells me I must follow the rules
to fit in
But I don’t want to fit in anymore

I feel something rising within me,
Something latent that I’ve dismissed within me for so long
It is my battlecry,
It is my truest song
I just won’t allow fear to hold me back anymore
I’ve got this one life,
And what is it for?
I may have hit countless rock bottoms
But I’ll always rise,
For with every time I rise
I become stronger,
And wiser
And kinder,
Softer, more weathered
But humbled
With every instance my heart was cracked
It opened
Wider and wider

So you see,
I can’t be what you need me to be
I can’t go back to who I used to be
I must answer to this new life beckoning me
I must rise once again
To invite this process of becoming everything I am meant to be.

I needed to hear these words today
and I thought,
maybe you need to hear them, too

sometimes you’ll put up a good fight
you will do everything right in life
and you will still lose
sometimes you’ll hold on really hard
and realize there is no choice
but to let go and walk away
this isn't failure, or weakness
this is part of being human
acceptance is a strength

you cannot convince anyone to love you
not your mother, nor partner, nor friends
those in your life will never give you love
just because you want them to give it
love can move freely
it ebbs and flows in every direction
and it graces people with it's presence
just as quickly as it leaves us bereft
and perhaps it's fleeting nature
makes it all the more beautiful
when people who love each other
connect

Dear self,

Be brave enough to break your own heart.

You spent thirty minutes talking to your mother last night. She wasn't great to you growing up, and I know that. I think back about how she teased you for wearing long sleeve shirts over summer when you cut yourself. I think about the time she told you to **** yourself. I think about how she tried to cut out people from your life and still, to this day, doesn't know about some of your closest friends because you needed to protect them from her.

Do you realize how loud your unhappiness needs to scream for her to hear it? This may be the first time, in thirty years, that she listened to it. She took it seriously. She told you to go. That it would be okay. And she validated the thing you have known in the pit of your stomach and the bottom of your heart for years.

Go.

You aren't a bad person for leaving a situation that doesn't work for you. Leaving someone you love doesn't mean you never deserve love again. You aren't disgusting. You aren't a monster. You aren't being stupid. You aren't making a mistake. You have always told others that they don't need a reason to leave. You have always shown everyone else a kindness you could never show yourself.

Leave.

Just because you have everything others want doesn't mean it's what you want, or what you need. Right now, at this moment, this isn't good for you, and that's okay. You love him. He loves you. It was beautiful, and it was good. And ending this will destroy both of you in ways you won't even imagine right now. And no one will fix these holes inside of you. It takes courage to realize you need to rebuild yourself. It takes courage to become.

It takes courage to break your own heart. But just like the physical scars you've given yourself, the emotional ones will heal, too. And you will be okay. This is your permission to do what is right for you.

Love,

Yourself

On the horizon I see the clouds above the breaking daysky
and dark arcs of rain pouring down soaking soil.
These great open spaces invite my spirit to be free to fly
and join the source of all thunder
and this gray dawn.

In these times
where time vanishes
I sink into Earth like the rains
where there are no horizons
or division of land from sky.

I am grateful for being an earthling
despite the desperate tiredness
in my leg and calf muscles
and the aching in my joints and back
at day’s end.

The gift of sleep
sneaked into me
in the darkness and peace of night
and there in my dreams
I became a being of imagining
a me in fear and sadness
on the brink of courage
and in my drift
across the slumbering sea
I find beings familiar and different at the same time
men fulfilling possibilities
beyond their imagining,
men becoming.

So here I am drifting
into consciousness
on the melody of an Indian flute
and field lark songs
into another day
where this old me
again becomes
an earthling.

In the process of becoming
I have seen the worst in me
Mix with the worst in others

In the light of awareness
I have felt regret
Regret beyond any prediction

In the solitude and silence
I have brought myself
Closer to myself- closer to god

In the wake of anger
I have fueled the fire
I have kissed the scorched earth

I have begged for forgiveness
I have asked for answers
I have sought revelation
But only found more questions

Is this my answer?
Is this the journey?