Carried

The shifts toward greater alignment with my heart were painfully subtle at times, but I learned that movement is movement.  I found any amount of flexibility in my mind and body could be held and carried into more movement and more gentle guiding of unaligned fragments of Self back to the center of my deepest heart — in each moment.

Whatever Remained

One day I realized the peace I felt had come out of the quiet moments, the insights that came that couldn’t be shared or explained. It had come out of whatever remained of the grief of being within a separate self and the grace of having found my way back to my whole heart.

It was the non-verbal kind of feeling my way through life that had saved me. It was the wisdom beyond stories and questions and answers I found in the silent spaces within that nothing else could reach.

It came out of the willingness to wait forever for words to form and outer forms to match the love I knew in my heart.

In Unlikely Places

It was sobering to find tenderness in unlikely places — to be willing to listen to life — tossing up thoughts and stories gathered and held so carefully in exchange for a new kind of emptiness and the courage to regather pieces of my heart again and again — each time a little more sweetly.

It was a relief not to need to fit the many pieces of my heart together all at once.

Beyond

There was a settling

down into my heart

that continued to deepen.

I began to understand

beyond thinking

and listen beyond words.

I learned to hold

my own shadows

and light —

letting go of ideas

held too tightly

in exchange for

the lightness

of compassion for

myself and others

and the renewed strength

to continue on

as a clearer reflection

of my own quiet

prayer.