ENOUGH

In those slow motion moments
right before waking,
that deep-as-death, bottomless hole
yawns wide within her and
in those moments 
she knows
she will never be enough


   Years of therapy, years of sobriety, and still my instinctual response to being in the world is I’m missing something that everyone else has. I’m a thousand piece jigsaw puzzle complete but for that one piece. Waking each morning with that awareness was enough to send me into my day handicapped, a poser who couldn’t let anyone close enough to see the flaws. Every activity, every interaction required a different mask. It was an exhausting way to live.
   Today, feeling inadequate is still instinctual but I know it is my own choice. I’ve learned that “enough” is a judgment I make about myself, not one that I let others make. At times I have been overwhelmed, confused, uncomfortable and frightened by my FEELINGS, certain that I was facing failure or rejection. At the center of every situation was a fear of loss. Not only was I not enough but I would never have enough. Now, as I look back at those challenges, I lived through every one of them and all that I feared never happened. My experience tells me that I am as capable as I need to be, as capable as I believe myself to be. One of the gifts of getting older is the wisdom that comes with each life experience and the added benefit of having the time to reflect on it. Wisdom has shown me that feelings aren’t facts, they can be changed with a thought. Wisdom says believe the facts not the feelings and the fact is that I have been, that I am and that I always will be enough.


I woke with the breath of a believer
in all that is being better than all that was.     KAW

Grandfather’s Ashes

It is April. I stand on the front porch of his farmhouse, built simple and solid as my grandfather’s nature. Grandfather, the hinge on which our family swung, was a simple weave of dignity and duty, abundant in the ordinary. I remember how he stood straight as a steeple in the sun-bleached, denim dawn and at sunset, how his scent would crack the evening air like fresh dug dirt. He was a farmer who knew what the land asked of him and in return it held the memory of all that made him whole. 
It was here, in the fragrance of cedar and cigars, I heard the rooftop rooster spin the stories of the wind and I learned to wonder at the size and shape of the weather. It was here, in the kitchen that his stove-hot words of whiskey wisdom were soothed as we hummed the rich, smooth harmonies of poetry and prayer. It was here, he would tip the tables of time with his stories then gently roll our questions to a boil and set our dreams to simmer in our sleep. 
And it was here I remember a spring when there were no flowers, when the sun slept through the day and the windows wept. It was here, in the hand-rubbed mahogany of a four poster garden where the seeds of my family tree were sown, here, that his whiskey washed my innocence away. It was here I learned the sound of truth was silence.
It is April. I stand outside his farmhouse. I anoint the soil of the past with his ashes and I forgive him for the sin he never understood.   KAW

Change takes place in a moment of choice. There are no strings attached but the ones we hold in our own hands. What takes time and work is the willingness to let go of the strings.   KAW

(via “Back to earth” by Catrin Welz-Stein | RedBubble)

Shame  

Working with young people that have suffered deep trauma, often in isolation and without a supportive network of resources can be heartbreaking. It’s especially hard when I know that there is treatment. What’s even harder to communicate is that there is a loving, healing presence in every one of us who loves us even when we see ourselves as totally unlovable. I know I cannot fix but I hope my eyes reflect that presence and my actions in those critical moments are unconditional in their love.

I know a boy who was set to burning.

His secrets caught fire and the silence raged out of control.

Consumed by the thoughts of the many,

he was lost to the presence of The One

KAW

THE GOOD OLD DAYS

Saturday morning, Winky Dink, Janet Leigh paper dolls, Peter and the Wolf on my little red record player, playing dress-up. Artist in the making.

MEMORIES

The myth of who we were, 
where does it go when the photos fade,
and the tapestries go thread bare,
while the story well runs dry?
What part of us endures 
when we go where memory can not follow?

KAW

photo  http://www.flickr.com/photos/thescw/5486416487/sizes/l/in/photostream/

SIX WORD STORY: MATURITY

He soothed her with his simplicity.

KAW

(Source: allseeinghunter, via emotionalemancipation)

Sitting in the morning quiet of my office, I realize what a rich word silence is. Silence isn’t the absence of sound. Silence creates a space for a symphony of sounds: 
The wind wiggling the large magnolia leaves, freeing the tree of last years leftovers.
The tick of the clock.
The whir of the ceiling fan.
The creak of the window sill.
Birds landing lightly in the leaves and skittering away with a giant whoosh.
My dogs breathy sighs.
Birdsong bringing the day to life.
The faintest flicker of the candle’s flame.
The train blowing a whistle full of blues into the dawn.
It’s a wonder I can hear myself think in all this noise!
That’s exactly it. Silence is wonder.

Usually, the dictionary definitions disappoint. They glide across a word rather than sinking into it, like landing in layers of deep downy quilts. But in this case, Webster almost captures the essence of wonder: “rapt attention or astonishment at something awesomely mysterious or new to one’s experience.” Silence opens up room to pay rapt attention. It invites our curiosity to step outside the chatter and the clatter of an idle mind into the awesomely mysterious womb of the universe just inside our imagination. Silence awakens my senses and I feel the breeze brushes past me like cool silk on clean skin moving over me like mist on water. Stories begin to stir. I can hear myself think.   KAW