Landslide

Took my love and I took it down

Cheek to the mat.

I’ve heard this song a million times.

Robyn’s cover of Stevie humming on my yoga playlist.

Climbed a mountain and I turned around

Lights dimmed, candles lit, wrapping up class with my favorite heart-opener, facing away from the other women+ in the room and staring at the cracks in the faux brick wall of my living room in this expat community in northern Thailand.

And I saw my reflection in the snow covered hills

Two days since the election.

Still in shock, just beginning to grieve the numbers of women who chose this. Maybe women in this room. Definitely women in this community. But I am not seeing those women in the brick wall cracks tonight.

I am seeing myself.

I am seeing all the years I’ve given away, all the ways I’ve scratched and searched for something true, all the hope and faith I’ve white-knuckled, all the doubt and grief and pieces of myself I’ve buried deep.

Til the landslide brought me down.

A reflection of something that has taken her last breath.

A part of me.

A frayed telltale that has been showing me which way the wind is blowing for some time now. A last threadbare tether of belonging unraveled.

Oh mirror in the sky what is love

Why are we not talking about this? Why is everyone so silent?

Who are we beholden to? What do we stand to lose?

Can the child within my heart rise above

I don’t need to ask. I already know.

I am not the only one frayed at the edges, threadbare faith disintegrating between breaths. We’ve gathered here, an outpost for the unraveling, finding each other in the quiet where not even a scream would bring relief.

Silence is too often the sound of the complicit or the held-breath of the muzzled. The strangled throat in bed with power. The wounded shushed with sacrifice in the pew.

Sometimes silence is just the beginning of the leaving. The birds kept in cages hanging in the trees no longer convinced they are free.

Can I sail through the changing ocean tides

I know the weight of these consequences.

I know the stakes are high.

I know the cost of held-breath for the sake of unity all the while bursting at the seams of the soul.

Can I handle the seasons of my life

Being so far from home has given me room to be honest.

Being honest has given me room to release.

Well I’ve been afraid of changing

My eyes widen.

My steady breath quickens.

Like I am hearing these words for the first time.

‘Cause I built my life around you

Church. Faith. God.

This moment was no longer about an election or an expat community or even the power structures rooted firmly into the depths of religion. This moment was a love song from my soul to a way of life. My last remaining bullet points, like bullet holes, not holding water and no matter how I’ve tried to patch it up I cannot keep it from sinking. And so I let it.

But times makes you bolder

From the deep listening, through cracks between each open rib, floods the admission: The farther I take it, the less it fits. The longer I stay, the less I can breathe.

Even children get older

From the deep well beneath my sternum rises the permission: You are allowed to set it all down. You are allowed to make a different way.

I’m getting older too

Almost twenty years of building a life according to ideas I can no longer reconcile with the world I see around me, with a Wild Love. All this time climbing ladders just to have them disintegrate out from underneath me. Following paths inside garden gates only to arrive at dead ends.

Education. Ministries. Churches. Missions. Non-profits.

I’ve gone as far as I can go.

Love keeps expanding, but the whitemalegod keeps shrinking.

Well I’ve been afraid of changing

I feel it crumbling.

I feel it coming down.

Cause I built my life around you

I know the unspoken rules.

I know the loss will feel like death.

But time makes you bolder

But death always gives way to new life. This much I know for sure.

Even children get older

I am allowed to resurrect my own life. I am allowed to set myself free.

I’m getting older too

And there is only one soul that is mine to save.

Oh I’m getting older too

My own.

I take my love and I take it down

Same cheek. Still to the mat. Still staring at the cracks in the brick wall.

A dark stain where my tears have soaked in.

I climb the mountain and I turn around

I know, honey. I know.

And if you see my reflection in the snow covered hills

I see my own hands taking my own soul down off the walls of identity.

Of belonging to something else, to someone else.

Well the landslide will bring it down

It’s time to set down the heavy load.

Time to belong to myself again.

And if you see my reflection in the snow covered hills

I see through the cracks in the brick wall to faces of all my younger selves turning to look my way.

They smile and nod. They know, honey. They know.

Well the landslide will bring it down

My face joins theirs in the archives of my awakening.

I wonder what we will look like next.

The landslide will bring it down

Cheek to the mat.

I’ve heard this song a million times.

Stevie’s raspy throat on my Daisy Jones playlist.

It’s been a winding road back to this mat.

My reflection in the mirror leaning against my bedroom wall here in the desert shows me just how long its been.

But I can’t help but smile at what I look like now.

Wiser and more weathered, I whisper back to that younger me, oh honey…

Your face is full of flame and your eyes of constellations. You wear a crown a bones and incisors of quartz, saguaro blooms in your hair and a cloak of neon sunset skies, phosphorescence dripping from your fingertips you are torch-lit from within. You breathe deep and you sleep well at night. You ask more questions than you have answers and slowly, slowly you find your pack that howls back. A weaving of women+ expanding and shape-shifting and reconciling themselves more and more to the world they see around them, to Wild Love.

And those snow-covered hills? They’ve melted a little more every year under this  desert sun.

Your reflection once hard-packed and frozen solid softens into rivulets trickling down mountainsides into capillary streams, grafting into raging rivers, carving through canyonlands of stone, charging down into the delta, those same drops - more like water, less like ice - finding their way to the sea, to the ocean of you.

The landslide brought it all down. True.

But the landslide didn’t happen TO you.

The landslide IS you.

You brought yourself home.

I wonder what you’ll look like next.

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Five Faves

1. The solidarity of these screaming dagger faces that are the areolas of a saguaro queen are giving me life on my desert morning walks this week. Consider them your reminder to call your Reps and urge them to support H.R.1699 Office of Gun Violence Prevention Act. See if your Rep is already co-sponsoring here. If you are unsure of who your Rep is find out here.

2. With a day job working on one laptop plus spending all my days off writing on the other, my poor eyes are always so tired and puffy. Jumping full-force onto the bandwagon of these silicone eye patches if for no other reason than simply bc they feel so good.

3. Binged Tiny Beautiful Things based on Cheryl Strayed’s book in one sitting and loved every minute.

4. Lit the first flame in the firepit Steph Greene passed to me last week when I drove out to her side of town for a counseling appointment. I’ve been waiting to buy a gas firepit, but something about the truth that’s been told around the fire in her yard making it’s way to mine - one beacon to another - feels sacred.

5. Mel Gentry Bosna’s publishing debut In The House Of Me is officially out in the world! Mel is dear soul sister and practicing therapist and her work on consent (spoiler: consent is about way more than sex) is life-changing. The manuscript draft I got the opportunity to read has more words underlined than not, more pages dog-eared than not, and more hearts and stars and exclamation points in the margins than almost any other book I own. We ALL need the new language Mel’s work is offering Get your copy now!