My Truth

with gratitude to my beloved Writers Group

Good morning, muses, it is the brightest week of the year beginning here

on the eastern seaboard of Massachusetts, United States of America

and I feel ever so tender in my body and my energetic system:

premenstrual and sensitive and hmm …
grateful to get to witness this season of expanded light

There's a sense of this time of year that feels so vast and maybe bears flavors of the eternal

As the day seems like it will never end

Each day there's just so much light

And that's lovely and energizing and also kind of tiring sometimes

So, I’ve got my stuffed pig here for comfort and rather than muse fully off the cuff as I usually do, I am going to read a piece that I wrote for our Writers Group at Jeanne Geiger,

So a big bow to each of my muses there, with gratitude for this prompt, which we used maybe a month or so ago:

The prompt was “My truth.”

So I’m going to read this.

My Truth

1.     My truth is custom-fit for this soul in this body, a sing-ular song.

2.     My truth-song echoes truths from time immemorial, so if the tune sounds familiar, sing along.

3.     I am free, I am free, above (and below) all hints to the contrary, this Being you see must be free. Free to discern my path one step, leap, lunge, or sashay at a time. Free to stand still, free to falter or fall, free to curl up in a cozy or catatonic ball.

4.     Embodiment is central to my experience of Life. My truth glimmers in oily pores and shimmers in a frizzy, multi-hued head of hair.

5.     Mama let me stay in her womb 2 and a half weeks past the due date the doctor delineated. Nine pounds nine ounces when I was born; wasn’t my mama brave? I’m forever grateful she let me take my time. This world she delivered me into keeps telling me to hurry, but my truth sings strongest when I linger and lollygag, when I wait for my moment.

6.     Mama says I was born breach, sunny side up. A smiley baby, a little girl who sang songs and invented games, a woman who makes lemonade when life hands her lemons. This truth, this sunny-side disposition, eventually became a cage for me. Everyone praised me for it, so it felt like they needed it from me, and I began to feel I was failing if I wasn’t happy. The expectation of others became a self-expectation I could not escape.

7.     And eventually fending off the sadness led to a happiness that was too happy, so happy I could almost fly away, and a secret strand of my truth was revealed. The medical professionals called it bipolar disorder; some Indigenous communities call it a shamanic gift. It’s a gift that I’ve pushed away and picked back up again. It’s a capacity, a calling, a curiosity.

8.     It led to a central tenet of my truth: the importance of feeling each fleeting feeling. From the brief burst of curiosity to the occasional sojourn with rage; from dazzling dances of delight to heart-heavy rendezvous with despair.

9.     Now no one can talk me out of feeling/sensing/wondering/lingering my way through each moment. I want to fully taste every morsel Life places on my plate.

10.  Yes, even Pain, that portal to primordial truths…

Pain and pleasure sit side by side in twin rocking chairs on the porch of this psyche, saying,

Sit a while. Stay.

And I do.

11.  Willingness to savor

Willingness to feel

Capacity for ecstasy

Capacity to heal

12.  My truth is sensate and sung. My truth is sunrise and thundershower, fingers hungry to touch flower petals, feet thirsty to feel grass beneath them, muscles and tendons, sinews and skin curious to know the full extent of their powers, their possibilities. 

13.  My truth is a stretch: always stretching beyond the probable, beyond the comfortable, beyond the known.

14.  I am forever learning to transform fear into love,

to honor the ice storm with the same reverence I accord the sunshine,

to savor the sour of the lemons before adding the sugar.

15.  And have I mentioned that my truth is meaningless without you? What is a song without ears to hear it, hearts to learn it, voices to add harmony? Sit beside me in any weather, my friend. Let’s linger and laugh until we uncover a tune that we both know by heart.

…

Blessings on your week, my precious muses

There are some fresh truths that are churning in me in this season of expanded light,

This week in which I am concurrently living into a transition and release within my own embodiment

So I look forward to sharing some of that soon

And in the meantime, grateful for each of you

Always feel free to comment in the comment section or reach out in whatever other way you and I are in touch…

Sending so much love to you, whether you are musing in a season of great light,

or for those of you on the opposite calendar –

if this is your season of full darkness/fuller/deepening … shortening daylight hours;

or if the world is bright but you are in a season of inner dark –

Please know that I am holding such love for you in my heart

Blessings