I puzzle over what it means to trust.
I lean into my own feminine instinct, then catch myself afraid I'll fall backwards into the void.
Stop myself too soon before take-off.
I dare. Not.
Who can I be when they've taken my essence from me?
Or is it mine to give away freely? Am I blaming you for my own foul shortcomings?
I worry you can not take from me what I am unwilling to give.
I fear I've nursed the wrong pup at my breast.
And when my fear rises to its climax, I open.
I feel, but it takes silence to feel.
I touch, but keep my fingertips sheathed.
Learn to experience the world through the edges of my being
Maybe I don't have to push so hard
Maybe my life doesn't need to move so fast.
My muscles relax when my mind learns to be silent.
My breasts press into the earth and surrender becomes flight.
Freedom comes when I embrace bondage.
I can only breathe when I stop struggling against the chains.
My body, weak and frail as I perceive it, shouts into maw-ears
I can't. You're forcing me. You are taking from me what's not mine to give.
I present my hip flexors with a list of demands
And they laugh and crumple me into an old hag.
I let loose and my body remembers youth.
I am relearning to be what I am now for the first time.
It can be perplexing. I expect to know
What my body needs to feel.
Give is not an invitation to take,
Love not a path to abandonment.
Patience, my trick for rendering time void.
I am feminine in my mastery of time.
In my command of fathers, a daughter
With her brains bashed and lost.
I don't need to force it.
I don't need.
Yet it's coming my way, regardless.
I'm reminded of Sthira-sukha here - given the body imagery I imagine you'd relate to that too. THere's a balance between strength, steadfastness, sureness, conviction and sweet surrender and letting go, and we always seem to be vacillating between the two.
I love the femininity here - it's hard for us to relinquish personal power as it's so hard won in a world that expects us to be soft and compliant. We find ourselves fighting and resisting because to be vulnerable CAN come at a great personal cost. But then it's true for all of us - the tension between forcing things and allowing things, really.
I am finding letting go a rather big theme at the moment - so this resonated with me. People say to be patience, to allow time to pass, so just give in to the process. That doesn't make it any easier, to have that knowledge or advice. WE can say lean in, be vulnerable, accept, breath, release - but in practice, it's a lot harder.
I do. Very much. This was originally a yoga post, but spiraled into other areas. Being here where life happens is such a beautiful trick, but a really weird one, no? It doesn't matter how many times you learn how to do it, you still can forget it sometimes.
Ha, left a similar comment on your new post (well, a bit of it anyway). Of course, easier said than done. Maybe you're not supposed to let go? I think all the words come out of a place of both love and fear. People who love you want you to not hurt anymore. But we're also afraid. Grief is scary and we treat it like it's infectious. I want you to stop feeling so bad because you remind me it's gonna happen to me, too.
Again, I don't know if you're supposed to let it go. 'Cause there's this underlying notion that you're supposed to let go and eventually stop hurting and rebecome the person you were before somebody died. Except how does that work? They were there before and were a major part of you, so how?
Maybe you're not supposed to let go, maybe you're just supposed to learn to live in this new reconfiguration. We wouldn't say let go to someone who'd just moved halfway across the world if they kept having flashbacks about their old life.
So instead of 'let go', feel what you feel. You will not feel it forever. Even if you feel hopeless, angry, lost and hold on to it till your fingers bleed, you will still not feel it forever. Whether you personally let go or not, things will rearrange themselves anyway, time will pass. You're okay (even when you're not).
❤️ you.
Sometimes, life can be funny. Those things you forced and pushed yourself to get wouldn't come but the ones you never took notice of or even force hard on, it just happens when we least expect it.