Category: Prose

Do I remember how to do this?

~ jennadawn ~ Leave a comment

Months away from the creative page.
The desire to make things
or express myself with words
evaporated and melted away
like the unseasonably warm weather of these winter months
kept the snow away
and prevented it from returning to stay.

I cannot find the words to convey the depths of pain and grief and depression and anxiety and ambivalence and change and interspersed joy that have filtered through and between the days of recent months.

I could not imagine what such words would look like, sounds like, spell like, write like or hear like, so it seemed worthless to spend any amount of time before a blank page, hoping for the imagining to come to me.

The thought of spending time before a blank page cascaded waves of fear, discomfort and vulnerability through every tissue of my body, maintaining distance between us.

I have felt vulnerability before, even embraced walking alongside it. But this felt different. It was vulnerability in a new form, a more terrifying form, and I chose to stay away for what I believed to be my own self-protection.

Last weekend, in the midst of an anxiety attack, I tried to color in a coloring book with pencil crayons, reasoning that the act of coloring would distract and calm my mind. Instead, my anxiety amplified. Fears of choosing the right picture (not too complex but not too simple), fears of choosing the right colors, fears of coloring too faintly, too intensely or beyond the lines, fears of choosing colors to live next to each other that do not complement. Questioning why I am limited to the colors chosen to be within this collection of pencils. Questioning why I need to adhere to rules and lines and systems laid out by an entity separate from myself. After ten minutes, I abandoned the effort.

I want to stand before a giant white canvas and throw globs of paint upon it, then wave a brush to spread them all around under the guide of exploration and curiosity. I want to get my hands messy. I don’t want to abide by arbitrary rules that tell me what’s right and what’s wrong with my exploration of self. I want to translate myself into colors and textures and images that words cannot always adequately capture within themselves. I am evolving. I am expanding.

I must believe
I am strong enough
to rise up against any tribulation
threatening to pull me down
and keep me there.

I have to trust
that I have the means within me
to face each new situation
in the moment.
It’s somewhere deep inside of me
waiting to rise when the time is right;
the knowing of what to do.
All I need to do is trust.

Trust that evolution
is a celebration
and a journey with no finish line.

I must trust that I remember how to do this,
and will remember how to do this
when I need to.

believing in my body

~ jennadawn ~ Leave a comment

When my body talks to me, I listen to her. I listen to her, and I believe her.  

When my body told me I was safe with him, I believed her.

When my body told me I was not safe, and I needed to get out of the situation, I believed her, and I ran.

When I received declarations of love that did not resonate with my body’s perception of truth, I believed her distrust.

When my body ached and longed and dreamed of the situation being just a little bit different, like how I had imagined it in my mind, she allowed me to play along for awhile, because she could see how much I wanted to believe, and how tightly I was holding on. But when she murmured over and over again that the situation would never change without me sacrificing my personal integrity, I believed her, and slowly, eventually, let it go.

When my body shows the beginnings of a sore throat and the quiet introduction of a cough, I believe her and I take care of her.  

When my body initiates the slow and soft hum of building pain extending across my pelvic floor, I believe her message that my bleed is coming. She has never let me down before.

When, on the screen, my body showed an organism too small, with a heart beating too slow, I believed her message that she was doing everything she could, but it would not be enough.

When, after the second procedure, I felt like my complete, whole, ‘normal’ self, I believed my body was feeling that way for a reason; she doesn’t play mind games with me.  

When my body expresses hunger, I believe her. When she requests movement, I believe her and get my heart and lungs working. When she experiences discomfort, I tune in and solve my way through the problem until I reach the heart of it.

When my body pushes me out beyond my comfort zone with insistence that I will grow if I do, I believe her, and do my best to push aside my anxiety.

When my body calls for artistic expression, I believe and honor her requests through writing, photography, vocal release, and decorating my skin with ink.

When my body knows there’s something worth fighting for, she stirs up the energy I need to speak my truth and advocate for others. I believe she knows, better than my mind does, what is important to me.  

When my body whispers to me her need for rest, for stillness and quiet, I believe her, and give her what she needs.

When, over the last few months, I felt subtle shifts taking place in my body, I believed she was trying to tell me something, even if I couldn’t understand it.

