Dream Garden

With the help of Mother God,
I cultivate stillness.
With the help of Father God,
I cultivate my power and strength.
With the help of Mother God,
I cultivate transcendent forgiveness
as I release the chains of past transgressions
and forgive all those who caused me harm.
With the help of Mother, Father, God,
I mindfully and lovingly tend to my dream garden.

We gingerly sprinkle a healthy layer
of rich tranquility and steadfast faith;
then we shower the sprouting seeds and bulbs
with delectably quenching loving assurance.
With the dream seeds fed and watered,
our hands rest gently upon the loose soil,
as we pause and send our shared intentions.

Mother, Father, God and I share a vision,
a vision of bright purple blossoms that
bespeak their inherent royalty.
A vision of rosy pink petals that
proclaim their love of life
and their life of love.
Mother, Father, God, and I share a vision,
a vision of bright bleeding hearts,
whose beauty remains untarnished by their pain.
A vision of brilliant bluebells,
and fragile Queen Anne's lace
symbolizing the humility I want to keep
as I step into my sovereign power,
the power God has granted me
that I have continually
renounced, denied, and deferred.

In my sacred dream garden,
I graciously accept
my powers of transformation and manifestation.
In my sacred dream garden, 
I graciously accept
my powers of discipline and discernment.
And I accept that I have the skill and patience
needed to tend to this sacred garden.

A Matter of the Heart

If you wish to know
how I came to embrace
struggle and strife
over joy and delight...
I'll tell you what happened.

The heart of the matter is a matter of the heart. 

Early on, we were taught
that we weren't allowed
the privilege of elation or glee.
For our former parents could not perceive
their own worthiness for euphoria or jubilation
and so there came a time when
our hearts held neither joy nor contentment,
and living became burdensome.

The heart of the matter is a matter of the heart.
Our hearts learned lies before they learned truth.

So there has been a part of our consciousness
that has believed that happiness
might never be in the cards for us.
And there has been a part of our consciousness
that has accepted this falsehood.

The heart of the matter is a matter of the heart.
Our hearts are in need of miraculous repair.

The only remedy for us
is to ask Father God
to restore our sense of worthiness,
our sense of deservingness,
and to ask Mother God
to mend the broken hearts
of our childhood selves.
For it seems to me, at least,
that my grown self cannot remember
a time when she felt whole,
a time when her heart had not been broken,
a time when she had felt fully lovable and wholly deserving.

My grown self cannot remember
a time when life was not
a cumbersome burden to bear.

But the paradigm is shifting.
For the heart of the matter is a matter of the heart.

My heart has called forth the aid of angels
and my soul has silently summoned
the divine, healing grace of God
to assuage the grief of the past,
to erase the power of the lies,
and to obliterate the feelings
brought to life by these falsehoods.

Gone! is the belief
that I am not enough.
Gone! is the belief
that I am unlovable.
Gone! is the belief
that happiness can never be mine.
And gone are the feelings of smallness and undeservingness.
And gone is the grim acceptance of a meager existence,
one starved of joy and ecstasy.
For I know, accept, and embrace
the entirety of my worth and
I accept the fact that it can never
be diminished nor heightened by my suffering.

Never Sought the Spotlight

Preferring to remain invisible,
I have spent my life
quietly seeking out shadows
in order to remain hidden,
to remain inconspicuous
for I was wary of the spotlight.
I did not wish to be noticed,
I did not wish to be perceived.

I never sought the spotlight.
For I feared people would see
that I was more alien than human,
that I failed to play the part.
I feared people would notice
that I could not feign interest in make-up
any better than I could feign disinterest in academia,
and that they would hold these things against me.
I had observed others often enough to know
that I was uncommonly strange,
to know that I surely countered
the acceptable status quo.

I never sought the spotlight,
for I believed it would only ever
illuminate my flaws.
The spotlight never suited me before,
for I believed people might see
into my painful past,
and quickly conclude
that I was just an easy target.

But I have been stepping out
of that mindset for a while now.
I am beginning to allow the spotlight
to remind me of the sun instead of headlights,
I am beginning to believe
that the spotlight can spark my growth
instead of my destruction;
but only if I walk into it with fearless determination.
I am beginning to understand and acquiesce
that my true role is not to shrink into nothingness,
but to be like the birds,
to place not my trust
in whichever branch I have landed upon,
but in my sturdy wings.

