You are not the cardboard cut-out of the “worst thing you ever did.” Your silhouette extends infinitely, your flesh the expression of the desire to stand your ground in mid air, and finally jump. Breathe in & feel in your body your strength of being, even if you are exhausted. Feel the bravery that has carried you to now. The weight lifts knowing you did what you could with what you knew, and you continue forward in wonder. Feel how brutally tender it is to be human. Breathe out any shame that has settled in to your system, transmuting the heaviness with compassionate presence. Some of those experiences you label as “mistakes,” have been catalysts for tremendous growth that stretched you in unimaginable ways. You have taken responsibility for your role, release the rest. Honor the transformations and abandon the fear of “getting it wrong” by making the commitment stop abandoning yourself. Hold yourself as gently as you would a small creature, uncertain and groundless. You are here because you are awakening to something vital, the path unfolding with your own becoming. How closely can you nestle into the anxiety when it rises? Can you walk through the unknown and nurture the primal forces surging through you with a slow, steady softness? Could these currents you resist be the same ones that call you home to yourself? Your body does not lie, and sometimes it speaks so loudly it hurts. Can you get still enough to listen, and act from there? Beyond the comfort of knowing is the wisdom of feeling. My commitment, right alongside you: To hold myself tenderly with unconditional love and compassion. To never abandon myself again, by living in truth to myself through every season, knowing that this is my anchor through it all. To love what is hardest to love, bless what is hardest to bless, feel what is hardest to feel. To hold my heart as sacred and to follow the light within as I move through deeper waters, the golden thread guiding me through this wild darkness with courageous kindness, trusting in flight.

Side note:  Sometimes I will look back over things I have written and there is this strange sense of remembering an aspect of self that emerged, and then dissipated, or maybe transformed. The process of writing takes me into hidden realms of psyche, heart, and soul, and sometimes I will drudge something up, express it, and it will call to me later, to be seen and held again, maybe in a new way. The first line of this piece above was a part of a poem I wrote called Lunation…looking back at that poem, I felt like I wanted to expand on that feeling, because it hit me, and it felt so relevant to this moment, here. The living, breathing poem, the pulsing of life through our fragments, the call to reconnect and complete…the wholeness of it all becoming more visible with every step forward and reflection back.