from somewhere deep within me
there was a woman reaching
I am packing up my childhood. I have existed in a nursery world. With children all day long and then dreamily a child-like soul at home. There are dolls and stuffies. Soft pastel colours.
Anything that feels too soft and too sheltering, must go.
Ya no.
You're right and absolutely that is what is has been like for you.. for me though, it has always been how i have walked in the world and i know that i am on this earth to be with children. Usually, there is one specific child.
And because i belong with them I am happy to be where they are.. and sure, they are not mine and I have to say goodbye and i am constantly letting go. Yet, I know that I could never be for them who their parents are and could never give them what their parents do. So there is just this beautiful space where we are together and they need me for somethings, but not all things, and I need them too.
All of my strengths and all of my gifts and all of who I sincerely am.. blossoms when I am with a child..but when I am not with a child, then I am my inner child and she is shell shocked and unseen, she is constantly wishing to have a voice but is silenced, she is drowning in the confusion and noise of the world, she is scared. She is always afraid!
I had a chance to be with a healer and they listened to me and what I felt I needed, and the most shockingly profound thing happened before she even began the healing work. She said my question back to me and phrased it as.. help Alison to find her authentic self and let go of her inner child. I was rocked by this.. I have always known only one thing for certain and that is that I am my inner child, that she IS me..and here was the suggestion that perhaps there is a true me that is not the inner child. That perhaps I needed to consider letting go of what I thought was the one thing there was to hold onto.
What?! But it sounded so true and it sounded like this is the healing i need. To let her go. To hug her and love her, but let her find her place within my past.. to actually breathe into who I am as an adult.
Then another strange thing happened. I have always been welcomed into the inner world of children, into their play and into their clubhouses. When I was recently in Ontario on a farm with a very dear friend and her children.. they extended this to me.. as many children before them had. Only Alison can come up here! This is our special rock, only Alison is invited. It warmed my heart and reminded me of the deep deep way in which I walk in this world in a way that so many cannot and do not. It was sweetness and the very best of all welcomes.
Then, after I returned to the island and was in the yard outside the school.. the children were climbing in the low branches of a large tree and they spoke of being owls and wolves, as they hid and climbed around together in this tree I observed as I always do. As I walked near the tree, one child said " no adults allowed"
I stopped, for I was the person they were looking at. I was the only non-child present. This was new. Can it be felt, this allowing, this growing up.
Perhaps the whole awakening comes with a world of coming-of -age experiences.. comes from the wisdom that only mistakes can bring.. maybe I was a child because I was always protected and lead and lived in this bubble of a life.. and now, now i have felt the cold ocean water for years and the longings and wishes deeply hidden.. that i haven't soothed the pain but let it destroy me.. let it bring me to people and places that had to be.. and that being an adult means stepping out of the playtime and looking at the wreckage and still waiting for the growth..
maybe i have been a tiny seed for forty two years, and maybe this pain is the feeling of the very first green shoot.. maybe this is a time of looking long down all of my thousands of roots and when i am ready i will look up.. i will let the green leaves happen
I am at peace with the pain. I have been in the ground for a very very long time. I am surfacing and there is such a pull to immerse myself in the soil again and feel it close around me keeping me safe.. but i am beginning to be curious about what kind of tree i will be.
Is my story one of childhood until suddenly being a grandmother! This is such a quickening as everything happens now.
..and maybe that is why you made sense.. why the meeting was so true.. you are a child and a grandfather too. i think. The very start and the very end.
i have just cut many inches off my hair
i'm keeping my dreads, for now
i am excited to get my nose pierced
it wasn't perfect, but there were moments
and at some point when i looked at you, i knew everything i needed to
without words, in the silence, with real presence
i knew
and now, i am washing all wondering away
and accepting reality though it comes with a lot of pain
i am here
my life is unfolding as it should
and i feel a deep sense of gratitude
as the angels gather round me again
and the wander lust parts of me
are ready to rest
and the fire is becoming a far away glow
and i only need a little warmth
because the world needs me
i know this much
so i'm getting my ducks in a row
and cleaning and organizing my heart as i go
dusting out the rooms of my childhood and finding they are empty
the things that i thought were there to haunt me, are not
it is flooding with light
and i can furnish it with anything i want
and i will invite you again, when the time is right,
when i know my home is where i am
though you come pretty darn close at times
just know
i needed you to get here
somehow i needed to be with you
and also, to let you go
for now, the house of my soul
is empty
the ghosts have all flown
and some have left letters, some have left poems and some little treasures
i'm later to know
but you are all colour and clearly not myth
so you will come knocking at some time and when you do
i will see how i feel
maybe i will smile through the window, or throw wide the door
and give you a tour
of all the me you do not know
of all the me you cannot see
but she doesn't even exist yet
and that is the marvelous, magnificent, fuckin' fabulous
mystery
No one knows me
and though my childhood formed me, and i have existed so fiercely in all that is gone
i am ready to open my eyes so wide it hurts and blinking see what is left
in the setting of the sun
