Ancient Sadness

 From 2024 after Grace

The ancient sadness in me

Is the opening of my depth

The way I love and care

It is the recess to the tapestry 

That connects my heart

To yours

And it isn’t bad

Or wrong

Or even heavy

It is depth

Without weight

Understanding

With empathy

Connection

Without tethering

Love

Without bounds

It is the fuel that feeds

The vibrancy in me.

What is the vibrancy

Full life

Effervescence

Of Who I Am

I am Caring

That shines the light

I am Generous

In creation of energy

Space

And understanding

Loving

With all the colors

Of the rainbow

Beauty

In the perfection of me

An aura of color

That surrounds

I fear what I don’t know. 

And while the fear is natural - it is who I will be when I am healed

And how life may change 

That scares me. 

I am a caring,

Generous

Loving

Leader

That will never change

And those around me will still be 

Who they are. 

Rebuilding

 There are so many beliefs that went in as a child, so many experiences that shaped me, and unfortunately many of them were not conducive to viewing myself as anything other than broken, damaged and wrong.  I am not alone in this - it is after all the way of life that our childhood experiences shape the way we see the world, relationships, and ourselves.  It is the heartache of poverty and abuse, it is the loneliness of that surrounds us even in a crowd, it is the landscape painted with strokes of a faulty brush loaded with colors of complex trauma.  And - it is not a complete picture. It is incomplete to stop at the brush strokes that went down without adding in the details, appreciating the layers, or highlighting the beauty in between. 

Simple isn’t always good and complex definitely doesn’t mean bad, and yet I have often collapsed it as so.  I have seen the parts of me that kept myself safe my staying quiet as weak, wrong, and bad while simultaneously holding the parts of me that speak up powerfully, stand strong even if raging, and keep myself safe by being bigger, louder, and more scary than anything around me as bad and wrong too.  I’ve held myself wrong for not keeping myself safe a decade ago by the same standards that I would view keeping myself safe now - and simultaneously judged myself for keeping myself safe at all and putting up protection instead of standing in love, courage, peace and softness continually.  It’s as though I never give myself an option to win. 

I judge myself for not being free, expressive and letting my passion shine, for not being sunshine and roses and rainbows and that way of BEING loving light and sweetness I adore when I see it — and at the same time I have not trusted others when they are that way and have no connection to it - while holding myself wrong for not being it and them wrong for being it.  I only just today connected that I saw my little brother shamed and abused and hurt for BEING that love, freedom, light and playful sunshine - so why would I have ever given myself space to be that when it clearly was a dangerous way to be.  Up until now I only saw that I didn’t WANT to be like the people who seemed to be that happy go lucky because that way of being is also what was often adopted by some of the people that hurt me.   Not only have I held it wrong but also unsafe… and people wonder why they can’t tell if I just came from a carnival or a funeral. 

There is a silliness about it - a ridiculous standard of who I “should” be that has no grace or compassion or appreciation or thankfulness for who I’ve BEEN. 

Today my therapist encouraged to separate it somewhat, give some space and distance, and see that there are parts of me that needed to keep myself safe with silence, calmness, self shaming and complete seriousness growth and learning.  …. And there are some parts of me that have started to come online with owning my voice and finding the way to be true to me without raging… and there are some parts of me that feel shame at how I did or didn’t handle certain things mostly born of this insistent and unrealistic ideal of how to be the best possible me all the time even though that ideal is changing. 

I have had a sense of not being able to trust myself to know when enough is enough, to not be able to trust myself to keep myself safe, of being ashamed and angry at everything that I have allowed and created and all the ways I haven’t held myself and others safe too.   I have held rage at me, Kyle, Ryan, Mom, Dad, and others for everything else too - at some level. 

Today I give myself another layer back to me. I meet a new layer of myself newly. I hold myself safe and wrapped in love. 

Today I am reinforcing new stories, pictures, and ways of seeing me. 

I trust myself. 

I love myself.

I hold myself safe and cherished. 

I have boundaries and I hold them with love for myself. 

I surround myself with cashmere, softness, warmth, love and support. 

I am learning and always will be. 

