My body doesn’t do what I ask it to do, these days. I get frustrated. The frustration spills over into my personal relationships. Sometimes I feel like a traveling snarl.

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The snarl expands to include my body – this frustrating, mostly useless body that certainly doesn’t fulfill this culture’s ideas of what a body should be: smooth, able, glowing with energy… That is not this body.

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Snarl!

I am learning not to indulge or dismiss the snarl. Let it be, for a minute. Open space and discover that it is not (as it sometimes seems) endless. If I open space around it, it does not fill the whole world until there is nothing left but snarl. In fact, if I give it room… It becomes…

Hurt. Sadness.

scribble-3-11-16Look who I wanted to be in this world. How these arms wanted to hold you! How these legs wanted to race to your side – help you to build, help you to march, help you to move forward. (I am talking to you, future world. You, the future that I cannot help to build.)

The snarl opens out into rivers of sadness. They feel endless… But what if I don’t indulge or dismiss the sorrow? Let it be, for a minute. Open space…

The river of sadness flows and flows… For a while I think perhaps it is endless. Then, eventually, we reach shallow water, shining over dark earth and there, in the earth, is a seed. Tender seed, in the aching ground,

It’s love.

Open space around the seed and watch as it sprouts roots…

A root of love for sadness-soaked land. Love for the life not lived, for the loves unexpressed. Love for the weak and illness-wracked body.

After roots, perhaps a leaf?

Love the seed. Love the roots. Love the ache and the uncertainty. Trust.

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