What a Good Woman Does

This post has been sitting in my drafts folder since I wrote it last summer. It always felt too big, too messy, too vulnerable to share. It still feels that way. But I'm learning I don't want to die buried under the secrets that are crushing me. I've spent too long trying not to rock the boat, denying myself in order to do what I thought (think?) was necessary to keep the peace. Shame can't thrive once its spoken, and I have decided I'm not ashamed of my story anymore. This quote from Glennon Doyle Melton confirmed things for me. This is no longer my secret to carry. Its not yours either. But maybe some things need to be said so they can just get out there and breathe. Maybe this is a mistake, but maybe, just maybe, its the beginning of long awaited freedom.
...
"Don't you think there are some things you should take to the grave?" I thought hard for a moment and said, "No, I really don't. That sounds horrible to me. I don't want to take anything to the grave. I want to die used up and emptied out. I don't want to carry around anything that I don't have to. I want to travel light."
...

It's like a story, one that only makes sense if you start at the beginning. Problem is, I don't remember my beginning. It's like a black hole in my memory. I can feel the fuzzy edges but what's inside it escapes me.
...
I grew up in a paper hospital. Welcoming death and life in split seconds, I existed neither fully dead not fully alive. Each animalistic howl and fiber of pain medicated, drawn into submission by drugs and chemicals with names like Lexapro and Zofran. In this paper hospital, so minimized and contained in comparison to the outside world, kept safe and sterile in here as opposed to the germs, the danger of out there, I learned how not to trust my body. My body, inferior in and of itself, slipped under the hold of modern medicine. Now I'm grateful for modern medicine for without it I wouldn't be alive. Without it I wouldn't be one of the inbetweeners, existing halfway inside and half out, but very much fully dead. But modern medicine, the drugs, the interventions, the machines keeping me alive since my first moment of life, the constant scrutiny of my body by those who had gone through years of books and lectures to be told they knew my body better than I did, they took something from me. In exchange for keeping my halfways life, they taught me how not to trust myself and my body.
...
"There was an ache at this site as old as the world"
I plant myself on the grassy earth to feel connected to something. The vibrations in my body - what my sister is calling my bad aura - pick up on the frequencies around me and as I melt into the grass I feel a connectedness to every being who has ever lived that steadies me. Maybe its the hippie in me that feels secure in the arms of what the mystics call mother earth, soothed by all the death and life that has existed in this grass and under this sky. Maybe its the poet in me that believes I have so many untold stories inside me. Maybe this full ache inside me I'm trying to write out has existed inside the roar of many women. Maybe the earth reminds me of this. Of the holy hum, of the connectedness that rises up from my trauma, that we're all just vibrating off of each other.
...
It was April, maybe. Spring, but still greyish, muddy piles of snow on the ground. I don’t remember how old I was. It feels like forever ago. It feels like yesterday. It was a game – truth or dare, because the boys didn’t want to play ‘would you rather.’ I felt small and inferior, an outsider because I was a girl, so I went along with it. I don’t remember what happened first. I’ve imagined it in different ways – more or less horrific in exact correlation with my mood. I remember, though, the exact moment it started.

…

The next month’s come in bits and pieces. Like a collage, a hazy flashback movie scene. Spreading apart skin, shaking hands curling around body parts. His hands pressing down on my hips, my shoulders feeling more intimacy with concrete. A blanket fort in the basement of my grandparents’ house, my bed, his bed, the old chicken coop, the playhouse, under the blue sky. Again and again. Not just a game but a given. Not asking but demanding.
“Turn around, let me see.” I became only good for my “private parts.”

…

I held my breath. In the moments of his hands on my skin and in the ones that followed. He stole the air from my lungs, the voice from within, the fire in my belly, the softness from my face. Or maybe I gave them up in surrender, in fear. I stopped breathing, stopped moving, stopped living. The word ‘Spirit’ in Hebrew means breath, life force. I lost my spirit and I couldn’t even cry for myself.
I held my breath in the moment the curious, unwelcome hands of a boy touched my softest skin. I froze. Even my inhales and exhales felt like they belonged to him when I let them exist. So I stopped. I held my breath. Still I haven’t managed to release it.

…

It was a good number of months later before I breathed a word of it to a living soul. I just…forgot. The brain, as a protective measure, doesn’t let you remember the memory and I don’t remember what I did in those months. I wasn’t going to bring it up, ever.
When she asked me if he’d ever touched me, I lied about the damaged done. I immediately regretted telling. I felt like no one would ever understand. It was my secret. Telling it, I soon realized, was in and of itself a powerful act.

…

I got my first period on a camping trip. I bled through everything. I had awful cramps. I bled out my innocence, my girlhood.

A miscarriage is, by definition, an unsuccessful outcome of something, a failure, a collapse, an undoing. That word felt so exact for what I felt was happening to me. I named it after the season of abuse and mourned it furiously. Something died within me.

…

People believed him. It was dealt with quickly and quietly, no one asking me how I felt. My rights as the victim were constantly denied. I felt unentitled to my feelings. I learned that the only person I could trust was myself. Still the sacred act of telling became like an epidemic.
I told everyone, not only to see their reactions to my horrific news but because the act of telling became therapeutic for me. By saying it over and over, I could manipulate the telling of the story so it didn’t sound so bad. I liked the attention I got. Maybe I told because for me it didn’t feel real. Maybe I kept trying to justify and explain it to myself. The act of telling became more about me and my perceived inadequacies and failures than it was about what I was telling.
…

I swallowed God and religion back at age 11. And perhaps it was that lack of fulfillment, that mania from pursing my addiction without constant and consistent relief that turned me off from God.

The other addictions are easier to pin point, each accurately reflecting my growing self-hatred and desperation.
The days when I crumbled at the sight of a sandwich, counting calories, the razor blade, the pills, the porn, the men. Each boy, each drug, each behavior, they were all attempts to numb the strong anger I felt. My life became a survival act. My addictions, however destructive, centered around survival.

…

My life became dependent on the idea that I could make myself feel (and not feel) things. I got fat. I got skinny. I cut my hair. I cut my thighs. I flirted with strange boys. I poisoned myself. I threw up. I isolated. I tried to die. My body needed to be punished. I couldn’t trust it. All the feelings I felt were transferred to and inflicted upon my body. The pain, the sadness, the anger, it was all kept inside my body. I needed to release it, purge what he’d done to my body, or it would kill me.
I wasn’t an addict because it felt good. I wasn’t an addict because I loved getting high, or being an emotional rag doll, or inflicting pain. I was an addict because I don’t know how not to be. My body didn’t feel like a body anymore and I needed to feel it again. I was attached to no one, tethered to nothing. I wasn’t a soul or a person or even just a body. I was an ‘it’. And I learned you can only wander around empty for so long before you collapse. When a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around to see it, does it make a sound?
I am a tree.

…

I wonder what the secret formula to thriving as an abuse survivor is. Or are we all just lost souls, gorging ourselves on our own leftover remains as if our bodies were the thanksgiving feast?

…

He’d been killed in a car accident. Killed, not died, taking away any immediate speculation that he’d done it on purpose.
I fell to my knees on my purple yoga mat and howled. Something inside of me snapped. My body held together by the surviving act of hatred died. My heart formerly beating cold nearly stopped, freezing over. My thoughts were an ever changing contradiction.
Relief, then howling. Love, hate. Missing him and seconds later it would all come rushing back and I hated myself for my grief. When I left that room, my grief took on everyone else's. They told me how to feel. He was dead so no one spoke ill of him. I convinced myself it was true, that he was a great guy. What happened had been a mistake, that’s all. I loved him. His death revictimized me and I ran from it.