Today I choose to, at long last,
test my disused wings
and take flight into the blinding spotlight.

The Need for Love

The people who need the most love

are those who know and speak Your name

yet know not Your true identity.

They speak as though they know the true You,

 yet spew the lies they were given as truth,

the lie that you would withhold happiness from us,

the lie that you would condemn us,

the lie that we will never meet

the suffering quota needed to reach

your Kingdom

unless we lay prostrate at Your feet

and admit we are sinful and undeserving of Heaven.

The people who need the most love

are those who feel forsaken by You,

the ones who think to themselves

that it would be nice if some god or higher power existed,

but that it seems very unlikely,

or even like a childish fantasy.

May the lightworkers on the Earth

help restore their faith in You.

Even if they wouldn't guess Your name,

may they finally feel Your presence.

May it be that they would finally feel

a new, unidentifiable source of love,

a new, unidentifiable source of power,

a new, unidentifiable source of peace.

Rise As The Phoenix

If you are like me,
you have often wondered
why you have suffered so.
If you are like me,
you have often wondered
how you are going to make it
out of the impenetrable darkness.
And if you are like me,
you have often wondered
"why am I here?"
and "what is the meaning of my life?"

Our task is to give meaning
to our own suffering,
to let our hardships direct us
in ways to love one another.

Our task is to rise out of the ashes of our suffering
with the realization that we are the phoenix
who dies and is reborn in the same fire
and then to share that discovery with the rest of humanity.

But just like any newborn,
we have to be patient with ourselves
as we rediscover who we are
after surviving the all consuming flame.
We have to be patient with ourselves
as our wings grow in strength,
as our wings gradually replace
their downy fluff with feathers built for flight.

And in the meantime,
we must maintain our faith
that we will learn to fly again,
that though we feel small,
weak, and vulnerable after hardships,
those feelings won't stay with us forever
as long as we set that intention.

All I Have Is Faith

How long does it take for our convictions
to lead to the recovery of long lost memories?
What steps must one take to remember
our time between lives?

I have tried to recall,
I have tried to summon
the memory of choosing this life,
to summon the memory of my mission of love.
But alas, all I have is faith.
Faith that I must have chosen this incarnation
with a plan to instill seeds of peace and grace
within the hearts of others.
All I have is faith.
Faith that I must have known what this choice entailed,
that I must have known then,
that I cannot aid in restoring humanity's sanity
if I didn't lose some of my own.
All I have is faith.
Faith that I must have known then,
that I cannot aid in restoring
the original paradigm of light and hope,
without overcoming darkness and despair.

Does this mean that my soul thought itself a martyr?
Or perhaps, better yet,
a phoenix whose life begins and ends with flames.
Perhaps that's one of the lessons I am here to learn.
That I am not meant to keep choosing martyrdom.
I am not here to suffer on behalf of humanity
but to understand all of humanity
so that I may aid in healing the pain of the ego,
the pain held by mass consciousness.

All I have is faith, and I pray that is enough.

Let Me Choose Again

Again and again I have chosen
pain, suffering, struggle, and lack.
A part of me believes that I began
choosing these out of habit and
due to the false belief that
there was no other choice before me.

Since my soul chose a life path
that held early and severe suffering,
my ego never recognized
that there was another option,
that there was a way to have heaven here on Earth
with all of the ups and downs life inevitably entails.

So where I have repeatedly chosen pain and suffering,
let me now choose peace and grace.
Where I have repeatedly denied myself
the experience of enjoying this incarnation,
let me, in every iteration of now, choose to love being me
and all that happens to encompass.
I wish to choose, in this moment,
to finally allow myself to love my body fully,
to accept fully, my human female form,
to accept exactly where my body is in this moment
despite its current inability to give me
the experiences I most desire.

