I see you dear one. I see your pain, I see your striving. I know you feel that you are completely alone in this world, but you are not. You are seen. You are understood. You are believed in, and you are hoped for.
I see what is inside of you, waiting to be released. Beyond the chaos, the constant striving, the movement. You keep yourself busy day in and day out, you keep your mind busy, afraid of what you will find in the silence, in the dark.
You are an ember, delicate and brilliant. You fear that with one gust you will be extinguished. The winds that will blow will only ignite you further.
It is in the running that you get snuffed out. It is in the masking, the hiding, the behaviors that you rely on to “keep going,” when in reality, you have all you need right now, as you are. And this world needs you, in all of your messiness, to show up, just as you are. Right now.
I know that the pain can be overbearing at times. That there are days when you want to pull up the covers and not face the world. Sometimes these days stretch into weeks, weeks to months, and months to years. You fear that there is no end in sight, that this pain will always be with you.
But in the darkness, there is the ember. And the ember burns hot. It burns with your desires, your hopes, your passions, which have laid dormant underneath the crushing weight that you feel. But nonetheless, it exists. It is more a part of you than the weight that you feel.
The ember was there at the beginning. Perhaps you’ve been weighed down for so long that it is hard to remember what it was like to feel alive, to feel passion, to feel hope, to feel excitement.
Take a moment to close your eyes and picture yourself as a child. You may be afraid to do this because childhood was not a safe place for you, but I challenge you to try. Envision yourself as a child and call to mind one moment, one day, one time that you remember feeling pure joy, pure excitement, wholly immersed. Maybe it was on a field trip to an amusement park, or maybe it was Christmas morning.
Call to mind that place. Feel in your body how that felt.
That zest for life is there for you. It is older than the pain. It was born into you at the beginning, and you can feel it again.
Today, whether you leave your bed or not, do one thing that brings a piece of that joy to you.
Take a bite of a candy bar you loved as a kid, and savor it. Listen to that song, you know the one, the song that stirs your soul and transports you to a world of possibility.
Do one thing that connects you to that ember. It is there for you, waiting to be tended.
Comments