There isn’t one part of me that is all or nothing - all powerful or the only truth.  There are parts of me all over the place that get to be loved, held and understood. 

I’m not wrong and neither is anyone else…. I may not be right either. I am me though - and I am the perfect amount of me in every situation. 

I am trustworthy. I am kind. I am loving. I CARE. 

I love me. And that is enough. 

Cashmere

 I was asked to write down what it would feel like to wrap myself up in cashmere instead of protection like I normally do.  Every time I try to write it down I go blank.  

I don’t know what cashmere feels like. Not in a relationship. Not in life. I’ve never been gifted cashmere. I’ve never been gifted that sensuous soft embrace of trust and been held with luxurious care. I’ve never been cherished consistently and protected as priceless and held that way.  I’ve had glimpses of it, brushed my hand against it, and sometimes even had that softness caress my cheek and kiss the back of my neck, just behind my ear.  I’ve seen what I thought was it, reached for it, even worn it - later to find I’d been duped by a fake. The kind that has just enough cashmere to not be outright false but mixed with enough scratchy wool and nylon to disappoint and become itchy at the first sign of heat or sweat from a brisk walk  or exertion.  I’ve worn the sweaters of hope and effort and even commitment and work - just to have it torn to pieces with every stitch of my soul shredded by the sharpened saber of another’s inner wounds. 

I know disappointment. I know how it feels to filter everything through the wounded eyes of betrayal and pain. What I’m not sure of right now is what it feels like to let it all go. To stop trying on the scratchy sweaters others hand me from their wounded past and instead paint myself in perfumes of sweet vanilla and fragrant jasmine, covering my soul with the softest embrace of meticulously hand selected fibers of love, connected by the steady hum of softly clicking knitting needles from the sweetest grandmother whose heart has aged but whose love grew stronger, shored up by the wrinkles of time. 

I’m not sure what it feels like to dress myself in robes of silk in front of mirrors reflecting the infinite beauty of who I am, tenderly caring for me.  I am beauty. I am love. I know it. I trust myself in it, but I am seeing how I haven’t carried myself in it, bathed in it, or wrapped myself up in the scent of it regardless of what paths cross mine each day.

I think I’ve had it twisted somewhere that if I live a life like that, it also means I live in naivety of life without pain, challenges, or sadness.  That a life wrapped in silk and cashmere only exists in blown glass bubble, and since I am not the princess in a fairytale that it really isn’t the life for me. 

But I am the center of the fairytale I create in my mind, regardless whether it is a life lived in clouds of bliss or - as I have currently painted it - filled it with more nonsensical creatures, terrible ogres and twisted lies and betrayal from a prince with a broken heart and whose self betrayal holds him back from holding me in cashmere every day.  I think he sees me as the spiny beast in this sad tale more often than the warrior princess wrapped in shrouds of chain mail and weighed down by the heaviness or the protection she carries, which is more often than not the way I dress myself. Or equally as often, I drape myself in robes of sadness with ash marked brows of haunting pain and shards of broken dreams strewn on the floor around me, feeling trapped, broken and unseen. 

I am neither fairy princess or haunted ghoul.  I am me. And it’s time to wrap me up in the copious amounts of love and care that is within me, savoring the scent of jasmine on the wind, letting my skin soak in the warmth of the sun that surround me when I step out of the concrete walls that have held me safe for so long. 

I can say it - but now, I get to be well practiced in it.  No matter what the price whether charming or foe is being around me. 

So to sum up this exercise of cashmere instead of protection - this is what I see.   That every day I get to embrace me, wrap myself up in the love and care and cherishing that I long for outside of me, hold myself with tenderness and sweet embrace while being authentically and vulnerably me. Trusting myself, holding myself, and staying vulnerable without fear. Letting all the fear go is a stretch because I see how knowing what to fear, what to avoid has kept me safe for so long. But I am no longer a child hiding from her Dad. I am no longer a teenager being disowned for having a voice that said no. I am no longer a woman being used or abused. I am no longer without an army of love around me from people who see me.  I am oceans of complexity and simple simultaneously.  I am love. I am me.