I am the beautiful breeze in the body of a woman.
I am not contained in stories of suffering.
I have always been an unrestricted choice in the making.
A sweet dream singing high in the sky, over the black and red of the fight.
I am woman, I know my worth.
I am human, I am not a story
of oppression.
Some more memories came up for healing, today.
It is the most fascinating process, it truly is. Especially considering the memories, as they come up, are attached to a physical feeling within my body and a recognition of the vibration of that particular feeling. (Eg- shame, guilt etc.)
For those of you who are relatively new here, thinking: what on earth is she on about, I should probably explain. I experienced quite a drastic life change a couple of years ago which I call, and many call, a spiritual awakening. After this time, my nervous system returned to the super-sensitive energy system of my youth and has since been dragging me through a healing journey of sorts— a journey that is slowly bringing to the surface the buried wounds of the highly sensitive girl I once was.
The emotions that came up with the memory today were guilt and shame. My goodness. All the bellyaching. And interestingly, the recognition of these particular vibrations was a surprise for me, momentarily, because I had completely forgotten that guilt and shame were a part of this particular experience. Obviously, I’d done an excellent job of burying them.
Let me go through the memory that came up.
I was around nineteen, I’d say, and still living at home. I’d never had a large group of friends, always opting for my own company and the company of my precious keyboard (and my C.D’S and my Nintendo 64.) I was working with my Dad at the time of the memory and, one day, full of excitement, he pulled out a gift for me. A very expensive one. A game of laser tag— a game that would require a large group of friends to go along with me. Friends I did have, If I counted them all, but…I didn’t want to.
I froze.
I could not do this.
‘Why?’ my Dad asked.
‘Because I don’t have enough friends,’ I said, petrified.
Shame-ridden because anxiety was the real reason.
Guilt-ridden that my Dad had done this beautiful thing for me, and yet there was absolutely no way I could even think about doing it. My mind, my everything, was frozen.
Anxiety wasn’t a new thing for me. It had stopped me from taking part in the year eleven ball a couple of years before because I just wanted to watch my friends do it. That was nonsense, of course. I was a dreamer, an all the way through romantic. I longed to take part in the ball. The real reason was that I was terrified. Surely no boy would want to go with me…and the rules were that the girls had to do the asking.
Nope. Not me. What if they said no?
Or worse…what if they laughed at me. And then said no.
I still struggle with my sensitivities, I won’t lie, but now I am able to appreciate them, too. I’m often able to harness the most beautiful depth and power by bringing them to life and asking them to shine, instead of just having them break me like they sometimes choose to do. So there’s that lovely thing. For example, without them, this blog would have died about two years ago. And where would I be without you lot, hey? 🙂
The thing is, though, these ‘superpowers’ have done quite a bit of damage to me in the past, and now is absolutely the time to take care of that poor little muffin child I was. My goodness, I ache for her.
But the great news is, in this moment, she is safe and well.
In this moment she is here.
And healing.
Can we become the peace
that glistens on the ledge of our differences?
Or will it be war swept under the carpet
for yet another age of humanity?
I see your needs. Do you see mine?
Can we surrender to the chaos
of boundless perspective?
Can we be soft,
quiet,
beautiful,
life?
My next life lesson
will be to blow through days of stone,
and understand that days of stone
do not indicate a whole life
of stone.
Still there are diamond days.
Always
there will be both.
And never
am
I
broken.
Do you think a caterpillar knows, upon entering her cocoon, that she will soon die to the only form she’s ever known?
Do you think she is afraid of the dark of the wait, or what might find her on the other side of it all?
Do you think she knows she will soon have wings, and that, though she couldn’t fly before, soon she will soar?
Do you think she wonders what the world might look like, from up there?
Some say the caterpillar is ugly, and that the butterfly is truly the most beautiful version of life she can be.
I say she was always beautiful.
I say she’ll simply be a different kind of beautiful when she grows her wings.
Life is a process of being. Some days the butterfly will be still, some days she will burst into the sky, a flutter of speed.
But despite her many faces, she will always be.
Perhaps that’s her most beautiful part.
When the sun woke up
in my small human frame,
I learned that love lives
on the wings of the wind.
My dear sweet, darling sun.
Always swimming in my eyes
as I gaze at those who need me.
Always melting this heart of mine
so that I might paint the world
with a bright new day.
I will never close my eyes
again.
I will never close my eyes,
beautiful sun.
Slinking down alleyways,
thrilled by the rippling dark.
Black
upon white, cold
stone.
Daisies tilt their heads:
smile.
Axes bite into crimson bone,
dwelling in the corners
of the corners.
Pure.
Devilish.
A curious mix.
Grace breathes life
into fire.
Life breathes fire
into grace.
I couldn’t possibly know who I am.
I’m so many things, places, people, feelings: it would be impossible to really say.
Who I am, that is.
The question of who I want to become also seems pointless.
I want to become whoever I become.
I want to feel, and know, and see life from every angle—
to chase the wind as it takes me.
Who I am now is soft,
is gentle,
is wild,
is alive,
is both free and caged,
all at the same time.
The wind of me never stops at one station, only.
I am a woman; passionate, creative, strange.
A woman.
Beautiful, kind, ugly, horrible.
I couldn’t possibly know who I am;
I never stay the same.
I never will stay the same.
Life, for me, has been an up and down ride.
A little like one of those slides at the playground, the ones that follow a wave-like movement and snake you all the way down to the ground, sometimes taking your stomach with it.
Life, for me, also changed when I had the epiphany that my body (and I believe all bodies, but that’s a theory for another post, I suppose) was absorbing the energy of life around me, and I was reacting heavily based on whatever it was absorbing. Needless to say: learning, and exploring, the term Empath changed my life. And learning about subtle energy and meditation changed it even more.
This morning—all in the space of an hour—I’ve had memories resurface that (although I missed the memo at the time) were very obvious signposts as to my body’s highly sensitive nature. I’ll never forget, about a million years ago, sitting in the passenger seat of our old clunker with my Dad at the wheel. Every morning we would travel to our shared workplace together, and every morning, in a confused state of discomfort, I would shudder as I listened to the morning show hosts chatter away.
I adored the two of them. The whole town did, actually, they were a beautiful pair. But. They were extremely negative, and always it felt like there was a heaviness or grumpiness to their chatter that had me dreading the morning commute. It was confusing because I liked them. It was horrible because they felt so entirely uncomfortable within my body.
I now understand that this is because of the way that I am built, that the more dense the feeling I’m exposed to, the more I tend to flounder. As a result, a good amount of alone time is extremely important for me to get back into the middle of me. Extremely important. (Have I mentioned how important alone time is for me? Very.)
It’s not all bad, though. If grumpiness feels completely horrible to me, you might be able to guess how absolutely beautiful love feels within my tiny human frame. And nature. And music— oh good heavens, don’t even get me started on the absolute purity that music fills me with. It feels like a beautiful wind. A wind that twists and frees my body in ways I never thought possible.
Anyhow, it’s a journey. A beautiful adventure, filled with tears and joy and all the horrible lovely things. Where to next?
I suppose we’re all about to find out. 🙂
I am
the same breath
as my art.
