Deep in my belly lie the words that need to find a page, the passion I have suppressed for too long, now clawing its way up and out, across my heart and throat, pushing, tearing, seeking. The words are not words, formless. Emotions and expression trying to find their way.
My throat, my strong brave throat, she stops them, silences them. I feel the battle, throat tight, sore, raw. How long can she hold out? How long until the rawness breaks through and pours out my mouth, my fingers?
So many years of not writing, of not speaking. So many years of keeping secrets and wearing masks. Untold stories lost, but not really. They have found their way deep into my bones, my DNA.
What have I passed down to her? To him? What struggles, heartbreaks, tragedies have they never experienced yet live within them? Because I experienced them, or my mother or grandmother or great-great-great-grandmother. I sometime wonder what is mine and what was theirs.
The stories they never told, but held tight within their muscles. Passed on again and again. Through blood and cells and actions and words. Through tears and shame.
If the trauma runs so deep, why doesn’t the joy?
Deep in my belly, my heart, my head, lies the passion to share these stories. To hear them. To witness and be witnessed. To find relief and release.
My quest, to shed the stories that no longer serve me, no longer serve you. The ones that get caught in our throats, held there by fear of releasing them and becoming what is unknown.
I’m right along side you.
So many paths of womanhood. All of us mothers, whether we have children or not. We are creators, birthing beauty into the world. Sometimes birthing ugliness. And what does that mean? We are not to blame for this world we were born into, for the scars so deep that they are passed along through womb after womb down to us. And yet… and yet.
We, the creators, can also be the destroyers, the rebuilders. Once the old stories are excavated and released, new stories can be written. We will stumble along the way. I know I do, constantly stumbling and thinking as the hurtful words pour out of my mouth “What the fuck are you doing?? Stop!!” And still they flow.
I fall to my knees, sometimes metaphorically, sometimes literally. I ask for forgiveness, of her and him and her and him and them. I beg forgiveness of myself. I find grace and new definitions of beauty. I get up, brush myself off and try again, and again, and again.
And slowly, so slowly, the new stories are written and some of the cells from other generations are shed and I emerge, new but not new.
What stories lie beneath? Let’s unearth them together.
Inspired by a Liberated Lines Flash offered generously by Alisha Sommer and Robin Sandomirsky, by the reminder in this article and by my own calling to do this guiding work and play . xoxo.
