Poetry is one of the places I go to find soul.
I write it to figure out how I feel beyond my human feelings. And I read it to remind myself of the deeper meaning of life. Jack Gilbert, Carol Ann Duffy, W.B. Yeats, Maya Angelou, Joy Harjo are some of my favourite poets.
Last night I came across a poem I wrote in June, 2019 in the midst of a healing crisis in which I didn’t know if I’d come out alive.
My time hasn’t come.
I won’t go out bent-backed,
quaking or sullen.
I will rise up, full-throated,
white, the call of the dove
waking the dusk from night.
It’s not only a poem about determination and surviving; it’s also a poem about joy.
Wanting to find joy amongst darkness and pain, and the choice to focus—despite the pain—upon joy.
When the world is going through a crisis and every day feels like having to face one harrowing, traumatic, awful experience after another, it may sound like New Age, just-do-postive-affirmations-and-it-will-all-go-away, superfluous advice. You may even think it’s uncaring of me to suggest it.
But, where there is shadow there is also light …
Holocaust survivor Edith Eger talks about this in her powerful memoir, The Choice.
She says that finding the light and focusing on it during her time in the concentration camps, and making that her life’s mission afterwards, is what not only helped her survive, but also helped her heal the trauma of her experience and go on to be a world-renowned psychologist.
Below are a list of 5 powerful resources that help me find light and focus on it.
I hope they help you do the same. ❤️
— The Work with Byron Katie.
— How to Find a New Spiritual Awakening During the Pandemic (with Eckhart Tolle & Oprah Winfrey).
— The Choice by Edith Eger.
— Staying Steady & Strong (this is a guided meditation I created when COVID began).
— Poems, books, speeches + everything you can get your hands on by Dr Maya Angelou. (This article here gives a good overview.)
with love,
Belinda
