How is your heart today? Is it tender? Mine has been tender lately. I burst into tears at an acquaintance in a way I have not done in a long time (used to be a regular occurrence). I’m trying to move past the embarrassment and see what my tears are telling me. Change is so hard. I feel unsteady and unsure. And that is okay. It is okay to pause and take stock of what’s going on in life, and sit with the big feelings.
A friend gifted me a book called “Every Day is a Poem” by Jacqueline Suskin and in it she talks about how the good and the bad and the mundane in life can be transformed and made sacred by poetry.
Here is a poem I wrote in a car with my napping child when I was feeling far away from myself:
Flowers are quick to wilt without water.
Be swift to press them
between the pages
of your days.
Press the death into them —
a sacred snapshot of life’s last moment —
to remember always
what was.
To press a flower is a kind of loving —
to press the memories of morning sun over table strewn with breakfast bowls,
of chin dimples and watermelon,
of bedtime songs and soothing,
of clawing our way back to each other every evening to remember who we are,
that we used to feel whole and human —
to gaze upon the still scent-filled silhouette
and remember
that we will again.
Your creative blessing:
Rest.
Remember what it is to be.
Just be.
Remember nothing counts as something sometimes.
From out of the stillness,
Catherine
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