Tag Archives: growth

I’m an animal!

I started out as a Mare

A pirate loudly aging

But I soon became an otter

Clinging to my people

Handle to handle

I turned into a fish

Overturned yellow tube

This was unintentional 

I scaled rocks 

Ducking under a sunken branch

Finally back on my trusty steed

I was a floater

Landing in dead pools 

With big rocks and shallow water

Butt’s up was flowing over

Rapids that jostled rapidly 

Happily lapping at the shore

Without good position,

I transmogrified into a T-Rex

Short little arms no water could reach

Neither could any feet 

I magically became a turtle

Floundering on my back

Finally in the flow again,

Mostly sunny haint blue skies with

Partly cloudy wispy white

Lava-floe sun shrieking hotly

A hawk and a turkey buzzard

Circle the sky at different altitudes 

I think out loud, “Ah, what a metaphor for my life.”

Chaos ensued, shenanigans had,

I laughed at myself in genuine mirth

I essentially stuttered downstream 

One challenge to the next victory 

How deeply grateful am I to learn

How I move in the depths 

And handle the shallows 

Ending up beached; engineering solutions 

As I concluded the journey 

I reverted and emerged, once again, Mare, but better for the experience.

Giving up grief

I’ve given up on grief.

It’s too small of a word

To contain the absence I feel 

To cover the sorrow that blooms 

Unexpectedly 

When I make coffee in the morning 

Or taste a muffin

Like you used to make

I’ve given up grief

It’s too small of a space

To hold all that was you

The way you laughed

The scent of your body

Fresh out of the shower

Or sweaty with work

I’ve given up grief

It’s too shallow for a feeling 

That is deeper than I thought

Although I suspected,

Your love holds me buoyant 

In the ocean of our commitment 

Yes, I’ve given up grief

Because the world requires 

The gift of who you were

Through my eyes. 

I can’t hold that when it,

Like you,

Were born to shine even now

Live out loud

Do not wad your spirit up in a crumpled ball to be tucked away or discarded. Spread out your body to relish the wrinkles of wisdom topped off with your star shine luminosity. Smooth back the night to raise the powerful roots that feed your soul with your destiny.

You weren’t meant to shy away from your glory, you were born to glitter wildly, bubble fruitfully, and bloom in magnificence like those before you. There are no boundaries beneath your feet, only your path.

You were meant to be loud; to take up the space stolen from you by those who fear your wealth of experience and wisdom. They use old, crone, bitch, or other words to describe those who embrace their true nature with delighted abandon. Those are words that mean survivor, wise, and assertive. Those words are meant to keep you small, withered, starving for approval. You own their power.

You do not require permission to explode with color, dance joyfully wherever/whenever you please, or to laugh until your eyes leak. You were born for this. I can’t wait to be a wild woman with you!

Deconstruction

At twenty-one I planned to die,

with a beer in one hand while getting high.

Nobody could see me, I didn’t exist

I screamed myself hoarse

while in their midst

Ironically, I didn’t tell

the secrets I had borne in hell

Imploding shrapnel from darkest places

Repulsed by misleading “loving” embraces

As I grew older, I refused my name

Pushing anger towards familial blame

I gave away my power

before it could be taken

If someone actually saw me,

they’d surely be mistaken

I never did because I knew I never could

It didn’t matter the effort

no matter how good.

I believed pain was love

because that’s what I was shown

Throughout my childhood

into the adult-self grown

I was Destructive in the sense that I had to tear down who I thought I was, who I believed myself to be. I had to dismantle the neglect, anger, bitterness, and apathy that were hidden under the guise of Love. Some of the wounds still ran blood. Some of them still had the knife protruding from my body. I walked around a victim, convinced I would cease to exist one day and that event would go unnoticed, under-appreciated, and quickly forgotten.

I was lied to, given gossip about my unworthiness for breakfast. I was taught values: The value of my vagina, the worthlessness of being barren, that I deserved wrath and disdain because, after all, I was the one insane.

I was force fed my inferiority until i vomited the parrot back to those whom despised the thought of me. The people who used every flicker of my light to read and implement my oppression. I allowed it, encouraged it because they lied love in the guise of vulnerability.