In this divine moment,
I choose to own up
to my choice of pain, suffering, struggle, and lack
and to recognize it as a choice
that stemmed from ignorance,
from a firmly held belief
that I was and had always been
forsaken by You and Your love.
As I acknowledge these painful ideologies as false,
I forgive myself for my ignorance
and take this moment to replace
these falsehoods with Your truth.
The truth that my heart
rests peacefully in the palm of Your hand, Dear God.
The truth that Your will for me
has always been perfect happiness
and peace that surpasses all understanding.
The truth that the love I so freely give to others
also belongs to me.
For every gift I give to others,
inherently belongs to me.

I replace the false belief
that pain and suffering is all there is
and all that I deserve
with the truth that YOU are ALL there is,
that YOUR LOVE is all there is,
that YOUR PEACE is all there is,
that YOUR GRACE and GLORY is all there is.
All else is illusory.
All things not of You are merely illusions
and a call for Your divine loving light.
I replace the false belief
that I am an inferior human
with the Divine understanding, the Divine truth,
that I am a perfect vessel,
a perfect messenger for Your perfect message.
The truth that I chose this form
and this storyline
so that my message would resonate more powerfully,
would reverberate in a much more all encompassing way.

My life is Yours, Dear God,
so please take me by the hand
and continue to fill my heart and mind
with Your Words of Wisdom.
I assure You God, that I am ready
to share my healing with the world.
I assure You God, that the Divine healing
you have gifted to me will never end with me.
I will always share Your overflow
of Light, Love, Grace, and Peace with all whom I encounter.
For I accepted this mission the day I was born
and I have been preparing for this for many, many lifetimes.
I AM READY, GOD! I AM READY!
I let You in NOW and in every single iteration of Now.
I fully and wholly accept this transformation God,
I accept this transformation.
Thank you, God. Thank you, God. Thank you, God.
Let this be so and so it is. Amen.

Confessions

I confess,
my trauma had a hand
in sculpting many facets of my character.
It is the reason I never knew who I was;
I saw myself as the ostracized outcast,
as someone whose company
was grudgingly accepted.
It is the reason I believed myself to be
an inferior human specimen.

I confess
that my trauma
is the reason I hid beneath baggy clothing
and why I had never looked at anyone
with even an ounce of romantic interest...
'least not 'til my early twenties.
It is the reason I would go so far as to
describe myself as gender-fluid
and that I still often feel
that it is clearly safer to be a man.
It is why I am apprehensive of relationships.
It is why I never truly felt safe and secure,
and why I struggle to fall asleep.

I confess,
my early source of anguish
has caused me to create
an elaborate, convoluted labyrinth of thoughts
that has kept me from believing
in my lovability, my deservingness, my worthiness;
a labyrinth that had me presume
that everyone in the world
was deserving of love except for me,
because I was the inferior human.

However,
it is also why I write.
It is also why I desire to,
and have a knack for comforting others.
I confess,
my severe moments of suffering
are also why I never retaliate
when someone verbally accosts me.
It is why I never hesitate to apologize,
or to shower everyone with kindness;
for I don't want others to suffer as I have.
It is why I sympathize and empathize
so effortlessly with those who feel alone.
It's why I question the veracity of rumors
and why I can look through
the caustic outward actions of others
and see the source of internalized pain.
Though many have hurt me,
I have never desired to hurt them back;
I never wish them ill.
And though this means
that I continually fail to stand up for myself,
I never hesitate to stand up for others.

There are plenty of positive aspects
of my character along with a plethora of flaws,
and I have no way of knowing
who I would have been,
what I might have been like
had the damage not occurred;
and I confess,
that I am curious to know.

Sublime Music of My Soul

As I sit quietly,
reaching for the rhythm of my heart
and bearing witness to the rise and fall of my breath,
I try to discern the subtle, sublime music of my soul.

As I sit quietly,
I sense the walls around my heart tumbling away,
making room for vast, wide open windows.
Wide open windows that will allow
a cleansing and rejuvenating breeze
to carry a hint of spring into my being,
a breeze that will gently soothe
the chaotic, turbulent cadence
of my tender, aching heart.
Open windows that will allow
the sun's warming rays to thaw,
at long last,
the winter ice of doubt and distrust,
of grief and sorrow,
that will allow my very first spring dawn
to illuminate the very essence of my heart and soul.

As I sit quietly,
reaching for the rhythm of my heart
and bearing witness to the rise and fall of my breath,
I try to discern the subtle, sublime music of my soul.