…

The dead boy couldn’t possibly be a monster. I called it a judgment error, a lapse in reason. It was a mistake, not abuse. I’d been so close, so connected to him. I should feel honored.
When the air inside the grief house got unbearably dense, I retreated outside. The air was cold, the snow hauntingly beautiful. I made it a few feet down the driveway before I collapsed. Inside, the strings of me snapped.
I felt left, abandoned, neglected. All of a sudden the world felt too big for me. All of the feelings inside of me were like a waterfall, rising only to plunge to their death, never to be seen again. I screamed over and over, “Dear God” and “I’m sorry”, “I love you” and “Come back.” I would have done anything. The feeling of being separated was so profound and vast.
I prayed for forgiveness repeatedly. Like I’d caused his death. Like I’d plunged a knife into his chest. And maybe I had. Maybe I had by keeping his secret and playing his game. I didn’t know any better then but in that moment it felt like an admission of guilt.

…

When I saw his body, so pale and lifeless, I ran to the bathroom and threw up. I’ve spent the past 2 years running.

…

I went to a concert tonight my friend put on in a coffee shop. As he sang I looked around me. I held in my hand the hand of the man I love. I’m surrounded by so much love and hope and creativity and light. So much of what I’m only now learning is possible. I’ve spent so long running, numbing, constricting, isolating, denying, punishing. I spent so many years dressed in shame, wearing it like a monogrammed robe. “My name is…”

But that, all this, isn’t the end of the story. Today, this love, that is how I have decided my story will end.

 

(You can find the song this post was named after here)

Courage - part 1

My fingers shook as I curled them around my spiral bound notebook.
Moments before I was going to give my talk, I considered rewriting the whole thing, making it up and presenting something less brutally honest and more flowery, elegant, something that fit in the nice 'churchy girl' box, that fit with the paper smile I give.
I say I'll do whatever, that I'm open to nudges from the Holy Spirit, until I am asked to do something that is right up there with being naked in public.
It is a part of my story I've sheltered for a long while. I say I have good reasons for it too: that there's no reason to bring up the past, that I don't want to rock the family boat, that my story doesn't really matter anyway.
There's so many advocates for sexual abuse out there, why does the world need another one? Why my voice?
So in the moments before I was going to begin speaking, with my hands shaking and my heart racing, I reached over to grab the hand of my friend sitting beside me, hoping her calm would rub off on me. And she began to pray, whispering in her sweet voice for courage and strength and wisdom.
I wanted to disappear into the chair, to be back in bed curled up under the blankets faking sick like a little kid who didn't want to go to school. That's what it feels like when you are asked to do something so scary, to share something so real and honest and personal.
When I began to speak, I was shocked by the calm, strong clarity in my voice. I felt like the cowardly lion, the one who was supposed to be strong and brave but instead jumped at the sight of her own shadow.
I lost my voice a long time ago, as a little girl who cried for help with no answer. This summer, I learned how to use my voice again. Over and over I was affirmed by those around me, "You have a beautiful voice."
I clung to those affirmations this morning. I curled my fingers around the courage I found in the words and actions others had left behind. I stepped from shame into courage.
What happened to me was not the end of my story. It doesn't define my worthiness. It doesn't get to take away my voice.
And with the words I spoke to this room full of girls aching for words of grace and truth and love, as I spoke about my own pain and healing journey, I could feel my voice vibrating strong. I heard the most beautiful sound: a soft but still present roar coming from within.
To you: I see you. I'm standing with you. Come to the table. Jesus had a thing for outcasts

Hello my name is...

"Alisha, what's wrong?"
It happens every time he says my name. I pause for a minute, as if I need a moment to recognize who he's talking to. He calls me all these other things, and I answer to them without a second thought, but when he says my name...
I'm writing my way through this month's #thisisagoodbody challenge over on instagram. I'm getting real and honest about the things that hurt, and by holding space for them I am, hopefully, eliminating their power.
And it's hard work. The work that was supposed to be just about eliminating shame from my body has leaked over into other areas of my life, and this little project I joined just for fun and the desire to join one of the monthly yoga challenges has turned into this thing that's changing me.
Opening up the can of lies I believed about my body means opening up and digging into the past. I thought the shame would be localized to one area but instead it spread. The shame I held in my body was the shame I felt about abuse, addiction, death and every other trauma. The feelings I had about my body weren't just specific to my body but also the body of Christ.
I've written and cried and practiced and danced and groaned my way through this month, reclaiming freedom. My heart, finally open, has begun to feel and I find often I am weeping for reasons I don't fully understand.
Jodi Picoult says in one of her books that you can tell when a person loves you because your name sounds different on their tongue.
Years ago, my name was spoken in a way that wasn't loving. That sound, the way my name was said, what follows, it rings in my head. And I never really noticed it. I would complain about not having a nickname, lay in bed at night and dream about trying on new names: something exotic and fun and different, a new girl without a story.
I'm in the process of reclaiming a lot of things in the name of freedom, but one thing I'm just realizing I need to reclaim is my name.
My name comes from the name Alice, meaning noble. That's what I've always been told, but I always kind of squirmed inside the meaning of my name. Noble felt too big, too clunky a meaning to pull around with me anywhere.
So, like I always tend to do, I did some research.
Alisha is also a Sanskrit name, meaning 'Protected by God.'
I saw this meaning and tears filled my eyes. I could blame it on my overactive tear ducts lately but I'm not totally sure that's it. Something about this meaning hit me in the heart.
Protected by God.
Even then, in the dark days haunted by abuse and addiction.
Then, in the moments when I forgot how to cry and even my name sounded like a threat.
Then, when I stood over a grave and wept for the forgiveness that felt stuck inside of me.
Protected by God, even when I lay prostrate on the floor, crying to a God I wasn't sure I believed in anymore, so severely wounded by His body, ready to give up all hope and end it all.
Even then, even now, protected by God.
When the man I love says my name, beautiful and safe in his mouth, it takes some getting used to. It reminds me of all the hurt and pain that for so long was and still is attached to that name. But in the process of reclaiming it, claiming my identity, when he says my name I reach for his hand. I am safe. I am loved. I am protected by God.
Then, now, and always.
Amen