Despite all of that, I’ve broken that cycle. I know I am worthy of love. I know I am loved. I know I am kind, compassionate, loving, giving, helpful, wickedly smart, emotionally intelligent, with the sense of humor of a 12-year old boy who relishes bad jokes, fart jokes, dad jokes, irreverent and dark jokes.

I have accomplished more in the last five years because I believe in myself, my power, my skill, my experience, and my North Star; my loving heart. And best of all, I have a cheerleading band of friends who both keep me grounded and celebrate my successes in flights of fancy.

What a fantastic journey I have forged from the ashes of my youth. Nourishing the needs of my soul/spirit has been the best present I’ve ever given to myself. It leaks into the world like a floodlight of hope. Even better than that? I know it’s rightfully mine.

Remind Me

I’ll kiss you good night 

Holding you tightly in my heart;

But only if you’ll return.

In the dawning hours,

Brighten the sky

Like you did upon entering a room

At midday remind me

Again of your voice

As a bird lingering in a nearby tree. 

At supper, with the table set,

Join me as the clinking clatter

Of silverware and glasses 

Savoring the living moment.

And at dusk, as clouds draw dark,

Cleanse me with your tears

Shed as fluid reminders

That my love was not in vain

But returned tenfold even still.

Love Showed Up

When I have been in darkest pain
Feeling I could not hope again
Love showed up.
When I felt lost and overwhelmed
Riding grief on a boat unhelmed
Love showed up.
When I’d thought my demon’s vanquished
But they roared to life, causing anguish
Love showed up.
It didn’t try to change my pain
But gently whispered, “Try again.”
Love showed up.
It didn’t try to change my trouble
It helped me to clean up the rubble
Love showed up.
It helped me navigate which way to travel
Clothing myself in threads unraveled
Love showed up.
Its compass pointed to my true north
Showing me how to sally forth
Love showed up.
It walked beside me on meandering paths
Teaching forgiveness for my past
Love showed up.

Fishing

I entered the Anderson County Fair this with a wood art piece I call “Fishing”. Today I got news!

Fishing

Last year, I entered this piece made of paper and embellishments:

Durga

My confidence is accepting myself.

Soul Pool

Soul Pool

I have existed for eons before I was born

As a descendant of my womenfolk

Who have cradled me within their wombs

Nurturing my spirit they have always known

Just as I know them in my aging, dusty carcass

Animated by their tribal songs that lent me their breath

Extending their pneuma into my mortality

Anointing me with collective wisdom as my inheritance

Courage emblazoned like a scarlet letter;

ushered in with fiercest loyalty

Resilience bestowed as an endowment of hope

Strength of a champion intrinsically passed down

I am born again and again, basking in the immortality

Reveling in the joyful victories of lives well lived

Lamenting the horrors and pains that are birthed;

And rebirthed, and again

I am my mother’s eyes, my grandmother’s faith,

My great-grandmother’s charm,

my great-great-grandmother’s muscle memory

I am because of their willingness to grant me

This Soul Pool in which I float and swim

Growing Myself

My ancestral wisdom is tangible in my sunburnt skin, tasted on my compassionate tongue, washed in glorious joy, baptized in horrific sorrow. I am spirit ever expanding, heated with a desire to be loved, buried in the beaches of hourglass sands using a cracked red plastic bucket and a too small yellow shovel. I’m thirsty for knowledge, recumbent in peace. I am decayed by grief with only a mildly offensive odor. I have rebuilt myself, my life, my dreams with non-stock aftermarket replacement parts out of every past me I’ve ever been.

#2699

Darkness when I close my eyes. Pinpoints of light flare and fade against the backs of my eyelids like constellations. I imagine myself walking along …

#2699

“But our past selves are a kind of ancestor too, I realize.”

I’ve packed up my old selves.

Some are in cardboard boxes

Not neatly arranged, but haphazard

Strewn about through my ages.

Some are neatly painted wooden heart-shaped chests.

There are broken pieces of sharp wood and rusty nails scattered about

If you peek inside the ones with the missing pieces;

Lids askew,

You’d see a lot of damage on the remnants of me in those

But if you put on the complimentary rose-colored heart-shaped glasses

You’ll know my intentions were true, even if theirs were not.

Some are in disco 🪩 balls sending spectrums of reflection outward

Loud, frantic movements, jutting hips and ruby painted lips 👄

But who I’ve become is more than those but still the sum