We are all poets. And WHY that matters this holiday season.

From 2016: I showed up. It was the best I could do, had no clue what I was getting myself into. But I pulled up and paid for parking- I HATE to do that- in a little suburb of Atlanta. The next 5 days changed my life.

Here was the situation: I'm white, a mother of two, in a middle-class situation with substantial emotional baggage- typical stuff for the territory, right? What I showed up for was the National Poetry Slam competition. What I found... well, let's not skip ahead. So I walk in to the first venue, a sweet coffee shop with an outdoor stage, and two things slapped me in the face, in opposite order of importance: I was in the minority, and the poems were fire.

I've always considered myself to be a person who is open, in fact, thrives on differences, and let me say as empathy for my friends who share a similar background to me, that there was an element of shock in being in the minority; never unsafe, but there was a lack of physical belonging that I don't have to feel on a daily basis that just felt uncomfortable, unsituated. Granted, it is a flaw in my ego that I feel that way in a room of people I know, too, so it was merely exacerbated. But the feeling of shock, in the long term, has been absolutely liberating, because in facing the vulnerable human inside myself, it has made me realize the vulnerable humanity of all of us.

Poems, y'all. Three minutes for an artist to crack open their soul and pour out a story, a piece of the human heart that beats in all of us, and leave it exposed there on stage. I laughed, I cried, my jaw was permanently dropped open, I had to step out of the room because it was so heavy and so much.

I heard about a black man who was dragged behind a car by white guys- like, recently, because he couldn't have been out of his 20s.

I heard a trans girl speaking of fearing fireworks like gunshots- at her.

I heard people talking about love- straight and gay. About hope- with or without status. About fears for their kids all along the spectrum of race. There were connections.

Here's the thing, for my readers who grew up similarly to me: there may have been things I agreed with, things I disagreed with, things I found offensive, or things I absolutely adored. But here's the more important thing: when you are privileged enough to enter into (or hear) another PERSON'S story, the intersection of your opinions with various aspects of their lifestyle do NOT matter. You are meeting a God-breathed soul for the first time- and none of us have it all figured out. The appropriate response in a meeting of souls? Honor, privilege- a holy space of sharing in humanity: what a PRIVILEGE.

Poets have the gift of inviting you to enter into their story, to meet them where they are in their struggles, dreams, angers, and hopes for life. They open up avenues for your soul to meet theirs in places of connection, no matter what outside connections seem to be 'lacking'. And they do work by being voices for people who are voiceless. Because poets are real people, like me, like you.

I arrived back to the Queen City and had to jump on the train. What if, I realized. What if everyone is a poet? What if "they" are poets? What if "those people you are suspicious of", the Other, are poets? What if that person across the street who looks different than you has a story to tell? What if the shy girl holds deep pain under her facade? What if the big black man loves his family and is scared to death that he won't make it home to them? What if the entire population of white people struggles with depression {just saying}? And the jerk: what if he just suffered another heartbreak and feels like he might be dying inside?

What if we are all heart-beating, soul-ish human beings just trying to stay moving on this beautiful and messy planet? What would you do if the fear was gone?

What if we are ALL poets? What if, instead of fearing the Other, we see them as containing the most poignant story ever told? And what if you might have more of a voice, or more power, than even YOU think you do? What good would you do if you realized that we're all in this together, that your actions and inactions tell YOUR story without words, and these stories can be compelling witness for good- or for evil; it is your choice? Who would you be, in the secret, with your children, and for all people around you? What if the strangers in your own extended family have a story?

But the bigger question that is just as important, now as much as always, is what if family extends beyond biology, to the very people you think you feel most uncomfortable with? Because what I found, when I showed up to hear other people's stories, was that I had found my way home. 

Dreams: A meditation to bring hope to the broken

That girl, we'll call her "friend", she spoke truth when she talked about her dreams. How they are nebulous little things that vaporize like angels with golden wings as soon as babies come onto the scene. It's not just the screaming, squiggling bundles of joy that suffice to spook those flitty little wild things called dreams into the darkness. There are pains of life, where you find yourself stopped like dead in your tracks blinded by oncoming headlights of some unforeseen. This is when the dreams dissipate like a morning fog lifted. This is when you find yourself spread-eagle on the pavement, wondering where the car keys are. Dreams can get dashed to pieces, even if they took a lifetime to mold themselves into their perfect little shapes. "Always we begin again," says Saint Benedict. Always, with broken dreams, broken hearts, broken pride, or a broken favorite coffee mug, we just begin, again. Because a heart cannot fly if not offered a chance to dream. So here's the invitation to broken-hearted dreamers everywhere. Dreams are a partnership with Creator to say, "Let's make something where there was nothing: some idea, come to fruition; some longing, turned to art; some heart, made whole in light of Truth; some relationship, restored and brimming with Life. These are the scandalous things that bring our heartbeat back in rhythm with all of creation in our own humanique way. Our dreams, through their very nature, bring beauty, bring order, bring breath, bring knowledge, bring names to those parts of life that have been without for too long. Our souls need these things, because we were made to dream. And the world needs these things like a tourniquet on a bleeding-out arm. The dreaming is the real stuff of life, not the lists and the laundry and the hopeless attempt at getting places on time. Dreams write continuous and continuing threads on the door posts of homes and hearts and wraps a soul (and families) who otherwise hurts with reasons to live. So, do it. Dream a little. No one demands clarity, no one demands cookie-cutter responses or pretty pictures of perfect-square lives. No one has to see it but your soul. Open your heart to dream, just a little, and you find an anchor is dropped into the very Heart that drives this world beyond what we can see. Me? Now? I'm gonna dream in broken pieces of some things being unbroken, sometime. I'm gonna dream even only broken dreams because it is in the dreaming that Hope is released. Maybe one day I can see those dreams in technicolor or full-size print or maybe just etched in smile lines on my face. This is what I dream. This is why I dream. Your turn. What about you? {post sparked in 2016 by a sweet, honest, & open discussion of "breathing room" by Leanna Tankersly and breathed into by a generous gift from M, who gave me the courageous template to start}