"even my skin held memory"
For the past few years, August has felt like a cool breeze. It's a moment of breath, of reprieve. I live quieter in August, pondering in my heart everything I've stored up in the months past, and this August is no exception.
This August, I'm participating in a project hosted by Morgan Day Cecil called #justbeherewithme. The intention is to be more present in our lives by logging off social media for a day, a week or the whole month of August. I've dedicated my Sunday's to being social media free, and while my fingers crave the familiar scroll of the smart phone, I'm finding much more room to be present.
I'm learning to be present with my story. Continuing the work I started at the end of July, I'm taking a break from the public sector of blogging and documenting my personal story in my journal. Some days its hard to even scratch the words out, despite knowing I'll be the only one to read them. Some days writing them feels like a cathartic release.
"I think you need to speak it. I think you need to be as specific as possible and allow the space to empty on its own"
Writing these words, adventuring through my past, it feels like building monuments. "Thank you," I whisper to each segment as I finish with it, "But I no longer need you anymore." And by doing so I'm slowly undressing the layers of shame and guilt I've worn for so many years.
I'm finding the memories of the past are so deeply a part of me that even my skin holds the memory. My body remembers, even when my mind forgets. Which means this month has also meant hours laboring in pain as I ache to give birth to this story, practicing yoga, having honest conversations with the people I love and letting them help to begin building something anew in me. Every positive touch, is wiping over the old pathways where love = pain and rewriting it with the message love = love. The brave act of letting others hold me in my story is turning out to be one of the most beautiful things I've ever done, and the giving and receiving of this love, this medicine, is an honor. I'm also learning to keep some of this love, this medicine, for myself, as I'm finally in a place of speaking words of love over myself.
In August, I'm participating in a yoga challenge called #thisisagoodbody over on instagram (with the exception of Sundays, of course, which we're all taking off to find a few sacred moments). We're getting honest about things like shame, and this vulnerability is changing me. By combining honesty with movement, my heart is transforming. I'm discovering just how much negativity and shame I held around my body that I didn't even realize was there, and I'm beginning to work through that.
This season, which technically began in late July, is so healing and powerful. I've been hesitant to write about it, not only because it is so achingly personal but because finding the right words to convey the tender places of my heart lately is a seemingly impossible task. I'm finding freedom in places I never expected to find it. I'm stretching my heart wide open, going back into the past so I can move forward into my future. I'm speaking up and saying what for years I kept silent, using the voice that for so long I let others take from me.
I'm being present and honest with this moment, with the people I love, with myself and my story. And I proclaim over all of it goodness.

To Write Love On Her Arms

This story has been beautifully haunting me all day.
It has stirred up emotions in me which I try to write out, only to end up sitting in front of a blank piece of paper. It's been years and still I don't have the words to accurately reflect the world of mental illness, even though its a world I know personally.
I have a tendency to try and rush through uncomfortable places. So as I reflected on Renee's story, and sat with the emotions it brought up for me, I had a desire to try and wrap it all up neatly in words. There would be a beginning, a middle, an end, and everything would be complete when I finally put the words to paper.
I'm writing to you from the middle.
I've been saying for years now that I'm healing, that I'm a survivor, and I am. But I don't know if you ever truly stop the healing process.
I thought I had healed from my issues surrounding love and sexuality, only to find out when I fell in love that I didn't actually know as much as I thought I did.
I have moments where my issues around food are relatively non-existent, and then there are moments when every single bite of food is a victory.
Sometimes my head goes to dark places.
And I'm still learning to give myself grace in those moments. I'm in recovery, not recovered. I'm healing, not healed.
There's a saying in yoga that it's not about touching your toes, it's about what you learn on the way down. It's called a practice, not a perfection. And I think the same is through with addiction and recovery. It's not about being perfect, it's about growth. And if I know one thing for sure it's that I'm growing.
This week I've been doing a holy yoga video practice every day, and what I'm learning about myself continually blows my mind. Every day the practices (unintentionally) seem to follow a similar theme of keeping the heart open.
In today's practice, the challenge was to write down one small 't' truth you believe about yourself and your body.
I didn't realize until I'd already written it that I wrote my small 't' truth in all capital letters. My truth?
I AM BROKEN
In so many different ways, it's the story I've come to believe about myself. Physically, emotionally, spiritually, in so many different ways I've come to believe that there is something fundamentally flawed about who I am, something that makes me broken.
The second part of the challenge was to move through the practice as if that thing wasn't true. And at the end of the practice, the final part of the challenge was to write the big 'T' truth on the other side of the paper, to counteract what you believe about yourself.
The paper I picked up was one I had used for my practice the day before.
I had been writing about keeping my heart open, and this line I wrote on this page seemed so fitting to become my big 'T' truth.
I ask who I will be without it all and the whispered reply comes "Free." I will be free.
And underneath that truth telling statement I had written John 8:36
"So if the Son sets you free, you are truly free."
It became the statement to counteract the story I believe about myself.
I'm trading brokenness for freedom.
I wish I could say I'd figured it out. I wish I could say that recovery and healing and trading brokenness for freedom is a one time thing and I did it and now I'm good.
It's a process, a practice. And I'm somewhere in the middle, not where I was but not yet where I will end up. And I must continually offer up grace for the practice, for this beautiful ugly middle piece that I'm still making peace with.

"Tell them to look up. Tell them to remember the stars. The stars are always there but we miss them in the dirt and clouds. We miss them in the storms. Tell them to remember hope. We have hope."

Lost Stars

I'm restless. Things are calling me away. My hair is being pulled by the stars again
I can never walk straight when the stars are out. My boyfriend always laughs at me because we'll be walking somewhere and he'll have to pull me along because I'm so busy staring at the sky I forget to walk.
I think I've always been enchanted by the stars. The twinkling lights know all my secrets, have seen my midnight tears, reminded me of the stardust in my own veins when I threatened to forget it.
Something about them has always seemed vaguely poetic to me, hauntingly beautiful. And during long, sleepless nights when my heart was aching the stars became my companions in the wee hours when the darkness threatened to overtake everything.

I have loved stars too fondly to be fearful of the night
In April I wrote 30 poems in 30 days.
I ended my first year of college, and said some of the hardest goodbyes I've ever had to say
I think I cried more in April than I have any other month this year: in closets and hallways, in the arms of the stars and the arms of the people I love, in malls and concerts and hospital rooms.
April is a strange mix of salty and sweet, of toughness and softness.
It's a month of writing, which also means it's a month of feeling.

Underneath the stars you met me and underneath the stars you left me, I wonder if the stars regret me, I think they'd like me if they only met me, at least you'll go of your own free will
I've been feeling slightly off balance these days. Sometimes I think I'm scared of the dark, other times its the light that leaves me afraid.
I feel the need to find myself again, to hide among poetry and under the night sky until I remember how to breathe, to curl my body around this ache until it subsides into something softer, something tangible.
I had a moment where I was crying earlier and the only thing I was able to say over and over again was "I want to go home."
And I realized in that moment that home didn't mean a place, or even in that instance a person. I think home meant to myself.
I'm ready to come home to myself now, home to the sky and the earth and the water and the fire and the breath.

