After the fire…

The spring of 2021 was a rough one. In fact, that entire year was an obstacle course of depressive episodes interspersed with gut punches offered up in the boxing ring of life.  Not to say there weren’t many beautiful moments and supportive people standing ringside. Teaching yoga, spending time with family, good friends and hours upon necessary hours spent wandering in nature. These things kept my head above water.

Even so, this inbetween time was, and still is, exceedingly hard. We don’t often talk about the inbetween times in our lives. We come to our online lives fully formed, offering images of ourselves we’ve cobbled together, presenting as having our worlds in order. Inadvertently creating a cage of comparison our minds often get trapped in as we gaze at the filtered images of other people’s lives.

There’s a part of me that’s not wholly against holding our broken pieces close and not over-sharing them with the world until we’re good and ready, or not sharing them at all. Everyone’s threshold for self expression and exposition is different. When we are in these tender moments of trials and transitions, for many of us, sharing them with 900 of our closest friends does not sound the least bit appealing. We need time to process, live through the feelings and heartbreak. We need space to get to the other side of it, and then if we see fit, share it with those who have earned our trust.

That’s partly why I sat on this piece of writing for a year. Everytime I went to share it my heart said, ‘Not yet. Sit with it a bit longer. Learn what you need to learn. Love yourself back to your own center.’ At the same time, there was a part of me that knew it was meant to be shared.

First of all, the countless conversations I’d had with people struggling, hurting deeply, dealing with loss, pain, grief, be it collective or individual grieving, these conversations were accumulating every week. I knew others were feeling the same as me. For me, writing and sharing writing is a healing process. It helps me feel less alone. Helps me sort my thoughts out. And if me sorting myself can help others feel seen and less alone, then the deep sense of connection and joy that results, I can’t fully put into words.

Secondly, it was the kind of writing that was two fold; it came through me and from me. Elizabeth Gilbert, in her Ted Talk, spoke about ‘a genius’ as it was understood in ancient Greece and Rome. It was considered to be a creature or spirit of inspiration that lived in the walls of your home. If you were there to receive its wisdom, if you were fortunate enough to capture its artistic inspiration with your words or hands, then your ‘genius’ separate from your personhood, was praised as being brilliant. This took the pressure off of artists and writers. When the work was crap, or you didn’t produce, you could blame it on your genius. (I highly recommend watching this Ted Talk).

She also talked about a poet who used to feel poems that would come rolling towards her over the prairie hills. She’d sense them on the horizon and run like hell to her nearest pen and paper.

This was one of those pieces of writings for me. I was in the shower when a ‘genius’ chose to visit (not the most convenient place to receive inspiration). After a morning of crying and allowing myself to feel the sadness, I felt words starting to rumble through me, my body vibrating as sentences formed in a way that made perfect, painful sense.

And so I wrote them down. Knowing they were not wholly mine to keep. Knowing that I’d need to share them eventually. My hope in sharing them is that others feel a bit less alone in those moments of sadness. In those moments where life takes you out at the knees and all you can do is focus on taking one breath at a time as you piece things back together.

It’s not a pulitzer prize winning piece, but it’s an honest one. One that I hope helps others feel held in the hurt places of their hearts.

We are still going through a tremendous amount of collective trauma. Just because mask mandates are ending, and people are returning to offices does not mean we are in the clear. The amount of invisible, and visible wounding we are carrying needs to be acknowledged and worked through. Consider this an invitation to take as much healing time as you need to readjust. To let the ebb and flow of recovery and readjustment happen at a pace that is mangeable for you. The earth after a forest fire takes years to recover and find its way back to its former glory. So why, as residents of this slow, wise earth, would it be any different for us?

 

With Love xx

Jelayna

 

____________________________________________

 

Charcoal

 

I melted. I evaporated. I broke down, cried and crumbled. Productivity became an unreachable cookie on the top shelf, but actual cookies were close at hand to numb the pain.

 

I felt my former self disintegrate. My heart was smashed by systems and someone I thought I could trust.

 

I became undone.

 

I felt shame for not being able to do more. I felt so exhausted, used and depleted. Not just by the pandemic, but by the realization that I’d let myself be tread upon. Learning to forgive myself and others, while also learning how to direct appropriate anger outwards to the perpetrators of the pain. 

 

Deciphering what pain is self inflicted and what has been inflicted upon me. 

 

There is a blessing in being beaten to dust, a silver lining people rarely mention. When you lose your strength, but maintain your wisdom, it leaves you with no energy to put up with bullshit.

 

And so the thinning out begins. And fuck getting skinny. That’s not what I’m talking about. This is the trimming of life standards. Pruning away the unnecessary, the hurtful, the patterns of codependency and subtle forms of emotional abuse that you used to see as love, but now you see as the crutch you leaned on because it gave you an excuse to not run into all that you could be.

 

And so you set the dead weight on fire. And oh my, does it burn fast. Dry, dead kindling often does.  And immediately say “what the fuck have I done”, because that weight, although suffocating, was familiar comfort.

 

And no, this isn’t a Phoenix rising from the ashes story. I’m still on my knees in the fire pit, searching for charcoal big enough to write with. It’s time to design next steps.