Finding a way forward
"Are you sure, sweetheart, that you want to be well? ... ‘Cause wholeness is no trifling matter." - Toni Cade Bambara
This is an excerpt from The Healing Journal, where I share my most intimate pieces with our paid subscribers.
So this is where I find myself.
Depleted.
Empty. Stretched. Strained.
Void.
It is in this wide space
that I think of
how my decision to regain my joy
has become the singular source
of so much anguish and pain.
On the side of the road
starving for just one sign
that the path I have chosen
is a path at all.
We make decisions for ourselves,
unaware of how they
morph into truths for others
who did not ask
to be on this journey.
My babies did not want
to walk this road
that I now have to take them on.
It has been treacherous and unyielding
Asking them to give up so much
And endure even more.
I am overcome by the shame and guilt
that emerges from being the cause
I wanted to be able to live,
I wanted to be full,
and I wanted to have the strength
to truly see them and
carry them.
I was selfish.
I wanted to return.
I could not even recognize myself
And I believed I had been a woman
who they deserved to see.
Instead they witnessed a body,
she was no longer a person,
she was consumed with
tiptoeing into rooms,
walking over eggshells,
navigating cracks,
and becoming smaller,
quieter,
and more invisible.
She had lost her soul.
And the only way she could keep them from losing theirs
was to wage a war against her captor
and repossess everything that
had been taken from her
in the name of love.
So now there is death here.
The stench is rancid and
her daughters must take it in
so they know how to
kill who they become
for the whims of others
so they can live for themselves.
Perhaps everything that I’ve gone through
is not the end
but the sacred point when
the story can finally begin
And so the question is:
How do you put one step in front of the other?
And find the way
back to you.