The stars look like they would take such good care of you

in Dark and Empty Spaces

I wrote the same story for 2 years.
I used different words, different metaphors, approached it from new angles but essentially it was the same story. I wrote it because I didn't know if I would survive if I didn't get it out of me. I wrote not because it would change what happened but because I thought it would change me. I wrote because I didn't know what else to do.
For 2 years I told the same story: the story of earth shattering loss and unthinkable horror and unimaginable brokenness and destruction.
Every step I take forward in my life is a loss of something in my life and I live the waiting: how and of what will I be emptied today?
The past week has been heavy. Looking back I knew it. On Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. I could feel it. And then it happened.
On Thursday morning I found out a good friend from high school had lost her dad in an accident.
I was in care groups when I found out, and after we prayed together desperately I excused myself.
I barely made it out of the room before my legs gave out and I fell to the floor.
I know what it's like to lose your person. And while I am still lucky enough to have my own father with me I so easily could be in her position. My dad is still here but I do know what it's like to lose a person you love more than anything.
Hearing of her loss instantly transported me back to the day when I found out L had died. The first words that passed my lips were, "Why God?"
I want to take both fists and splinter that door with an ungrateful demanding for more. Why can't we be allowed days indefinitely? How can God ever expect us to say goodbye to the eyes, ears, hands of those we cherish more than our own?
 This is not the way I would have written this story.
 I say it over and over. I skip class and stay buried beneath a mountain of blankets and cry and write and listen to music and the whole time I feel as though this is not the way the story should go.
How is it possible to find true joy in a world filled with such brokenness? Is all we have been blessed with just some façade and this honest, gut wrenching, unthinkable pain all that really is?
My heart is broken by the lack of understanding, the inability to see the good. Death is not fair and the grief still bites me like the bitter cold and robs me of all my oxygen.
There are still moments when I whisper "I don't know how to keep living in a world where he doesn't."
I don't understand why my beautiful, brave friend is walking this journey. I would do anything to save her from the unspoken agony of bearing this story of loss inside of you.
What I would do if this wasn't the story we both have to tell.
And I won't shield God from my anguish by claiming He's not involved in the ache of this world and Satan prowls but he's a lion on a leash and the God who governs all can be shouted at when I bruise, and I can cry and I can howl and He embraces the David-hearts who pound hard on His heart with their grief and I can moan deep that He did this - and He did. I can feel Him hold me - a flailing child tired in my Father's arms. And I can hear him soothe soft, "Are your ways my ways, child? Can you eat my manna, sustain on my mystery? Can you believe that I tenderly, tirelessly work all for the best good of the whole world, because my flame of love for you can never ever be quenched?
All day I feel like those I love are nudging me.
"Hey, are you alright?" They ask. "What do you need?"
And in this moment I feel lucky to have friends who understand my brokenness so well for a loss that isn't mine but still carries the sting of that fateful day nearly 2 years ago.
In a moment of raw honesty I cry out to God. I flail and weep and question, and my questioning almost feels wrong.
"How dare you?" I say to God in a moment of weakness. Not just for this loss that has shattered my friend's world but for my own.
I inwardly rage and say no to death, no to illness and injury.
How can this be from the hand of God? How can this be good?
How, when my heart is broken and people die too soon and injury and illness become my delirium, can I look at what is being extended from the hand of God and declare it a gift?
That is what a shadow is, an empty space, a hole in the light. Evil is that - a hole in the goodness of God. Evil is all that lacks the goodness of God, a willful choice to turn away from the full goodness of God to that empty of His goodness.
The last few weeks I feel as though I've been submerged in grace. God is good, I would say over and over, because I truly felt it. I felt and experienced God's goodness, and it became my song. My heart sang over and over "Let us praise the Lord for all the good things He has done."
And then I got the phone call. And then I felt the sting of all the losses and the injustice and I fought against God and I said over and over that this isn't right and how God and why and what about grace now?
Is grace still proclaimed when there is a horrible accident that causes a father not to return home to his wife and children? Is grace still proclaimed when a mysterious monster lies dormant inside my body waiting to pounce? Is grace still proclaimed when 18 year old cousin's die and relationships crumble and dad's lose their sight, the eye destroyed by a mere nail? In these moments of unthinkable trauma and horror is there anything good and gracious about the things that passed through God's hands?
What of God's grace then?
Can I ask that question?
What in the world, in a world of certain loss, is grace?
I wish I had answers.
As I hold my beautiful, brave friend as she collapses in my arms I wish I had words.
As I spend all afternoon wearing my memorial sweater and crying and fluctuating between needing to be held and needing to be alone I wish I knew.
What is grace when everything crumbles and life becomes just another bad dream you can't wake up from?
This past year at PRBI God has been teaching me to listen to His heartbeat. I've seemed to run head on into every major thing I've struggled with and in all of it I've felt God tenderly whispering to me, "Do you trust me? Do you see how much I love you?"
And since the New Year it's felt like His blessings have abounded and it almost feels bitter when in my relentless raging against God I hear a tiny reminder in the back of my mind:
"Sweet girl, do you trust me?"
Trust? Trust that God is still good even when the brokenness feels like it's all consuming? Trust in God's plan when everything around me is chaos? Trust in God's sovereign power when I have lost so much?
In the moment I say no. I say no God, I can't accept this, this isn't good.
But perhaps there's a bigger picture, one I can't see because I am clinging to the pain and brokenness that is real and consuming.
I don't to accept this reality, that maybe my discomfort and pain is for some greater purpose. I don't want to believe that God would allow pain in my life for some great plan.
"Is what I feel not enough?" I sob.
When I realize that it is not God who is in my debt but I who am in His great debt, then doesn't all become gift? for He might not have
It could have just as easily been my dad not coming home from work one day. Instead delicate surgery is being performed on his eye with the hopes of restored sight.
In these moments of darkness we are learning to see.
And when the sickness rages inside of my body and I scream at God through the longest nights that this seemingly unending pain and suffering has become too much, I see it could have just as easily been the other way around. I wasn't supposed to survive, but on the third day... there is God's providing hand stirring tiny miracles in the darkness
And when the cousin dies and the world feels empty and inside of me is an unspeakable story, it is here that I learned forgiveness, and the beauty of love that holds together and that story, my story, has made the way for me to reach out to others and to experience healing.
I used to say that I would trade all I'd learned for a chance to be well, to not have gone through this loss.
And maybe I still feel like that. What I wouldn't give for a tiny glimpse of heaven, of completeness and wholeness.
I don't understand, and I question still.
but maybe that's the point.
Maybe all these traumas strung together create in me a greater longing for the beauty and completeness of heaven. Because of that maybe I greater appreciate the tiny gifts I've been given here on earth And maybe it is through all these things that the Father is knitting me closer to His heart.
The suffering nourishes grace and pain and joy are arteries of the same heart - and mourning and dancing are but movements in His unfinished symphony of beauty
In naming the things that so called manifest the goodness of God, I have separated life into two camps. There is good, the blessings, and there is bad, the ugly.
I praise God for one and rage against Him for the other.
And God, in His bigness and might, lets me in my humanness fight against Him. He knows that when I'm done running, done fighting against that which I declare not good, I will become still.
He will remove His hand from the rock and there will be glimmers of light in the darkness and when I look I will see His back.
And so in my grieving, in my no, God, I begin to name these ugly beautiful blessings.
The beauty of vulnerability and friendship that becomes sacred in the split open moments and friends who call me just to check in and hold me up when I am weak and moments of rest and people who understand and little encouragement notes and the beautiful sound of laughter
I'm not always quick to see it, but this time I was. Last time it took me over a year and this time it took me an hour but I can see God in this place.
I had a thought a few months ago, when I was standing over His grave.
"What will you name this place?" I thought. We had been studying the Old Testament in class, most recently the study of Abraham and Isaac.
I barely had a chance to think before the words left my lips: "I will call this place 'God will provide'"
God is always good and I am always loved. Everything is eucharisteo

All quotes in italics from 1000 gifts by Ann Voskamp

"I think I deserve something beautiful"

“You know what I felt this morning, Delia? Nothing. No passion, no spark, no faith, no heat, no nothing! I think I’ve really gotten past the point where I can be calling this a ‘bad moment’… This is worse than death to me, the idea that this is the person I’m going to be from now on… There’s like nothing – I have no pulse! I used to have this appetite for food, for my life, and it is just gone! I want to go someplace where I can marvel at something, anything.”


