Comments on: Free-Write Friday: Shoulder to Shoulder https://healwritenow.com/free-write-friday-shoulder-shoulder-2/ Writing & Inspiration to Heal Trauma Sun, 20 Apr 2014 00:42:33 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.8.5 By: Cissy White https://healwritenow.com/free-write-friday-shoulder-shoulder-2/#comment-70 Thu, 17 Apr 2014 21:20:32 +0000 http://healwritenow.com/?p=1660#comment-70 In reply to Jennifer M.

Jen,
I love this:
“Yet, when the grey turned to black and we could no longer see an inch in front of our faces, what magnificence emerged? What arm did you find yourself linked to? What light did you find? Was it not the inner glow of your own soul? Your own shoulder? The emergence of a few, like-minded shoulders whom you may never have noticed before? Visions of backs and backsides leaving, but new faces, oh the new faces. So many new faces coming towards us from the darkness.”

I also love anchors capable of bearing snot and spit and life and grit. It makes me think of the changing anchors I have had but that there are always anchors (maybe books, people, pets).

This is beautiful writing!
Cissy

]]> By: Jennifer M https://healwritenow.com/free-write-friday-shoulder-shoulder-2/#comment-69 Thu, 17 Apr 2014 15:19:09 +0000 http://healwritenow.com/?p=1660#comment-69 I stand shoulder to shoulder with myself and in the past, that’s all I had, or so I felt. But now I realize that there’s a larger, greater support, a teacher of sorts, who stands with me when I need it the most. And I am grateful, because I have not always felt that way. In fact, for most of my life, I have felt alone.

Theodore Roethke wrote:

“In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade…
What’s madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance?

Ahhh, the nobility. In what ways have we remained strong, refused to cry, opposed our violent perpetrators? Demonstrated the utmost decorum in proving we, too, were as noble. Despite our circumstances. In light of the inner conflicts we felt while standing shoulder to shoulder with the very people who were oppressing us. The many masks we wore in order to fit in to a situation or circumstance or entire world that felt foreign to us or even worse, polluted and toxic, a sewage plant of sins that only we could see.

Yet, when the grey turned to black and we could no longer see an inch in front of our faces, what magnificence emerged? What arm did you find yourself linked to? What light did you find? Was it not the inner glow of your own soul? Your own shoulder? The emergence of a few, like-minded shoulders whom you may never have noticed before? Visions of backs and backsides leaving, but new faces, oh the new faces. So many new faces coming towards us from the darkness.

And perhaps not forever, because over time, the people who stand by us change. Some leave and in doing so leave large, gaping holes from which we must catch our breadth. But others emerge and some of those do stay. And those are the anchors. Those are the shoulders we lean on, who don’t mind our spit and snot leaving stains. Those are our soul-sisters and brothers whose shoulders hold us up when we can no longer hold ourselves at all. Those are the people who are woven indelibly into the fabric of our life’s tapestries and no matter the length of time they are with us, we are forever changed.

The others, we forgive them, because it’s not their fault. And in doing so, we learn to forgive ourselves, because it’s not our fault either.

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