The wind cannot be caught.
It cannot be moulded to perfection,
scraped and gutted
and made to be something other than
what it is.
The wind is only, and always, the wind.
And you
are only
and always
you.
Flow as you will.
The soft girl whispers in my ear.
I drift each cushion to the foot of the bed and carefully place it off to the side, as if it were made of precious, gold leaf.
I peel back the doona; the sight of a crisp sheet peeking out beyond its triangular puff will never cease to satisfy.
The world runs fast.
I run slow. Smooth. Deep.
Just the way I was made to run.
I see the pace of the world, I do not choose it.
I see me, now.
I choose me, now.
It’s funny. To think of the damage caused by cultural norms and stereotypes.
Of course, there are the absolutely beautiful cultural narratives out there. Those that cherish and honour human life by holding it, by respecting it so beautifully that even the hardest of hearts must surely be touched by the story of it all.
I heard a story as beautiful, just the other day. My counsellor told it to me: how, in her culture, when a woman becomes pregnant, she becomes the queen. The whole tribe lavish her with love, care, and most importantly, perhaps…food.
This discussion came about after a lovely tender moment where she looked over at me, my bulging belly sweetly growing a perfect little gift, and offered to bake me something lovely to celebrate the occasion (that’s right, surprise, I’m fourteen weeks pregnant. And how lovely it is, to me. How lovely it is. xx)
But, I digress. Because although there are some absolutely beautiful cultural stories passed on by certain cultures in the world, other cultures do not even realise their own toxicity. (And when I say toxicity, what I mean is…truly, their cultural ideas are heartbreaking and damaging to individuals who do not fit into the selected story being told.)
There are some absolutely wonderful things to be said about the culture I was born into. But one arm of the narrative, an arm that destroyed any hope of me developing healthy self-esteem in my early years, was the idea that vulnerability and softness were somehow character flaws. I was mostly soft.
As it turns out, this soft part of me, this sensitivity, is my super power; a power that helps me soothe, and bring safety to those who need it. A power that helps me tap into the world of everything and nothing, and pull down the words and creativity needed for my writing to touch people in the way that it seems to.
But my culture called me ‘soft’. It told me to ‘harden up’, and it assumed that If I didn’t…then surely I must be broken, at worst. Naive at best. Never have I been these labels.
And if you are a deep and tender heart resonating with these words…never have you been these labels, either.
Always we’ve been perfect.
Just the way we are.
Think of the trillions of flowers, plants and trees out there. Some are soft. Some are hard, shrubs built to last in the wind and rain and hail. None of them judge each other for being ‘wrong’ in anyway. They simply exist.
And so do I.
So do we.
Deep within my heart
there is a river, raging on.
And I ask this river to be careful.
‘I am fragile,’ I say, on the softest breath.
‘Sway me,
always,
never to rush me,
never demand.
Hold me carefully, river.
Hold me carefully,
I am not like the others
made of brick and bone
and steel.
I am only like I am.
I am only like I am.‘
Wondering about that second cookie.
It exists, should I eat it?
If I eat it, it will still be all it was
before I gobbled it down.
New shape.
Different texture.
Same ingredients, same everything else.
Should I eat the cookie?
Maybe.
Maybe not.
Maybe.
Oh, but darling.
The wind will take you, anyway.
Ain’t no fighting the wind, darling.
Ain’t no fighting the wind.
Ah, the loveliness.
There it is again.
As smooth as the drifting river,
as quiet as the song of a mother
to the sky.
Lovely loveliness.
The sweetest of all the dreams.
Here I am, now.
Me.
And I fly and I fly
and I fly away, now.
Still me.
Flying, flying away.
They tell me not to fly away.
They tell me not to fly away.
Living carefully and beautifully,
I know I am home.
The quiet moments when we see
we’ve been wrong.
They melt the ice of life
into sweet drifts of frost on wind.
I have been wrong
to my own heart,
often without knowing.
I have been wrong,
some days,
some days, it’s true.
Now I float in the mist
of a forgiving heart.
A forgiving heart
to soften the frost,
to sweeten the day around me.
This day.
A try a little, day,
I think.