A year ago I was sitting in my basement praying for my life to change. I wanted to marvel at something, to actually be alive and experience my life. I felt exhausted with the idea of my life.
I was watching a movie about a woman who goes to Italy in order to find herself. I'm a sucker for movies like that, where the main character goes on a journey and ends up finding out things about herself she had been searching for.
I decided to create my own Italy. I needed something risky and exciting and new.
I decided to enroll in public high school.


"I'm not checking out, I need to change"


As the weeks leading up to my dramatic re-entry into high school passed, I began to see this more as a bad decision and less of the something new I had been hoping for. All the unknowns seemed to be looming over my head. The what if's became big and daunting.
I entered my first day of classes fearful of this big new world I had been thrown into. I felt like a fish out of water.
So many times in that first month I remember crying because I was completely overwhelmed. I remember sitting and forcing myself to find the good things that happened in each day because otherwise I would be overcome with this sense of dread.
In September I remember thinking I would never make it until June.
And then something began to change...
It is now May and in a few days I will be graduating. I will be leaving this world and entering a new one. And the day that once seemed unconceivable is now here.
I would be lying if I said I was ready for it to come
This past year has been a challenging one. I have learned so much, about subjects like biology and history, but also about myself.
I have met so many amazing, incredible people, and made friendships that I cherish.
I have laughed a lot, cried a lot, stumbled and failed more times than I would like to admit.
But I have also succeeded in more ways than I can count.
And the thought of saying goodbye to all of this in just a few weeks terrifies me.
The place I was so hesitant to walk into now feels like home to me. The self discovery that has taken place inside of those walls amazes me. The people I have met are beautiful.
I went into this year searching for something beautiful, something marvelous, something new. I wanted my life to change.
And now, a full year after that incident in my basement, I can safely say that it has.
I have seen beauty. I have experienced love. I have learned lessons about biology and history, and what it means to be human and new experiences. I have laughed and cried and loved and been stressed out and sometimes I can only stand back and marvel at the wonder of it all.
In September I never expected the profound impact that this place would have on my life, and how it would shape me in just a few short months. I am walking out of this experience existing more than I did when I entered in.


"I will leave with the hope that the expansion of one person - the magnification of one life - is indeed an act of worth in this world. Even if that life, just this one time, happens to be nobody's but my own"

Trigger Warning (Maybe I need you)

There will be days when the fear of disappointment will sit so heavily on your chest it is paralyzing
He says this is okay
It feels like anything but okay
There are days when you can't deny the undeniable craving to be close to another human being, to rest your head on your shoulder and let them remind you that you are not an island
I've been here before, forced myself to believe it so many times, but still it's always a little hard to swallow
I am not an island
I am not a metaphor
I am not broken
I am not unworthy
I repeat the words over in my head like a mantra
I am not...
I am not...
I am...


There is a line in a poem by Shane Koyczan that says "For all intensive purposes you were alone in the womb, there was no one there to tell you that this is going to hurt. And it did and it does but it still remains a fond memory for your parents"
I've been thinking a lot recently about the languages I speak most fluently: music and poetry and metaphors.
I've been thinking a lot about what it means to be a poet, to be a woman, to be a grown up, to be a human being. To be in love and what it means to be a mother and I'm trying to figure out this thing God made called a person.
I often feel like I am wearing my insides on my outsides.
Because of the things I've gone through in my life, I often feel a little bit fragile, a little bit out of sorts, always slightly disoriented like I have been looking into the sun for too long. There's always that part of me that seems to need the label Handle with Care written right across the front, alongside the words fragile and breakable
Because of this I often find myself walking into sharp edges and salty things and lemons and trigger warnings
There is no one here to tell me that this is going to hurt
There are days when it feels like the entire world needs to be labeled with a trigger warning. Every moment is a memory, and my heart is a little more fragile than it is on any other given day. I can't construct a shell big enough to wrap all the way around, can't find a way to keep it from falling off
There are days when I am so busy taping and gluing my heart shaped cast that everything else feels like work. I demand too much patience, too much grace, and can get frustrated easily.
Trigger warning
There is no one here to tell me that this is going to hurt.
There are days when it feels like my world needs a trigger warning
There are days when I wish someone was here to tell me that this will hurt more than you care to admit
That this is ok
That you are not a metaphor
You are not a poem
You are not defined by how he looks at you, or what she says about you, or disappointing either of them
You are not an island
You are not a horror movie, hate crime in recovery, bruised and bloodied victim the world forgot about
You are a human
You are beautiful
You are...

I have always belonged to the light (National Poetry Writing Month)

April is National Poetry month and this year I have the privilege of joining some amazing writers in participating in Napowrimo, or national poetry writing month. Basically the goal of this is to write one poem every day for the month of April
It has turned out to be challenging. Most of what I've been writing has been squeezed into small bits of time, rushed elegance.
Many, if not all, of the poems I've written this month (6 so far) have been dedicated to a person. A guy in an interview I read, someone I met over lunch, my younger self, someone who changed my life.
And by writing these poems, carving out these moments for elegance and beauty and poetry, dedicating them to people, it feels almost like a spiritual practice, like for a brief moment in time everything else falls away and there is just me, and God, and love and beauty.
So while this month is shaping up to be a challenging one, it is always turning out to be rewarding.
This is something I wrote today, unedited and lacking in proper elegance, but none the less poetry
This is my heart speaking poems


He told me my eyes looked brighter today
I imagined kaleidoscope colors spinning like a pinwheel
reminded of six years old and peppermint ice cream
of the days before my light was stolen and I forgot what it means to shine
I felt lighter today
felt hopeful, washed in grace and love
like sunbeams peeking through my ribcage after a long winter
like purple tulips and rain on the tin roof, washing away my yesterday and new life blooming
I felt the breath today
reminded of the release, finally feeling peace settle on my skin
it whispered to me softly, like I've always been in the light
and maybe I have
The night nips at my heels, trying to pull me in, calling my name
But let this be my battle cry, my sweet release, my remedy
"I have always belonged to the light"

Where I stood

The sun warmed my shoulders as I sat at the kitchen table, listening to Missy Higgins and writing about nostalgia and hope and grief and everything beautiful.
March has been good to me, in a way I never expected.
The first words I wrote this month, as it came to me full of untold secrets, were "I'm not great at ending things."
It began quietly unfolding as I wrote of bad haircuts, watching Julia Robert's movies and saying goodbye. I wrote about grief, pain, still (always) trying to analyze the hole in my chest that came from losing too many people and things that I love.
I fought with myself, constantly wrestling against the idea that there had to be something more, examining my pain under a microscope and trying to make sense of it.
I tried to find myself amidst the unknown, often stumbling over my own edges.
And then there came a moment, and maybe they all come something like this, where I tripped over myself and fell into what I had been looking for.
For a brief moment in time, there was nothing left to say. No apologies sneaking out in the form of poetry, no love letters slipping out of the pen every time it hit the paper. There was just the sound of my heart, and I was learning how to listen to it.
During this month of March I often fought between my heart and my head. I felt like I needed constant reassurance that everything was ok and that I was ok.
And I encountered something I am still trying to explain, and can only describe as radical grace.
In my running away from myself I ran face first, full speed into radical grace, radical faith, radical love and hope.
I had some real, honest conversations with people about my life and where I've been and where I want to go, and maybe I was a little bit surprised by the responses I got. Because sometimes if you give people a chance, they will surprise you and it will be great.
For the first time in forever I realized how loved I am (even if that's something I am still trying to understand)
I laughed and cried and struggled and fought against myself and for myself a lot this month. I got real, got scared, got excited, got honest, got loved.
And I made some big decisions about my future, which are slowly unfolding into something beautiful.
For me, I think March was about beginning that journey to find myself, and listening to my heart and being honest about that. And while that's been my intention I definitely experienced it in a really real and crazy way.
Listening to Missy Higgins and writing in the sunshine was a perfect way for me to wrap up this beautiful, crazy month of grace.
And while I don't know what the next month or few months or year will hold for me I can only hope it involves more of this radical kind of love, and grace and faith. I can only hope it involves more of this being cracked open, because this, I am learning, is how the light gets in.
Even if it's painful
Even if it's hard
I am learning to open myself up to the light and to love and to others and to myself


