I was starving
and you were my only food,
but you were also poison.
How brave I was back then,
when there were no other sources of sustenance in sight,
to turn away from you
and trust
that if I could only hold on a bit longer,
I’d be able to find some.
I did.
I tried to escape the pain,
and nothing worked.
So now, I will go into the pain.
As I stand at the edge of this ocean,
I cannot see the opposite shore.
But I must trust that someday I will,
if I’m brave enough to start swimming.
(May 2022)
When I go deep into my guilt, I find innocence.
When I go deep into my sorrow, I find joy.
When I go deep into my anger, I find forgiveness.
When I go deep into my self-hatred, I find self-love.
When I go deep into my grief, I find rebirth.
When I go deep into my hurt, I find healing.
When I go deep into my loneliness, I find connection.
When I go deep into my weakness, I find strength.
When I go deep into my fear, I find courage.
When I go deep into my bewilderment, I find clarity.
When I say deep, I mean DEEP.
The path to heaven often takes a person straight through hell,
offering no shortcuts.
But every suffering is the raw material for its opposite.
Don’t be afraid of your darkness.
Sit with it quietly.
Listen to it intently.
Someday,
it will lead you to your light.
“You are only free when you realize you belong no place—you belong every place—no place at all. The price is high. The reward is great.”-Maya Angelou
__________________________
Dear sister:
When you feel the discomfort
of not fitting in somewhere,
rejoice!
It means you have a shape.
Society is a machine.
Be a flaw in the code.
Acceptance isn’t passive.
It is active.
It is facing and contending.
Don’t be afraid
to dissolve
old layers
of yourself.
Caterpillars
completely break down
inside their coccoons
before they become
butterflies.
Sometimes, it is best
to let yourself be forgotten.
Particularly,
when you feel you must change yourself
or betray yourself
to be remembered.
I finally see the mean inner voices for what they are:
part of the family.
I’m never going to eradicate them.
Fear,
self-doubt,
self-criticism,
and depression
will always be in the car
in the road trip of my life–
a month from now,
a year from now,
ten years from now.
And that’s okay.
They can be here–
as long as they know their place.
They sit in the back.
They sit shotgun.
They are not the driver.
I repeat:
They are not the driver.
*Credit where credit is due: this poem is a paraphrase of a part of Big Magic, by Elizabeth Gilbert.*
I vow
to spend my life
walking through fires
instead of
cowering from them.
I vow
to spread light
even when it means
I must
endure heat.
(written 2017 or 2018)
*Inspired by the Viktor Frankl quote, “what is to give light must endure burning.”
Musings and Music 