Tag: healing

Checking In

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I wanted to take a moment to pause and reflect on what this space is and has meant to me. Kind of like a mid-point check in.

First of all, thank you to anyone who has read even one of these posts. Sometimes, my writings feel like a shot in the dark. Often, I just need to write it down so I can put it to rest in my mind. But to know that someone reads anything I’ve put out, really means everything. I’ve had some incredible one-on-one conversations with people who’ve felt a connection to the experiences I share. And this is more than I could’ve hoped for.

This blog has been a tumultuous journey of “collecting, sorting, and storing [memories] with the intention of holding on to the good things for the journey up yonder” (Megan Devine). When I began, I was dealing with a very recent separation from the person I thought I’d spend my life with. Added to that, I had moved back home for the first time in 8 years, jobless and completely lost. Together, these were (and still are) very traumatic and dislodging experiences. I looked around and I felt like I was sitting on square one. Probably even negative one.

But it has been a really liberating and strangely natural experience of sharing my personal journey on these pages. What began as an act of self preservation, has become an act of self care and self reflection.

What I’ve learned is that it’s okay to still be in search of my joy. I will find it. Or more likely, it will find me.

When I first began this blog, I wasn’t sure what I wanted it to be, I just knew I was no longer afraid to share my voice. If anything, I hope that’s what you take from it: that you’re no longer afraid of anything. Heartbreak. Returning home. Unemployment. Failure. Zombies. None of these things will end you (except for zombies, obviously). So gather your pieces, and continue on…

You have my unending support.

 

“Be brave enough to break your own heart.” – Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things

Letting Go

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It’s so strange to read back on my writings from just a year ago. It feels like a story unfolding. It’s a story that I didn’t know would end how and when it did. And though I knew things were crumbling, I didn’t realize just how fragile it all was.

I didn’t ask for this ending. Some days I feel it isn’t truly one. But on most days I’m able to understand that love should flow easier than that. Love like that – though magnanimous in its essence – was still very human and very flawed. It wasn’t full-bodied love, not really, not in the end. It had barriers, compromises, long distance, and brokenness woven into its DNA. A love like that hollows you out in the best and worst ways. It provokes a force in you, simultaneously imbued with melancholy and healing. It was almost too much to bear.

And for that, the story had to play out as it did. Had to end as it did. It couldn’t have been any other way. I couldn’t have been better at holding on to it. No one could. Letting go means recognizing that the past could not have been any different than exactly how it happened.

This love was soft, powerful, tender and, ultimately, beautifully human and beautifully flawed. It was exactly what I needed to be who I am today.

(Funny enough, this perfectly captures the end of loving a person and a place.)

“You see love liberates. It doesn’t bind. Love says, ‘I love you. I love you if you’re in China. I love you if you’re across town. I love you if you’re in Harlem. I love you. I would like to be near you. I’d like to have your arms around me. I’d like to hear your voice in my ear. But that’s not possible now. So I love you. Go.’” – Dr. Maya Angelou

milk and honey

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The two poems below are written by Rupi Kaur. She’s this incredible poet, writer, and bad ass woman of color. You might have heard of her a while back when her menstruation-themed photo series was taken down by Instagram for being “offensive”. I was in a book store (as usual) and my eyes ran across her book, milk & honey. I had no idea who the author was, nor made the connection with the Instagram story. But something about the book whispered. So I got it. Inside, I’ve found beautiful poetry of love, loss, and healing. The ones below articulate a couple things I’ve been unable to up until this point. Mostly, it’s this aching to move forward while knowing how much I would leave behind. Destructive cycles and putting the past on a pedestal don’t work. They never have. Letting go and moving forward is the only way I know how to mend and survive this…

neither of us is happy
yet neither of us wants to leave
so we keep breaking one another and calling it love
 
– untitled // Rupi Kaur
 
you were the most beautiful thing i’d ever felt till now. and i was convinced you’d remain the most beautiful thing i’d ever feel. do you now how limiting that is. to think at such a ripe young age i’d experienced the most exhilarating person i’d ever meet. how i’d spend the rest of my life just settling. to think i’d tasted the rawest form of honey and everything else would be refined and synthetic. that nothing beyond this point would add up. that all the years beyond me could not combine themselves to be sweeter than you.
 
– falsehood // Rupi Kaur