Coming Home
Through the looking glass smooth, shiny a more complete version of an unknown me; reaching inside, try as I might she wont be pulled through
too many parts of me still float aimlessly, existing above and below; realms I’m yet to traverse, distant corners of a shapeless universe
my fragmented soul cowers out of sight then in the night our darkness claims us, when the light is nowhere, out there the black expanse gathers
peering into the looking glass shadows cast I see myself coming home.
I recently found this poem scribbled in an old journal. It made me sit and think about the journey I’ve been on in this lifetime, the path of shadows I have taken. At each step I have met another lost, frozen, shunned piece of myself. I have met the wounds of lifetimes over and over until I was ready to give them compassion and embrace them. I have lived there in the darkness with those aspects of my being until the healed pieces were ready to come home.
To walk this path has been crushing, exhilarating, devastating, uplifting. I tried to take detours many a time, and repeatedly learnt the hard way; the only way; there are no detours. I have dived into my darkness and lost myself over and over, only to emerge each time a more complete version of myself. There have been countless times that I was sure I could not pull myself through, that the pain of my broken pieces was too sharp, and would surely stab me for the last time. Yet here I am, still feeling it all, and remembering that to do so is more than a blessing; it is to truly experience this life.
Ever since I can remember I have heard I am too much. I have been made to believe the depths to which I feel are not normal. I have been lead to believe that I am over sensitive and irrational. I have been told that I need to seek help; that I should feel less; that I need to find a way to ‘shut it out’. I lived a lot of my life believing the extent to which I feel the world of emotion and beyond was a curse, that it would engulf me irrevocably. But it is no curse. It is not abnormal. It is not irrational. It is not over-sensitive. It is through the ability to connect with our emotional depths that we are able to feel the true magic that is often forgotten, or shut out, when we humans shut down our ability to feel our feelings in totality. Through feeling, embracing, releasing the emotions that exist within us personally, and as a collective, we are able to transform ourselves, our world, and to transcend realities. Because we tend to feel it is not acceptable to feel the full range of emotions we all have as human beings, we often get stuck, rejecting ourselves in this process, and feeling unfulfilled in our lives.
I realise now that it is a gift to be able to reach the lowest and the highest points of our existence. To do so allows us to step into our truest essence of self again and again. I also realise that so many people on this planet, especially women, have also been told they are too much. They are suffering immensely as a result of this. Rejecting parts of themselves in order to be accepted. Too many parts of their souls are waiting to come home, yet being left in the dark. They learn to let go of their connection to the whirling oceans within, so as not to upset those who still fear to traverse the deeper realms of self.
It takes immeasurable strength to visit these deeper places. To feel is not weak, as I have too often heard. To feel, to allow for vulnerability, to let go of control, and to dive into the murkiest of waters, is an intrinsic part of the journey we are supposed to go on. When we do not give space for the feelings that arise within us, we cut ourselves off from our divine nature.
In order to fully allow the essence of our souls to join in alignment with the magic of the universe and everything that we are, we must try to embrace every part or ourselves.
In order to do this, we have to feel what it is that made those parts of ourselves break away to begin with.
I am grateful for every opportunity to meet the parts of myself that felt they had nowhere to belong, to the shadows that have been embraced by the light and come home.
The artwork was a piece I made seven or eight years ago that was made up of drawings and poems I had kept from my early teens. This piece was called Passage of Time and it amalgamated many of the demons and dark spaces of my childhood.
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