SUN
cow bone earrings, plastic lavender earrings, black mini-vase, string of freshwater pearls
Journey
I think it was around 2014 or 2015 that I realized: there are times when I just can’t. Up until that point, I had been a person who was able - or who could at least appear to be. There is a fortune in that reality. The misfortune in it is that the change hit hard.
It started with depression. My understanding of the grief and suffering of the world was viscerally expanding. And I was further grieved by the responses of the “people of faith” I thought would care about these things. There were days when I would lay on the wooden floor of my bedroom for hours.
Over years, this grief would deepen. And, I didn’t realize it at the time, but what started as a burden of the heart and soul, would work itself thoroughly into my body.
I thought this could be resolved by learning and mission. By educating myself and others, by doing good work, I could restore my vigor for life and love. I would offer my self, as I’d always done, in service. I went from working in ministry to doing racial equity work. I would be among those to change the world into something I could live with and in. In striving toward this, I would learn that the world I could live with and in, were not what many people wanted. I wasn’t even sure I had what it took to get there myself. I couldn’t see a way without others. So, when I experienced others saying they didn’t want to come along, that the ask of collective freedom was too big, I myself felt stuck.
Not even a year into my official racial equity job, the COVID-19 pandemic began and, even though I did not catch it, it wasn’t long before the social weight of the times impacted me.
In addition to my fibroids and heavy periods, I started losing hair and sleep. Days of insomnia turned into weeks, and weeks into months. At one point, I took myself to urgent care and found myself crying as I checked in at the front desk desperate. I truly thought I would die from not sleeping.
My body was falling apart, being intruded upon, and now even refusing its rest. They had nothing to offer but pharmaceuticals, which did nothing to relieve me.
This poem holds the words of my body speaking to me at a time when even dreaming of new ways caused me grief.
Paradoxically, the more I have accepted the ways in which I am unable, the more my tenderness and vulnerability surprises me by making a way. In needing, I find I reach more honestly and creatively for that which brings life. And I have no choice but to honor the time it takes for life abundantly to unfold.
Invitation
Breathe.
Look or listen.
Feel what you feel and pay attention to it.
Wait.
What is your body inviting you to?