When I learned I would need to undergo more testing before re-entering treatment, I heard my body say quietly, under her breath, that there’s no guarantee this test will have normal results. She told me to wait until I didn’t have other concurrent commitments, but at the same time, that I should have it done soon for there’s no point in unnecessary waiting. She reminded me of the futility in detailed planning for months in the future, because the first test needs to be clear before the other dominoes can fall into place, and I haven’t had that test yet. I believed her, but I still held on to hope that perhaps, she was worrying unnecessarily, like my mind tends to do. That for the first time, she might be wrong.

My body wasn’t worrying unnecessarily. She was right and proved, once again, how I can and must always believe her. 

mental health lifeboats

~ jennadawn ~ 3 Comments

When you share an intention with someone else, usually, that carries with it an added layer of accountability. Now, not only have you given a voice to the thoughts traveling around inside your head, but the voice has landed upon the ears of other people. It’s not just you anymore.

But what do you do, when you want to change your mind?

You’re no longer the only person that knows. Other people know. What will they think of you, knowing that while you seemed so sure, so prepared just a little while ago, now you’ve retreated back to the timid and apprehensive version of yourself that believes they can handle the journey up this mountain on their own?

They might make you out to be a fraud. They might believe you are too scared to face whatever you think you need to face. They might think less of you, they might consider themselves to be superior to you. They may call you weak, or arrogant, or in over your head.

Or, they might just understand what you’re going through.

Only the people who have traveled a similar path can understand the terror, the uncertainty, the vulnerability, the bravery that comes with sharing your needs with someone other than yourself. It requires a new kind of strength.

Admitting that you need to talk to someone, admitting that you have reached a new point where you feel more fear than excitement for your future, admitting that you don’t know where to go on your own, admitting that you need help – these don’t make you any less than. In fact, they make you more than. Feeling uncertainty about your decision after you’ve ‘taken your stance’ is normal.

Use your knowing of others’ awareness of your current experience not as a rope tying you to an anchor, but as a rope connecting you to a lifeboat; available to you when you need some additional support.

You will be OK. You have a fleet of lifeboats ready and waiting to carry you to safety.

spruce trees

~ jennadawn ~ Leave a comment

Spruce trees fill the front yard of my small-town home. Standing dozens of feet tall, they tower over the speckles of bushes and hedges growing close to the ground, but in communion with neighbouring trees who, too, extend tall and looming into the sky. One is blue, the others ‘normal’, or so I’m told. I can see tones of gray-blue in the one they call the ‘blue’ spruce, and perhaps green holds a more dominant position in the color palate of the others.

Regardless of their colours, they grow, they behave, they act in similar ways, as how the world would expect members of a tree family to be. Here, in the spring, once the snow melts away, the ground stands covered in cones and needles. Not that the snow had much opportunity to stand in its own self-assurance, for the needles see to it that the snow quickly and silently melts away wherever they choose to fall, and land. Sneaky are these trees. The cones and needles dirtied the snow like clumps of dirt and sprays of sand all winter long, that is, until they unleashed their power and spell-casted the snow to disappear, almost overnight.

I wonder if I could make something disappear overnight.

Out into the yard I go, nowhere to step but on cones and needles. I cannot see a single blade of grass left free to stand alone. For hours I rake, gathering into piles the cones and needles and clumps of dead grass that could not withstand the ruthlessness of the falling all around them.

The trees know how to let go of what they no longer need. How to let go of what no longer serves them. All winter they engaged in this process, including seasons before, though more subtly, dropping useless cones and needles to the ground. The trees do not need them any longer; why would they let them go otherwise? I assume they let them go for practical purposes, and not based on emotionality. I assume trees to be straightforward beings.  

For hours I rake, wondering of the lives of each cone and needle slowly gathering in amongst the prongs of the rake and joining together in a pile. The trees seem to have fully embraced the act of letting go. Glancing up, dozens of feet above me to the very tops of the trees and into the piercing white light of the sun, I see more cones still, hanging on to the branches by their tips. Eventually, they will join others on the ground. For now, they keep hanging on.  

The piles grow larger and larger behind my rake, with collections scattered across the lawn. I appreciate just how much new space the trees have created for themselves. I imagine how free they must feel, to sense this space for new opportunities, for new growth.

Glancing up once more to where clusters of cones remain huddled together, I see how those branches droop heavily; lower than the others with no cones to be seen. Bending under the weight of holding on, the tree assumes responsibility for what the cones cannot carry. The cones do not care, for they do not have to hold up their own weight. But the tree does, and continues to do so, sporadically up the tree trunk the farther my eyes travel.

