“The council dressed Girl-Warrior's spirit for the journey
to enter the story, to make change.
They placed the map in her heart.
You will forget, they told her.
When you ask for assistance
you will find us in the quiet,
in the silent places of the earth garden.
Because you are Girl-Warrior
you have chosen a path of many tests.
You will learn how to make right decisions by making wrong ones.
Those whom you love will abandon you.
You will find yourself again.”
-Joy Harjo, Poet Warrior
I do not know why, or at least cannot remember why, but in the quiet silence as I soften the barriers within myself, I can feel a deep sense of: terror, grief, shame, and rage. I hear stories I know I did not live and yet I can feel the lived experience pulsing inside me. Why? How? What did I do to deserve this? What am I supposed to do with it? Is there even anything to do?
Sometimes I feel alone in my love.
I do not know why, or at least cannot remember why, but in the quiet silence as I soften the barriers within myself, I can feel a deep sense of: safety, peace, gratitude, love and ecstasy. I hear stories I know I did not live and yet I can feel the ecstasy alive within me. Why? How? What did I do to deserve this? What am I supposed to do with it? Is there even anything to do?
How do I make sense of these conflicting experiences alive inside me? They seem as though they should not be able to exist in the same place, and yet they do. Have I been lead astray by my own mind that such experiences are separate, are at war, are competing for space? What if they were never any of that… what if they were always meant to be alive together? What if my feeling of being alone is because I thought I had to seclude, push out, or rid myself of the feelings that love was meant to hold?
Maybe my love would not feel alone if I stopped separating her from her children. I wonder if my feelings of separateness come from my belief that light and dark, love and fear, are opposing forces. They are water and oil, but only so they can hold and be held by one another; a lock and key.
I’ve only allowed the smallest parts of me to exist. I miss the parts of me that I’ve not allowed. Maybe this is why my love feels alone.
I do not know why I contain the multitude of paradoxical feelings that I do. I do know that I do not have to explain or justify them. I can stop looking for stories and reasons they exist. I can stop rejecting them and I can stop missing them. I want to welcome them home so I no longer feel alone in my love and so they no longer feel separate from love. They are all here. They are the parts of me and together they are the whole of me.
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