As an empath, I feel all the things. It can be overwhelming. I don’t know how not to feel things, even if they start to consume me. Making things helps. Being creative helps. Writing helps. This poem is one of the outpourings of the healing process.
As an empath, I feel all the things. It can be overwhelming. I don’t know how not to feel things, even if they start to consume me. Making things helps. Being creative helps. Writing helps. This poem is one of the outpourings of the healing process.
As an empath, I feel all the things. It can be overwhelming. I don’t know how not to feel things, even if they start to consume me. Making things helps. Being creative helps. Writing helps. This poem is one of the outpourings of the healing process.
Today I have a bonus post. It’s summer and my nostalgia is running high, even though (because) the world still feels upside down. It has been a tough few months for me personally, and a heartbreaking week for many of us. I am trying to cultivate the seeds I’ve been given to bring about something that I can call beautiful.
Today I was chopping a watermelon
And unlike last time
I was using a knife that made the fruit
Feel like soft butter
And slid through the rind with a satisfying snap.
The sweet smell of the juice
Running over the board
Reminded me how nervous I had been
Using the wrong tool for the job
Hoping to chunk the melon on that plastic table
without the blade slipping into the flesh of my palm.
I didn’t want him to have to find a bandage for me again
Like the time I sliced open my finger
And he called to me from the bathroom door
That he had found the Band-aids.
Today I trimmed the rind from the red flesh,
Thinking about my mom and how she
Chopped everything with a furious speed when I was kid
And in my amazement I asked how she did it.
It takes a lot of practice she told me.
Today I nearly laughed, thinking how I still haven’t mastered it
As I cut slowly so the knife didn’t slip.
I don’t need another injury
To add to the long list of wounds I’m healing.
I took the inedible greenery to the composter
And as I dumped the pieces into the loamy-smelling bin
I wondered how long it would be before the rot
Turned them into fresh earth, rich for growing.
I peeled a stray sliver of fruit from the tray
Placed it on my tongue, savoring its perfectly sweet sharpness
I have had the great benefit of having many spiritual mentors over the course of my life. I grew up surrounded by people that loved me and had my best interests at heart. But I also grew up in a denomination that was fracturing over a number of issues. The biggest question that impacted me personally was the role women had to play in spiritual life. My congregation was affirming of women and their gifts. We valued women and their leadership. We ordained women and placed them where they were being called to serve. Unfortunately, none of those choices could fully protect women in our church from sometimes feeling the pain of a denominational crisis that centered on them.
When she is broken
And she doesn’t have words
She will creep down the dim hallway
To the place where she doesn’t need them.
And there on the door
She will read the rules:
“Menstruating women are not permitted to use the prayer room.”
I have not always had the best self-esteem. I am, at heart, a people pleaser. I want everyone to like me, and when they don’t, a level of self-doubt and even self-loathing starts to infect me. Poor self-image can be just as debilitating as any other mental health issue. The times in my life when I have not liked who I was, most often brought about by trying to be someone else, I wanted to cut out all the parts of me that felt like they didn’t fit. It felt like the person I was trying to become had to kill the person I was pretending to be.
I wish you would penetrate my spirit
This darkness that craves you wants me to become
Something different- something made of you and me.
So force your will on me, violently, so I can’t protest
An overpowering of me so complete that I disappear.
I had a spiritual mentor once that was only a few years older than I was. He was not just a mentor, but he was a dear friend. During our time together, I grew to love him in a powerful way, a way that I couldn’t quite define. It was a holy kind of love, where you can feel the other person pulling you towards a better version of yourself. He blessed my life in ways I can’t put into words. I miss him terribly. Normalize telling people you love them. It really isn’t as awkward as you think it is.
I can say this to you because you know what I mean
If I said this to someone else, he might take it wrong
And if someone overheard she might think
Why would I admit it?
But they don’t understand. They don’t know what’s in my heart when I say this to you:
I love you.
And I don’t mean it in the way that people use it
Like “I love peanut butter” or “I love Fridays”
Because you aren’t an event or a commodity
Something that’s tasty or fun.
No, not like that. You aren’t a thing at all.
And I don’t mean it in the way that’s scandalous
Like “I love you. Let’s keep it a secret”
Because I already have a bedmate
And you don’t need or want another one.
No. It isn’t that kind of love.
And I certainly don’t mean it in the way people use
To describe their frustrations.
“I love my sister but…” or “My uncle is…but I love him.”
No. That’s not what I mean when I say this:
I love you.
It’s much more than that
Because when you are near I can’t help being drawn
Into your fire
Burning with passion and light
Pointing to something that is outside and yet inside of me
I had a bad breakup in my early twenties, the kind that makes you reconsider everything. Shortly afterwards, I went on a trip with my family to the Great Lakes. Lake Superior is wildly beautiful in ways that words cannot capture. That trip turned into a spiritual quest for me. There, at the water’s edge, I remember deciding that I should start being myself, instead of who I thought I should be.
Deep, endless water
Dark, angry; a grave of many men.
Waves splash, choppy white-caps crest
Are swallowed, softly crash against the shores.
It is cold. The beach stretches out for miles
Rocks, pebbles, stones. No sand.
Not here, in the north.
Summer doesn’t seem to penetrate.
Sun shines, not a cloud in the sky
But the breeze is chill and frosty.
A wide open sea
Mysterious as it is beautiful.
Compelling, my heart cries to sail off into its waters
Until I reach a brand new world.
I feel free.
I am shedding all the shackles I had
And drowning in the possibility
Of a rebirth after such an agonizing death of my heart.
I had a habit of wishing for things I couldn’t have. There was a particular guy who fell into this category. We had a very frank conversation one night after work in which he told me he couldn’t offer me anything other than his friendship. It was the right choice, for many reasons, even though I didn’t want to see it at the time. I’m not sure I’ve been cured of the malady, but at least the things I can’t have no longer take up so much of my emotional energy.
The Quick and the Dead 