Speak of love

Change the story, a little voice said.  Change the story.  You are the writer.  Talk about love, talk about glimmers.  Talk about joy.  Talk about lessons.  Talk about your heart.  Speak of your beautiful, aching, strong, loving heart.  What does IT have to say?  What do you, my dear heart, have to say today? To me, to them?

Speak of love my child.  How you have been wrapped in it.  Not in the ways you expected, not in the script you had written, but in other, softer, subtler ways.  

Speak of how your father stroked your hair until you opened your eyes in the morning, his eyes full of love for you the first thing you gazed upon as you awakened.  Speak of the sun hiding through the clouds outside your window.  The hummingbird that visits your garden when you most need a little bit of hope.  Speak of the butterflies, of the dancing in the kitchen.  Speak of your mother’s stories, though few, honest.  Speak of your sisters and the way you have each other’s backs, the way you are each trying to heal alone and together.  Speak of your childrens’ fathers and the way they are trying to love their babies the best way they know how.  Speak of the medicine.  Of the way it speaks to you in a language you can understand.  The way it weaves the strings of your life together so that you can understand it and see that love has always been the thread creating the tapestry of your life.  Not the love you expected, perhaps, but love nonetheless.  Wrapping you in its warm blanket, keeping you safe, keeping you whole, keeping you growing and stretching and healing and surviving.  Love.  The thing you are here for.  The thing you are willing to fail at time and time again.  The thing keeping you alive after all this time, and all this life, and all this heartbreak and all these deaths.  Love my dear one.  Love.  Mysterious and confusing.  In all its colors and manifestations.  Sometimes a little, too little.  Sometimes grand and encompassing a whole life.  Love.  In your womb.  In your mother’s womb.  In that embrace, in that smile, in that small moment of intimacy.  Love in the dark, with yourself alone.  Always there for you.  Always asking what you need.  To heal.  To rest.  To forgive.  To smile again.  To love better.  To love yourself better.  Your own love story.  The greatest one of all.  The one with all the ups and downs, all the adventures.  All the unexpected twists and turns.  The one that lasts forever.  The one you have been looking outside for.  Inside all along.  You, with you.  Always by your side.  Always accepting.  Always tolerating.  

Forever forgiving.  

Forever continuing.  

Never giving up.  

You are here for you dear one.  You are her.  By your side in the long restless nights.  In the never-ending tortuous days, through the heart wrenching pain, through the failures, through the disappointments, through the drudge and misery.  Through the hope and the glimmers and the love and the laughter that catches you unexpectedly.  Through the magical dreams, and the small surprises.  Through the somethings that give you hope, that help you trust.

You already trust my dear.  You forget, but you already trust.  You are still here aren’t you? You believe in something.  You trust in something.  You know you have not been forgotten, and never will.  You are not that special, and yet you are also all the special.  All the magic.  All the mystery.  All the depth.  YOU see YOU. YOU SEE YOU.

I see my depth.  I see my complexity.  I see my love, my innocence, my hope, my dreams.  I see my struggle, my wish, my prayer.  I see my soul.  I see my soul and I love it.  In a wondrous, foggy, forgetful, but ever-present love.  

I see me.  The sun sees me.  The sky sees me, the stars, the moon in all its facets, the green grass sees me and the tree outside my window.  My baby sees me.  The wind sees me and the waves of the ocean and the sand beneath my feet.  The forest sees me, and the mountains, and the streams and the tall pines my grandparents planted in their land.  Dani’s soul sees me.  My father sees me.  My sisters see me.  My brother perhaps sees me from the heavens. My ancestors, they see me.  All of me.  The deep complexity and profundity of my being, of my soul, of my big beating, loving heart. 

My big, beating, loving heart. The root of me, the center of me.  The thing that matters and the thing that moves me.  The thing I live for.  My heart.

May I always let you lead my heart.  May I always feel your strength.  May I let you be.  Wild and free.  Expansive.  Exaggerated.  Dramatic.  Like a storm, like a hurricane, like a blanket, like a mother.  My heart, oh my heart.  The one where my tears live, my tenderness, my silence, my earth, my resting place.  My heart.  Oh my heart.  How you move me.  How you love me.  How I love you.  I see you my heart.  I thank you.  For continuing to beat.