There’s no turning back now.
The book has been sent to the printers. Publicity campaign is in full effect. Reviewers are reading, I’m planning the events. I’m sweating, regretting, I am breathing. The listening, the I-understand, honoring, standing-in, a thousand times a day. My head spins, I dig-in; hand in clay pot, wet earth, dead-head the pansie. The flip-flopping-feels while I walk.
Panic, pride, panic, pride. I’m so fucking proud! I’m so fucking terrified!
Gulp, bare naked in front of a clear glass window again.
There’s no turning back.
(Fuck! AND Fuck Yes!)
My book is in Spirit’s hands now.
If I had thought of it (I should have thought of it, why didn't I think of it?) Page 1 would read:
Memory is not a life timeline of events, and neither is my memoir.
Memory is a felt sense that lives behind the knees, in the marrow of my bones, between toes. I taste it in my coffee, in ashes I haven’t yet cleaned in the wood stove. Mine is in the songs I no longer play, it’s on sticky skin, in open pores. I dream from memory. It meets my yoga mat, meditations, words on the page.
How and what we remember will always be deeply personal, subject to the complexities of who we are and the lens we look through: coping mechanisms, survival strategies, our interpretation of our upbringings, belief systems, traumas, triumphs, family inheritance, world view, politics, people, point of reference, spiritual practices, what we ate for breakfast even, to name just a few.
My story will never be your story.
And yet sometimes, it is.
I touch my pain to remember I have healed.
So you can do the same.
I touch my sweet and tender spots to remember I am strong.
So you can do the same.
I touch the loneliness to remember I am loved.
So you can do the same.
I touch the chaos to repair-back/repair-forward, seven generations.
So you can do the same.
I'm sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you
~love, me