Sit down on the top there. After all, you climbed all the way up. You did that. Not me. Not your past. You: here and now. It was a steep climb and you almost fell but you didn't. Go on and sit down. And when the trees ask you to stay awhile, tell them "yes, yes, I plan to. In fact, I have always been here. I have always been the light

Hoarding: Buried Alive

Hoarder
I say the word sometimes, stringing it along with the other things I call myself in the dark, things that you couldn't possibly say aloud
Except that I did
I think there are parts of yourself, memories, that you keep closed off.
For me it's old relationships, that boy who broke me into a million tiny pieces, each boy that followed, hours spent fighting for my life and against it, the addictions you pick up in order to preserve your sanity (Everyone has them)
I cling to my stories, use them as protection, keep them in glass jars in formaldehyde on shelves in the cellar.
Grief. Pain. Loss. Depression. Addiction. Sickness.
Sometimes happy memories too, but I find that the moments that have rocked my world so profoundly are usually the ones where I have fallen to my knees in desperation.
I keep these stories, these moments, these memories close to me because they are mine, and also because there seems to be something sacred hidden in them.
There is something unspeakably sacred about the moments that have changed you as a person, and there is something to be said for writing about those moments for all they are worth. Turning them into poetry or a blog post or a journal entry.
This past week I haven't been writing much. I've been fiercely guarding my little story, tucking it up against my chest whispering the same words over and over again
"Shhhh, it's ok, I'm right here. You're ok. I love you."
I've been speaking my truth out loud, to others and also to myself. It is liberating, but also terrifying. I am realizing how I am the only thing standing in my way.
I am calling conditions, calling out my own crap and things that belong to others that I've been hoarding for far too long
The friendship that no longer exists, the relationships I haven't fully let go of, that one time when I slipped on that one day however many years ago
I realized how much I have been holding onto things that aren't mine, and holding onto all this stuff that is mine but that I've been convincing myself is necessary
I am learning to find that fine line, between being there for myself and protecting my little budding story, and calling conditions.
I think if you hold onto all those stories, the guilt and the lies and the shame and the pain, it will bury you alive. It did me.
I also think if you deny your story, and your truth, you will be buried beneath an entirely different sort of mountain.
I'm not there yet, but I'm trying. It is a constant tug of war, between letting go and holding onto and sheltering my story and throwing it all out there (I think sometimes they are the same thing) and in the end I have learned (am learning) I can only say this: Ok. I understand you are feeling... It's ok, I'm right here, and I love you
I am learning to listen to my own truth and it sounds a lot like this...
I am
I am
I am

Skinny Love

She sat in the driver’s seat of her car, in the parking lot, taking one ragged breath followed by another.

 There are moments, she decided, when your past and your future collide and it feels like an accident. There is broken glass and screeching tired and screaming and your right hand shakes as you try to hold the pen between your fingers.

 There are moments when there is no truth left in you to be spoken, and that is when you need to speak the truth most.

 The words slipped from her lips like turpentine, running like naked hooligans up and down the aisles before she had a chance to capture them, smooth down their cowlicks and straighten their collars. They simply existed without her knowledge, tumbling out of her mouth one after another like small towheaded children rolling down a grassy hill in June.

 And while she rambled on, all the while feeling this intersection between who you have been and who you want to be, he watched her. His eyes were unwavering, despite how many times she looked to see if he had shifted his glance, or flinched, cringed at the sight of her horror and her wonder being birthed into existence.

 To find your truth, sometimes you have to get on all fours in the ashes and dig through them, sifting through the rubble with bare hands. It is messy, and there are things pulled from the ground that you would rather have stayed unearthed, but this is how you grow. You speak your shame, illuminating it as it bursts into being. And by speaking the words aloud, they lose some of their power.

  He watched her, hands curled around his coffee cup, and the way his eyes penetrated her being unnerved her. It was like the moment before the crash, when you are trying to brace yourself for impact. She kept waiting for the fallout, the one that always followed. She was waiting for him to condemn her, like she had done to herself all these years. She was looking for justification but he wasn’t giving her any.

 She hadn’t known unconditional, unwavering love until she looked into his eyes. He had listened to her story, untamed and wild, and chosen not to look away. And she could feel it, the quiet roar within her starting to grow louder

 Do you not know how strong my love for you is?

 We are each given a story, a truth. It is raw and unedited, sometimes messy, sometimes reckless. Sometimes your heart is wearing so many scars it looks like someone has taken a paintbrush to it, because there have been too many times you have tried to paint over the broken places, finding love in places where it doesn’t belong.

 Her heart was wind worn, falling apart at the seams. There are marks from all the staples and tape and glue she tried to use to hold herself together, one for every man she romanced in attempts to numb the pain and she wears them like notches on a bedpost.

 And as she sat alone, reflecting on the way He had looked at her, chosen her, put his claim on a bruised and bleeding heart, whispering this one is mine over the girl who has called herself unlovable, her body shook with the emotion that was coursing through her veins.

 You don’t get to choose your story, she decided, but you do get to make peace with it. You get to say “This is not how the story will end.”

 You get to make that choice to learn from the past, not change it, and use it to move you towards a better future.

 Despite the tears on her cheeks, there was a hopefulness in her heart that hadn’t been there for a really long time. It was the beginnings of something, a small tender shoot that, if cared for, would grow into a beautiful flower.

 It was there, waiting for her if she would only try.

 And despite the words in her head and the words on the page, she heard the silent roar leak out of her mouth: Do you not know how strong my love is?

 

"Soon this place will be too small"

Writers scribbling in the midst of grief have noted the ways in which writing about the experience from the inside creates something new, namely, a safe or safe-ish place to rest. A net, a landing point, a dock from which to view the turbulent and troubled waters without having to wade in it every moment of the day. In a word: relief. The act of creation forces the creator to establish a new world with new rules and structure and form, an act that is sustaining not only in an emotion and a human way, but also in an artistic way."
From Still Point of the Turning World by Emily Rapp


For as many times as I've done it, you would think that letting go is something that comes easy to me. And yet I still find myself fighting against it, my heart suffering from whiplash and weathered by the elements.
There is something they don't tell you about the moment when you alter your position to the universe.
My hands and feet are cold, I am filled with reckless ambition, I have avoided mirrors and sharp corners and acidic foods simply because this is what you do when you have been stripped down to a new layer of skin.
Sometimes I think it would be easier if I could plot my relation to the universe with a simple formula, putting things into neat little boxes.
I am angry because...
I am sad because...
But sometimes there is no explanation, only still silence. It is in that silence I can hear my own heartbeat like a machine gun as it slams into my chest wall.

