A year ago today was one of the most difficult days of my life. My belief that I was not loved hit maximum velocity and sent me reeling into a storm. Without volition, I was consumed by an avalanche of unowned grief over a profound absence of a felt sense of being loved as a child. The agony I felt in my body was a new frontier. Below is a poem I wrote in an attempt to describe the experience.
I can hardly believe how differently I feel today. I was at a dinner yesterday to honor the woman who helped my teacher launch his now best selling book. I had helped edit the book and wanted to meet her during her visit from her home base in England. My experience at the dinner is still a wonder to me. I felt so at ease, talked to numerous people in a profoundly intimate way, enjoyed myself throughly and without any interior commentary about what I was or wasn’t doing/saying. I was myself and I hardly recognized me, as for so many years I have shown up in such a shadowed way. I always felt such separation yet have only recently become aware of how self generated it was. I would hide in a corner and hardly speak and then question why no one wanted to interact with me. How blind I was.
I have had more social activities since the new year then in almost the whole last year combined. Yet the most significant difference is how I feel. I feel peace, belonging, even joy!!!! Can you possibly image what a shift this is? Most of my life I had glimmers, hours, even days of joy yet it was always resting on a foundation of struggle and strife. Now it is the opposite. I have hours or moments of upset with days of peace. Truly, it has been through allowing myself to be vulnerable, to be honest, to allow gut ripping grief, molten rage that this shift seems to have occurred. Whatever it takes. All I can say is hallelujah!
grief
words turn guts to quicksand
Arctic flowing veins
no car key
hurtling down the driveway
shrieks fissure earth
howling yelps’ doppler
primitive grunts shatter eardrums
sounding depths
hunched over
arms
shield belly
careen down gravel road
fields rolling emptiness
wind smashed leaves batter chest
rain baptizes bared head
thunder unheard
stumbling
saturated clay
rough bark scrapes cheek
moss cuddles ear
body melts
trunk cradles
soil sky
arms
wrap
ancestral mourning
plaintive chorus branches
eons twisted agony
flowing sap carries
earth sky receives
crawling ant announces
arrival
river flowing veins
dissolving
flooded storm ditch
a symphony
frogs crock welcome
rain a benediction
each step an altar
beyond mystery
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