As my eyes travel, I see freedom, I see weightlessness, I see excitement; I see space for the future in the branches swaying with ease. I see heaviness, I see crowdedness, I see comfort in familiarity; I see the past weighing down the present in those branches encumbered by cones.

I see the same, in me.

I see the spaces in my body where I hang on to that which I believe I cannot live without. The memories that pull me back into my past and hold me hostage there. The people I used to know, the people who made me who I am. The people I used to be. The could-haves, the would-haves, and oh, the should-haves. Opportunities lost, chances never taken, words never said aloud to those who needed to hear them most. Voices echoing in my head, telling me what to do; voices that are not my own. Expectations and wishes, pressures and dreams that remain in the same place in which they were born, static. 

I also see the spaces in my body where I have, slowly, made space by letting go. I feel the calmness, the weightlessness, the joy in my heart of being at home raking cones and needles on a Thursday morning. I see images of people I have left behind so I could move onward. I see the moments where I chose to dance to the beat of my own heart when people told me I would be best to dance to music they have deemed to be safe and familiar. I see and hear the voices, and the narratives I have committed to re-write and re-record to better suit my ever-evolving nature. I see the constant of change, the necessity of change, and the beauty and demanding presence of uncertainty.

If I were to let go of the cones frantically hanging on to me, digging in their needles tight and strong, I wonder how many would fall. I wonder what would happen to them, once they hit the ground.

I wonder who I could become.

fragments of a whole

~ jennadawn ~ Leave a comment

A few months ago, I saw a quote on Instagram that read:
If you only share fragments of yourself with the world, you will never feel whole.

It only takes me one hand to count the number of times in my life where I have felt completely, undeniably, whole. Like I had nothing in me to hide and I chose to stand there, in the wholeness of myself, unapologetically.

Those moments are like shooting stars in the sky that often escape our sight until the tail end of their trajectory disappears over the horizon. A look to the sky, muttering to ourselves, “I could have sworn I just saw a flash of light.”

Yes, a flash of light.

And yet, there are people who seem to live in the light. It doesn’t flash for them. Instead, it acts like a spotlight, a source of light that lies within them, and emanates the light through and out from them. Only rarely does it dim.

The hours of time I spent in psychology courses, and therapy sessions, and conversation with others, tells me that we each have our own, inner spotlight. It’s in there, somewhere. It’s not a matter of some people being born with it, the lucky ones, and others not. It’s in there, somewhere. First, it’s about finding it. Then, it’s about building and growing and empowering the vulnerability to power on the light, and keep it burning.

But how?

How does one share all these fragments of themselves to reach a state of wholeness? Does it require verbal declarations to an audience? Does it require a press release to disseminate amongst society? Can these fragments be shared through mannerisms and appearances and preferential activities? After the act of sharing has been done, how can one be assured the message has been received?

Maybe privacy isn’t the gold standard that we should be striving for: to keep some, or most, things about ourselves private, only privy to those in our immediate circle. To maintain privacy can invoke feelings of shame, or regret, or unworthiness if one believes that the world would be better off if people could see only the mask they have deemed appropriate, and safe, to be seen by the greater world.

But, you see, the more that people know about you, the more they can understand, empathize, support, and love.

Perhaps it’s best if people know about the medical treatment you’re receiving, the loss and grief and heartbreak you’re struggling to navigate through, the joy and celebration you feel for the positive news you’ve just received, the thing you think that only you have ever felt when in reality, there are many, many people in the world who understand how you’re feeling. Perhaps it’s best if people know your dreams, your goals, the passions that make you come alive, or the deepest, darkest secrets you have buried deep within your heart because you believe they will only cast shame upon you if they were given words, and space, to breathe.

To bring all parts of us out into the open, out into the world, allows the dark and the light to be seen, to be celebrated, to be wrapped in wholeness. To understand that in the depths of the human experience, we have more in common with one another than we have different. That by finding the courage to bring forward all the fragments of yourself out into the world beyond your body and mind, you may inspire someone else to do the same. What a beautiful ripple to create in the waters of humanity.

I continue to gather the flashes of light, the tail ends of shooting stars and the warmth I remember feeling in my body as I stood tall and strong and true. I gather these fragments, these beams of light, to stand in wholeness.

Will you?