It feels like 100 years ago that I wrote a weekly column in a couple small town newspapers. For eight and a half years, I had the remarkable opportunity to publish whatever I fancied in the moment. That sort of creative freedom is a rare and enviable gig.
It’s been over nine years since I stepped away from my column due to illness. I think I’ve lived a dozen lifetimes since then. My illness didn’t kill me like we worried it might, but a part of me did die. It’s amazing what can happen when you completely surrender control and trust the process.
I’ve lost everything more than once in my nearly 50 years.
Childhood lost to trauma. Confidence lost to criticism. Innocence lost to violence. Freedom lost to abuse. Marriage lost to betrayal. Finances lost to divorce. Hope lost to despair. Family lost to silence. Health lost to stress. Home lost to necessity. Fertility lost to illness. Sanity lost to disappointment. Youth lost to wisdom.
Wisdom…
I don’t subscribe to the idea that we must suffer for knowledge, love, or happiness.
But I do believe that we aren’t meant to carry everything all at once. Sometimes, we need to lose to create space for something new to be born.
And sometimes, loss feels like a death.
If only we could flip to the end for a glimpse of how everything turns out okay.
But then we’d lose the glorious mystery of life, and what’s the fun in that? It took a while, but I finally learned to relish the adventure of simply existing in the numinous.
Not that I never have a day when I long to fast forward the struggle. That shit’s real, y’all! But I’ve learned to take a few deep breaths and remember all the times I thought the show was over, only to wake up another day to try again.
Sometimes I think that my days of writing simply for the fun of it are behind me
I don’t know why. I think it may have something to do with the incredible sense of mission that’s overcame me since my rebirth. Writing simply for the joy of words feels like a waste of the precious, limited time I still have here on this side of what comes after.
But it’s slowly been dawning on me that maybe writing for the joy of it isn’t just for me. Maybe it’s a gift that the world desperately needs right now. Certainly it isn’t a waste of time to pour real words into a world run by plastic billionaires and robots.
Hope…
Dare I say, there’s still beauty out there somewhere?
Or in here, inside my frozen heart of gold?
Oh, the amount of therapy I’ve had to recognize the gift of my voice and the glistening color of my quiet heart. The shame that lived there, guarding the door, telling me my magic was uninteresting to the rest of the world; my words were a self-indulgent luxury of no use to anyone else.
Oh, the labor of birthing this version of me – the one who doesn’t shrink from my mother’s reflection looking back at me in the mirror. Amazing what can happen to a woman when she realizes she’s more than just a pretty face.
Age isn’t a thief. It’s a magician.
And there’s magic here, on the B side of life. Not just for me, but for all of us. I refuse to write humanity off just yet. We are battered and bruised and so damn tired. But we’re also older and therefore wiser and the beautiful mystery remains.
And if you’d like, how about I narrate this shitshow, inject a little magic into our days while we hold onto our butts and hope for the best? Not every day. But sometimes, when you least expect it, or didn’t even know that’s what you needed.
You game?…
