By Blew Kind Featured in Little Love Stories Volume 6 Theme: Lessons on Love
My passion is lovely.
i can charm an entire room
To bring lightness and hope,
But for some reason
i am standing, open handed, pregnant
Raising my soon to be three children.
i know i am worth all the stars.
All the ripples of the river under the moonlight.
All the trees that reach as high as the
Cosmos.
My glowing skin is holy to be touched.
Words, sacred blooming roses with every breath.
But for some reason
My mind gets clouded
When finding/keeping a partner to voyage together
My spirit falls deep, black, dusty, heavy
My stomach turns
Wrapping around and around and around
Fears and “i-Thought-i-Was-Through-This” thoughts
How can i be liberated
To fly as i once did when I was a child?
Be enveloped by the wind,
Breathing in all Love. all Connection.
That swallows my tears and turns them into
Floating dandelion seeds?
How can i love myself so deeply
That its sap can cover my wounds
Carving new patterns, healthy roots
Nourishing me with juicy poppin’ fruit that bursts into butterflies?
How can i..
When I take time to sit, light my candle, breathe slowly, listen to the cars whisping by and the clock ticking second by second, I can see myself more clearly. I look. Look at my hands, the curves of my prints. Curves reminding me of both blessings and wild roller coasters of untended self care. I never knew I would have three children by three different fathers. Coming from a Christian background, abstinent until I was 21, waiting for a prince to come swoop me up from my wild brown world. But, here I am. Living in the reality of what is and what has always been…Maybe I just need to adjust my lense and see all the flowers that are blooming by my toes. All the sparkly wind filling my lungs with the life of sight, sorrow, and flight; seeing what can be, what is possible.
I can tend to sit in shame and wonder searching as to how and why I got here. I am someone who wants to know the core of problems, using Angela Davis’ motto “Radical means grasping things at the root.” So I sit, light my candle, breathe slowly and listen. Look deeper and deeper so I can make new patterns…
Adjusting myself to a more precious love that can lift me out of this mesmerizing river of self-sabotage. Am I doing something different now? What about now? What does healing actually look like? Have I.. Arrived?
I have to manage my children’s relationship to their fathers… who have caused deep scars in my reality. Sometimes I see it as my own suffering to hold, staring at it in the face until my children are grown. Though, I do see the incredible importance of fathers, the need we have of them to keep our future healthy, these little bodies… They will know themselves more clearly if they know and have access to both parents. However, it’s hard for me to balance kind interaction, thought, objective sight with these men that are used to me giving them the world. I don’t want to be drifted in their current until I hit another deadly rock…
It’s hard. It’s hard for me to have boundaries on my love. I really do love people, in an awe type of way. I see how beautiful we are as creatures if we live in our best light… However, I think that’s how I’ve also gotten beaten in the multitudes, openin’ up to be devoured by other hurt hands; Take, take, take…leaving me as a lifeless carcass floating with the driftwood to the next island…
A friend once told me I need to see my love as miraculous as natural pearls; stunning, iridescent, one of a kind. “Wouldn’t give those up so easily, huh?”
It has been a wild journey to find and practice healthy relating so my children can grow and be solid leaders, lovers, and seed planters… I can get stuck in a vine sea of “how’s,” when I just need to bring out my machete. I understand that the deeper I can untangle my love for myself, the more I am able to see clearly on how I can exist in my own beauty, and be a good mother, lover, and friend.
So I’m just gonna continue to sit, light my candle, breathe slowly, and listen.