Don't write if you don't feel up to it, people cautioned me when I told them I had started to write {about Ronan}. But it didn't matter if I felt up to it. It was my responsibility; it was my job. It ordered chaos, focused energy, provided a way of "bearing up" that no period of restfulness could possibly accomplish. In other words, rendering loss was a way of honoring life

I have spent months writing about grief, running it over in my hands, preserving it in every way that I can. I have spent days chasing after life, wondering what exactly constitutes life, and love, and always altering my position to both.
I have said the words I love you many times, and most of them meant Please don't leave me here alone
I write in my own blood, until my heart is exposed on the page. Sometimes I wonder if this also constitutes as art. I wonder if there is something beautiful in being so exposed and fragile.
I have been digging through my own ashes, pulling the gore from my chest with my bare hands, staring at myself and realizing that my horror and my wonder are colliding in this very moment in a place under my skin, that I am both.

After a second suicide attempt, Mary awakens on the bank of the Thames, having just been rescued from the water. This event marks a kind of rebirth for her, an awakening.
'We must go on living' Mary concluded, 'It is our duty'

And so, in the darkness, I am working to build a life for myself. I am capturing moments of beauty, storing them, treasuring them. I often feel like I am laboring long hours, and in the end I can only hope the outcome has been worth the heartache.
There is great heartache that comes with letting yourself be loved, I have decided. I am continually altering my place in the universe, constantly shifting, expanding and shrinking, pulling in and releasing with open hands.
There is nothing left inside of me to offer right now. My hands are empty, my body turning in on itself, my eyes always looking for glimmers of hope.
Somehow, as hard as I have tried to hold onto the past, this feels like starting over.
As much as I have made myself believe I must hold onto the pain and grief, never forget the extremes it has taken to become this person, right now it feels like I am awakening into spring, a new beginning.
There comes a time when you must taste hope for what is really is, and open your heart once more to the potential.
I have held things (people, pain, stories, grief, moments) close to my heart claiming that I would never let go of these that have impacted me so greatly
But sometimes it is time to let go
And you must stand in the wind with your arms raised to the heavens and trust that this is how it is, how it is supposed to be

I stared at him and tickled him and kissed him and wished that my words, anything, could save him. But no, writing would not save Ronan. But, I thought, it might save me

Gilead

There are nights when I feel weak
Depleted, lacking, always reaching for something that isn't there, trying to get a grip
My hands are cracked from all the hurt I have tried to hold in them, my throat is hoarse from all the words I tried to say, there is a hole in the pit of my stomach the size of a peach pit from everything I've tried to swallow, tried to stuff inside, tried to grow inside of myself
There are days when I pause and ask if it's all worth it, this whole living honestly thing, because living with a heart wide open means you are wide open when the stones get thrown
Sometimes I wonder if this is what healing feels like, this lacking, trying to hold everything with arms getting tired, heart chapped by the wind because it's been on your sleeve, exposed to the elements, for quite some time now
I feel an evident lacking tonight
Lacking motivation, lacking wisdom, lacking the ability to turn simple words into something poetic, lacking blood
I think this is all part of living with your heart wide open, living from that place of honesty. It is incredibly hard, and your heart gets bruised and there are times when you want to take back your open hands and close your fists so tightly nothing can get through, nothing can hurt you
Living honestly means sometimes there is crying, messy crying, and there are meltdowns in the bathroom and there is standing in front of the mirror trying to get yourself together and there are sleepless nights and evidence of lacking and weakness
Living honestly, openly, engaging in this give and take with myself and the people around me and the universe, it is depleting, and exhausting, and hard. Being real and looking myself in the mess and accepting that, it's one of the hardest things I've ever done. Sometimes I look in the mirror and I see a girl who doesn't know if she's worth loving today, with all the imperfections, when I'm not nice, when I am selfish and exhausted and depleted.
And then I take a moment, and I step back, and I realize there is beauty in this too
Because now I can write pages and pages on his eyes, her laugh, being surrounded by people and witnessing beautiful words and moments and conversations.
And if I acknowledge the hard parts of living honestly, I also must acknowledge the good
How it has allowed me to love myself and accept myself, even when it's messy
How it has allowed me to become a beauty seeker
How it has given me moments of connection and interactions with amazing people
Living honestly means you take the good and the bad, and I guess you set up a monument for both.
You acknowledge the good and the bad
I have books filled with memories of all the good things, the beautiful moments that made me so grateful to be here and to be alive and to be human
And I have a box filled with all those painful reminders, the physical and metaphorical scars I wish I didn't have to carry around with me but are such an important part of my story
Lately I've been hearing a lot about monuments, and naming the important things in your life
A while ago I came up with a word I wanted my life to embody, and looking at it now I think it's starting to blossom into existence


Gilead: A place of healing

Truth Telling

I told the truth today
Sometimes the truth isn't what you want to hear.
Sometimes the truth is messy. It gets all over your hands and stuck in your hair and tracks mud through the house
Sometimes the truth is bold and loud and demanding, roaring and stomping and bellowing
Sometimes the truth comes softly, in whispers, on the wind and through other people and through the voices in your own head
Sometimes the truth is scary


One of the things I've been trying to do for a while now is to live my truth. That is easier said than done. It's hard to live your truth when you're grumpy and angry and annoyed or when you're sad and scared. It's hard to keep living from that honest place when it feels like there is nothing left.
And yet, at the same time, I know that maintaining that honesty and that truth telling is a huge part of my healing journey


So I've been gathering wisdom, learning from poets and teachers and brilliant minds.
They are teaching me to live in this skin I'm not sure I belong in, how to breathe in acceptance and live from that place of honesty
Even if it hurts
Even if it's hard
To open my hands to accept whatever comes, and to give whatever I can
To let myself feel even the ugliest, messiest parts of this life, and love myself anyway


And I look at myself at the end of the day, tired eyes and messy hair with a long to-do list and a mind running circles around itself trying to get it all right (Because even with all I'm learning, I'm still trying to get it right)
And I can honestly say that today I told the truth

Forest Green

I've started identifying each day with a color
Blood red, harsh pink, ocean blue
I write every day that today is harsh pink or today is burnt orange
I've been taking notes
Some of them in a running word document I have on my computer titled Remember this.
Remember the way you feel right now, remembering how it all was, remember how you felt, remember this. Sometimes the words are coherent, detailed accounts of what happened. Sometimes they are feelings, words I shouldn't say but write anyway, the honest truth. Sometimes it is only a sentence, or a color.
Today is blood red
There are years for questions and years for answers and so far this year has been one for being stripped bare, standing naked in front of people, wearing my heart on my sleeve, gasping for air, trying to understand this. I'm not exactly sure what kind of year that is, but I know this last month and a bit has felt like a sledge hammer to the stomach, kicking my spine. I keep choking on the truth, acting like I have something to prove.
I've been writing a lot, most of it broken records, the same thing repeated in a million different ways. It's not always polite and I'm learning that sometimes honesty isn't polite. I'm over using the word metaphor and the truth is sometimes a bitter pill to swallow.
Today is forest green. It's wrapping my mind around the truth and trying to get it right. It's too much poetry, not enough honesty.


