May you bless the place you live,
And bless the spot you fell...
May we finally see
May we finally hear
All the perfect lies
That kept us here
And the skills we learned
Just to keep us whole
be thanked for what they were
and finallly let go.
(Carrie Newcomer - May We Be Released)
Today, I opened my “Journal 2016” folder and realize there are a grand total
of six entries for this year. And I feel... proud and sad.
Sad that writing, my lifelong companion and confidante, has not been a helpful or healthy way to live into this past year. Proud that I listened to the wisdom of my mind, body, my people, my life that said, “No more writing. Living (breathing) is what we need for awhile.” These days, I write nothing for public consumption and barely anything for private. I’m not sure “awhile” is fully finished yet.
Writing is a paradox in my life.
At its best, writing has helped me figure out what I think and how to
move forward. Writing has helped me sort my soul. Writing has helped me grow
and uncover wisdom for life I didn’t see before. Writing helped me reach out. Writing
was the first place I felt safe to be honest, to tell hidden stories that felt
dangerous--stories that were destroying me from the inside while others
insisted I let myself burn. Writing was how I started putting
out the fires and sifting through the ashes. Writing helped me stop stuffing
pain and dysfunction into my secret closet and step into the light (and the
night) with courage and my story. Writing helped me find my voice. Writing
saved me.
But sometimes writing helped me slip out of my life and float above it,
out of it, and play with story lines and meaning to make it look and feel the
way I wanted it to. This is dangerous. Real living with both feet on
the ground is messy, uncomfortable, ordinary, uncontrollable...human. This is the gift, the thrill, but I didn’t know it yet.
Writing about life enabled me to
disconnect from what is present, real and right in front of me. It let me take
a safer, birds-eye view which didn’t pierce or delight my heart nearly as much. (At
their climax, piercing and delighting are hard to tell apart.) Motherhood broke
me open and I began to learn the feeling of real life and love. I started slipping in-and-out of this disembodied way I’d
done life but only just. Still, just enough for vulnerability and authenticity
to find its way into my life and writing.
Sometimes writing became a validation
game. Blogging made me feel seen, heard, and connected. It’s a basic human need.
And my need was pulsing. Sometimes when our need is desperate and deep we
don’t see clearly the exchange we are making might be an artful, harmful deal.
Sometimes I noticed this still, small intuition in the back of my heart that
said blogging might be leaving me and my life too open to the vulnerability
voyeurs who like to watch but never play. Or the critics who never play and don’t
even like to watch. In fact they are offended by vulnerability, judging and clucking at others' attempts. The payoff used to be worth the cost. Sometimes writing was the safest way to
explain myself and my life to the critics. This is always a losing game but I
didn’t know it yet. Writing helped me convince others and myself that I was good enough. And god I needed that. It
helped me prove to myself that I was creating a good family. That I was
conquering my greatest fear and I was indeed a good, loving and sacrificial
mother who mostly had my shit together. Writing was sometimes a 2.0 version of
my lifelong hustling so others would applaud, beam and say “Isn’t she lovely?”
Writing is not an or. Good or bad, health or unhealthy, life-giving or
not. Writing is a paradox - an and. It has been all of these things. I miss it. But
I’m also afraid of what I sometimes do with it. I am still learning, with
wobbly legs, what it looks like to keep both feet planted in real life; to
incorporate writing into my living instead of the other way around.
I have a bulletin board on my desk that says, “Life itself is the most
wonderful fairytale.”
Indeed. Over the past few years, my life unravelled into the most
wonderful, brutiful (beautiful-brutal), livable gift. Everything I built my
life on disintegrated. The most excruciating grace. I decided to cooperate with
this grace instead of fight it. It was an unbecoming, a deconstructing of all
the scaffolding I built around my tender, vulnerable, "too much" self. It was a sifting and
shedding of the addictions and skills I learned to keep myself safe and “whole”.
The cost for that safety was astronomical and my interest and ability to pay my dues
waned. Suffering gave me eyes to see Life. It cleared my vision to see the false, destructive and costly hope of controlling life and buffering pain. I am no longer willing to pay the price of being alive to my life,
to the world, to being human, to being strong, to trusting myself and maybe most
of all ... to being free.
If writing or blogging should return to me, it will likely not be here
on this blog. I am not sure what it will look like. It’s possible “Journal 2017”
might have even less files in it.
My old writings were not disingenuous. They were simply the most authentic I could be at the time. They were an important part of my growth. Much love for all of the reading and responding you've done over the years on this and our old Shepherd Snapshots blog. You have given me a wonderful gift of bearing witness to my writing and the person I am becoming. <3
May We Be Released
Carrie Newcomer
May you bless the place you live,
And bless the spot you fell,
And let go of hidden stories,
To dangerous to tell.
Let there be no stones to throw,
And someone to watch your back,
And some prayers be never answered
For the things we think we lack.
May we be released,
May we be held dear,
May we listen to the wisdom,
That we didn`t want to hear
May we be released,
May we
May you leave and walk away,
Kick the dust and shout unfair,
May we finally stop and think,
Of the blame that we both share.
When you stand in gale force winds,
And home is just a passing thought
When the truth catches your eye,
May you have the grace to stop.
May you get fed up and finish,
Old obsessions past their prime
May you find the silent centre,
And leave all undone behind.
May there be bread and honey,
May somebody love your flaws,
Give a stranger your umbrella
And love a grateful dog.
May we finally see
May we finally hear
All the perfect lies
That kept us here.
And the skills we learned
Just to keep us whole.
Be thanked for what they were,
And finally let go.
May the unseen world be present,
invoked into your life,
May you have the strength to question
The things you thought were right.
May you sense the light around
the very old and very young.
May you go ahead and quit
What you should never have begun.