On Grief and the Present Moment

Bringing Light to the Darkness: Mindful Moments with Grief and the Present Moment

Yes. It does have to hurt this much. -Melissa Devine

For everyone, the experience is different, the situation, the scenario is varied. The stories have nuances of meaning, the actors and what is taken away has as disparate characters as humans on this planet. And yet we are all connected in the feeling, the vast empty hollow in the chest or the pressing weight and crack that has so often been associated with the “breaking/broken heart”. This is real. This is one of the many emotions that make us human. There is a before. There is an after. There is a story that sticks in your ribs and cues your body to respond in specific ways.

Don't worry; it's not just you. Grief is a fact of life and a real human emotion that can leave us feeling isolated. Bringing awareness to what it is and how it plays through our bodies can help us realize we are not alone.

What is grief? A useful model

Grief has distinct way of playing out in the human body and psyche. One model that is useful and general are the five stages of grief known as the Kuebler-Ross model (i.e. https://www.healthline.com/health/stages-of-grief#5-stages). In this model, denial is the first stage, followed by anger, then bargaining, then depression, then acceptance.

To put brief story and body/brain response behind this model, the response to the shock of the experience of loss begins with pretending the loss did not occur. ‘Denial’ is the truth that perception of reality can be frozen in a time where the change has not occurred. “This can’t be real” or forgetting that you can no longer call this person on the telephone are oh-so-vivid examples of denial.

The next phases are active, and, from a body paradigm, stages where we are most often in fight/flight mode or sympathetic nervous system activation. As the realization of the loss hits the brainstem, the first reaction for many is anger, a pointing of blame at anything or nothing to mask the overflow of emotion. An alternative or next step is bargaining, attempts to justify the loss to hide the vulnerability of the intense emotions of grief. ‘Bargaining’ looks like “if only” statements as a means to control the situation.

Grief takes a lot of energy. Following active anger and/or bargaining, there comes a time when a quiet experience best characterized as depression settles in. In the best case scenario, this is a time of isolation to cope and make sense of the swirl of emotions and new life changes. In the other-case scenarios, feelings of overwhelm and hopelessness and incapability are common addendums to feelings of loss, pain, disbelief, betrayal… and others. Support often helps, especially here, so that a grieving person does not get stuck.

The final stage in this model is acceptance, which does not mean everything is perfect (again). Acceptance means allowing there to be a before and after, seeing the life change for whatever it is and allowing that to be okay, or finding an uplifting possibility that feels like something to hold onto that feels like hope.

How long does grief last?

These stages are not linear expressions throughout the lifespan of grief. Acceptance may be a culminating stage after cycling through denial, anger, bargaining, and depression five times. Finding yourself at acceptance only to be angry again sometime 3 months and 5 days later - and then again after 1 year and 17 days- is also a very real aspect of grief. Grief’s lifespan may very well be as long as our human experience’s journey on this earth is.

I sat by the water this evening sharing experiences of grief with a friend, and we talked about well-meaning people who offer the encouragement of “live in the moment” or “be here now” as a way to get out of grief over something that happened in the past. This seems so well-meaning. Aren’t we still here, alive and breathing and mostly full of life? Aren’t we made of endless possibility? Why bother ourselves with what has already been finished by time?

Interestingly, the answer is yes, absolutely. We are here. We have lived this long and have so many beautiful other aspects of life. AND ‘living in the moment’, from a body perspective, means noticing what is present in my body right now.

The body tells our stories

Every experience, good and bad, easy and hard, is always already grafted into the memory of my body; my nervous system is tingling with all the felt sensations I have ever experienced. I have, in my body and systems, the experiences of birthing children, running marathons, having sex, being betrayed, watching sunsets over water, losing people close to me, and immersing myself in art and satisfying work. This ‘history’ is as much a part of my present as the moment sitting by the water with the lights from house windows reflecting off water.

In the work I do, we pay attention to what is present in the moment in our bodies. I trust the innate wisdom of the body, that what is present or coming up- as either pain or curiosity or felt sensation- is a messenger speaking for something that wants to be heard or experienced in this present, now.

What is present-moment living?

So ‘live in the present’ is not a call to stoically or (conversely) hedonistically throw off the old stories for something much better. The grief and the stories that brought us to this point, full of sometimes bitter pain, are always there.

Our bodies are constantly moving towards integration. The present moment can be painted over with images of the past that want to be seen in the light that this beautiful present moment shines. Sometimes that means going through the anger and bargaining with God about the loss of someone close to us while the fish are making jumping splashes on the water under a waxing moon. There is deep, deep shadow coupled with brilliant light.

Because yes. Life does have to hurt this much sometimes. And maybe, just maybe, that doesn’t have to be the end of the story, our story. Maybe that is our choice, each moment. We get to choose, once we have felt all of the exquisitely human feelings, where we go from here.

With so much loss present in life, where are you in the process of grief? What is the feeling that is present in your body right now? What wants to work through now? If something comes up, feel free to connect with me and let me know.

Where are you in the stages of grief?

• Denial- Grief? What grief?
• Anger- Burn the whole thing down
• Bargaining- If only you hadn't brought this up...
• Depression- Yup. It's too much. I'm over it.

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