"There are places inside me I'm still learning to love. They are shaped like God or cigarette smoke"

Here's to the good times (A thank you letter)

This is a thank you letter


This is a thank you letter to the world that birthed me, that raised me up to become the person I am today, to the trees and the rocks and the flowers and the ocean, to the stars that formed me and then called my name, reminding me that I always belong somewhere, this one is for you.
This is a thank you letter to those who were present that night when I was born, for the doctor who said "It's a girl!", for the nurses who cleaned me up and set me in my parent's arms, who made me the most special, newest human on earth for brief seconds, this one is for you.
This is a thank you letter for my parents who chose life, who decorated my nursery and took pictures of my firsts that would fill my baby book to remind me that I didn't have only lasts, but also firsts, who stood beside my bedside time and time again, tirelessly, late into the night, standing guard like soldiers, this one is for you.
This is a thank you letter to the friends I had growing up, who taught me the basics of human interaction. Even though we were just silly kids, I always believed we could be something more.
This one is for the people who bruised my heart, the ones I can still count off on my fingers. They say you always remember the bad things more than the good things and I guess they're right. I still remember it all. But thank you anyway, because you showed me who I could be.
This one is for the missions team that summer when I was 14, who were there for me when I needed someone, who taught me that love is really the strongest force of all.
This one is for the people who told me I couldn't do it. I proved you wrong, thank you for pushing me to try.
This is a thank you to the poets, the philosophers, the kind souls who touched me with their light and reminded me that we are not alone on this gauntlet, who encouraged me, listened to me, and laughed with me. Without you I wouldn't be half the creative mind I am.
This is a thank you for the friends that saved me, the best friends who remind me who I am even when I forget
For the friends I met when I decided to fearlessly step out of my comfort zone this year, who endured stress and teachers and tests with me, but also so many laughs, debates, questions and who connected with me in such an amazing way
For the people that don't quite fit, who are pushing against labels and boxes, this one is for you
This is for the ones who told me it was ok to be loud, to use my voice, to be passionate and opinionated and fierce
This is a thank you to all the boys I wrote poems about
This is a thank you to all the amazingly strong women who taught me what it means to be a woman, to be strong and smart and kind
Here's to John Green videos on bad days, late night conversations and music
This is a thank you to the doctors who saved me, the friends who saved me, the family that saved me, the words that saved me
This is for the teachers that inspired me, the poets that moved me, the moments that screamed Remember this
Here's to road trips, country music, taking adventures and writing about them
This is a thank you to the boy on the bus that one summer, the boy in the hospital waiting room, the boy in Chapters with a book and headphones, this is for all the people who's stories I've told without knowing their names
You matter
Thank you
Here's to the good times

On Grief and Pioneers

My friend Hannah wrote a piece on grief
I've written before that this month, this season, has been very introspective for me. A lot of looking inward, using my hands to sort through the mess inside of my chest like scooping the seeds and stringy guts out of a pumpkin when I was little.
There have been many cups of tea, many words whispered late into the night and written down in the margins of my biology notes, in notebooks and typed into my computer, much yearning coming from this heart of mine.
I become fierce, howling at the moon.
Even with years of practice, I'm still not that great at doing grief.
Even with all these years behind me, I still feel like a pioneer, turning up the soil with my fingers, marching through uncharted territory, each step timid and shaky.
It is in these days I've been listening to the same song on repeat, often crying through the whole thing, drinking coffee black and tea because someone told me that tea makes you happy. I've been sleeping a lot, because someone else told me that sleep makes everything better, and I'm learning he was right about that, even if he was wrong about a lot of other things.
I'm taking on the role of a pioneer.
Pioneer: one of the first to settle in a territory, a plant or animal capable of establishing itself in a barren or open area
I've been moving slowly, writing much, discovering that sometimes there isn't an answer for everything. I've been taking shaky steps towards the future, towards this uncharted territory, when all I want to do is run the other direction, fast.
I've been here before.
Here being in this state of grief, this state of not knowing, this state of fear, this state of not feeling like you belong anywhere.
It feels like stretching, pulling, tugging, shifting, like the world is turning too fast and all I want it to do is stop.
I don't know what's coming next, and I'm not going to pretend I do. I don't know when this season of grief will end, when the sun will rise after a long night.
But I know I'm not the only one who's been here. I'm following the trails of those who have gone before me, those who have bravely walked full speed face first into the dark. Maybe my journey won't be the same as theirs (there are often moments when it feels like I'm the only one to ever experience this, and in some respects I am) but it helps knowing that there are other people out there.
Other people who have been scared to death. Other people who have sat with their grief and didn't die from it. Other people who saw the choice to kindly leave or walk into the dark.
I follow the pioneers who so bravely went before me, making their own trails through the darkness. I find courage in their ashes, bravery in their stories, hope in their truths.
And I make my own path, begin my own journey as a pioneer, walking full speed face first into my own dark, into this uncharted territory where I'll eventually make a home.
This is where it begins. You make a home in the dark, make friends with the grief, embrace it only to find it isn't so scary after all. You become a pioneer, and maybe after a while it doesn't hurt so bad and you can finally see that sun.

I refuse to be silent

When my friend Isabelle asked me to write a letter to myself for her blog, I was honored. Of course, I told her, I'd come up with something.
I spent days trying to think of what to write. I wanted it to be amazing, I wanted it to showcase the light on the other side of darkness, and if I'm being totally honest I didn't want it to be too honest, too reflective on my own weakness.
There is light in the darkness, but there are also days when the darkness is so overwhelming, so overpowering it's impossible to remember there is light beyond this, much less catch a glimpse of it every now and then.
The post I ended up writing I wrote in 15 minutes. I wrote it after a day when I was exhausted, when I felt like I was done trying to get it right and I had nothing left to give.
I don't like to admit to those days. It worries people and I feel like it makes me seem weak and people look at me differently when I confess that my life is pretty messy at times, a mosaic made up of shattered pieces that I keep trying to arrange into something beautiful.
The letter I wrote to myself was on one of those days. It was on a day when I got into my car after hours spent with people and broke down while Springsteen was on the radio. I was tired, and frustrated, and everything hurt and I didn't want to take any more.
So I wrote this letter to remind myself that bad days come, and you just have to feel them out. But good days come too. Days when people end up surprising you, and your heart is so full of love it might just burst. Days for dancing and wearing red lipstick. Days when there is sunshine out there and you can feel the light penetrating your being.
I refuse to be silent about the things that matter, about who I am, even the messy, hard parts.
I refuse to be silent






"Jacob, where do you find the strength to carry on in life?"


"Life is often heavy only because we attempt to carry it," said Jacob. "But I do find a strength in the ashes."


"In the ashes?" asked Mr. Gold.


"Yes," said Jacob, with a confirmation that seemed to have traveled a great distance. "You see, Mr. Gold, each of us is alone. Each of us is in the great darkness of our ignorance. And, each of us is on a journey. In the process of our journey, we must bend to build a fire for light, and warmth, and food. But when our fingers tear at the ground, hoping to find the coals of another's fire, what we often find is the ashes.


And, in those ashes, which will not give us light or warmth, there may be sadness, but there is also testimony. Because these ashes tell is that somebody else has been in the night, somebody else has bent to build a fire, and somebody else has carried on. And that can be enough, sometimes."