The Journey to Beautiful

Pressing palm to breastbone,  it is said this replicates an embrace.  I sleep at night with hand firmly centered  over my heart to know this dire longing. To find home, I've been on this quest  for a while now, maybe my whole life. Few corners call to that place  where a body and soul can fully land, and slow.  Looking far and wide, I seek solace but find none. Home - define this, describe it, what does it feel like, taste like?  Is there a map I can get there, on my own, in the dark? I keep looking.

 My prayers  are rocks, falling from my mouth- tumbling off the bottom lip like lead,  hitting the ground below in muted thuds. Wet stones, these pleas, landing in piles on the earth, making paths in dust to dead stops.  Rolling, gathering soil, caked in mud - my words suffocated by so much dirt. Poem started October 12, 2022 completed Jan 1, 2023

 I can't say how consistent I will be.  I am hesitant anymore, to declare some 'new year, new me' resolution.  I know too much, and I've experienced too much.  I also know that one can have the best intentions and the best laid plans, only to stumble backward in just about every area of life.  So no - this isn't a vow of intention.  I signed up for a daily journal prompt and thought I would try it here.  Not making any promises.  Some days I might not share if the prompt gets too messy, or I might just not get to it.  I haven't written ANYTHING in ages, much less a prescribed prompt.  Yet, here goes.   Here's today's -  Welcome to 2023! We begin the year with an intention. Take a moment and close your eyes. Take a few deep, slow breaths. Center yourself. Imagine yourself a year from now. What is something that you would like to create, make happen or have in your life that is not currently in your life? The sky's the limit...

 It's been thirteen years.  This place needed a bit of a face lift.   Are you for stripping down to the bare minimum? Are you ready to shed that which binds?   It feels right to slip off the old, what was.  It's common to accumulate layers over time, over years. What does it take to peel away, to loose the encumbered lot? A trigger, a catalyst - a catapult, a launching forward from the wire-wound bog of what was.   There is only onward and it is promising. A benign fire waiting.

 13 years ago.  I set out on a journey that had been a pivotal point in my life.  It's been 13 years,and feels like an entire lifetime.  Was it a dream?  My life is so different now.  I am so different, it seems.   To commemorate, a writing I came across.  I haven't written in so long, so I borrow from another. Herself A society unconsciously committed to patriarchal ideals will spend years pouring the whole ocean of a woman's soul into an ice box and call it good.  Then, there, inside that ice box, she will remain.  Unless. Until. She catches a glimpse of another oceanic soul. That glimpse has the power to awaken her within her small, dark, chilly tomb. Once she is awake, she will begin to  remember she too  is ocean.  And it is the remembering that has the power to set her free.  To return to her home.  Herself.  

My Mom passed peacefully in her sleep early Wednesday, April 7, 2021 after a long and difficult battle with cancer.  Grief is no joke, but I am hoping to learn something from all of this.