As I sit quietly,
I feel a burgeoning sense of grace arising
from the center of my heart.
I can feel the ashes of my heartache
gradually, steadily drifting away
to reveal small, soft downy wings.
It seems that my first spring dawn,
has brought with it a phoenix,
ready to start anew,
ready to begin again.
In the stillness, in the silence,
the comforting tunes of playful birds
are telling me that the arrival of this creature
represents a return to love,
represents a return to inner peace,
and represents restored faith. 

As I sit quietly,
reaching for the rhythm of my heart
and bearing witness to the rise and fall of my breath,
I try to discern the subtle, sublime music of my soul.
And it assures me that everything will be ok.

Show Me A Walk To Beautiful

Dear Mother God, please show me a walk to beautiful,
the walk to peaceful, to wistful pleasure.
Dear Father God, please show me where you placed me
in your garden of grace.
For surely, I lay somewhere among the water lilies
or the roses with their thorns.
Dear Mother God, please show me where I shine among the stars.
Dear Father God, please show me where my dreams lay
before they feel forsaken among the "could have been's".

Dear Mother God, please show me a walk to beautiful,
a walk to joyful and delightful.
Dear Father God, please show me the moment I chose this life.
For though I know I must have, there are times I feel the need for proof.
Dear Mother God, please show me where my passions lay.
Dear Father God, please show me where my sleep has gone,
for it still hides from me most nights.

Dear Mother, Father, God, please show me a walk to beautiful;
let me walk through Your mind so I may see my soul more fully,
so I may see the truth of who I truly am and release all doubts.

May I learn as I walk with you, Mother, Father God,
that I cannot empower the marginalized
without overcoming marginalization myself.
May I learn as I walk with you, Mother, Father, God,
that I cannot empower those with special needs
without succeeding as someone with special needs.
May I learn as I walk with you Mother, Father, God,
that I can only empower traumatized children
by overcoming childhood trauma
and that I can only empower women by empowering myself.

A Divine Lesson

Today I take in love and let go of fear and doubt.
Today I take in peace and let go of worry.
Today I take in joy and release my perceived wounds.

In this moment I breathe in God's grace
and breathe out the strain of sleeplessness.
In this moment I breathe in God's blessed assurance
and exhale the frustration of perceived powerlessness. 

These lessons were divinely planned.
Where I once was the powerless victim,
I am now the capable caregiver.
Where there was once a man who wounded me,
there is now another who needs my ministrations.
In this new scenario, I am the one with the power,
and I am using it to provide tender, loving, care.
I am learning that we all will
experience extreme moments of vulnerability,
no matter what gender,
no matter how we are built,
no matter how strong others perceive us to be.

I plan to figure out the rest of this lesson
for I feel I only scratched the surface of it.
But in the meantime,
I will again take this moment to breathe in God's love,
to breathe in God's grace,
and to take in God's peace.

Profound Simplicity

Though surely dawn always follows
the deep darkness of the night,
you mustn't take the new day for granted.
For every day is a new day to enjoy the impossible;
the impossible trees that take root in solid rock,
the impossibly sublime scent of jasmine blossoms.

Every day gives you a chance to experience
the miracle of transformation,
to bear witness to the magic filled life-forms
borne from our beloved Mother Earth,
and to give in to the ceaseless wonders of the world.

Every day gives you a chance to fall in love with yourself;
to embrace the enemy you had once perceived in yourself.
Every day is a new day to take in what you love;
to breathe in the whistling, whirling wind,
to draw in the sweet scent of the summer sun,
to take a bite of a succulent strawberry.

The days we wake up to can hold
beautifully simple, yet profound experiences.
You may find yourself simply standing
in the shade of an orchard when
a sudden storm of birds spontaneously take flight
spurring within you a surge of jubilance
that enables your heart
to soar upon the wings of the flock.

Or you may find yourself wading into the ocean,
the soft sand seeping between your toes,
and as you watch the sunlight create diamonds
on the eternally moving, multifaceted waves,
you may feel the rhythm of your heart
match the pulse of the sea
and sense the sun reflecting
and refracting off the light within you.

There is something alluring and splendid
about the profound simplicity
found in the silence of solitude
and the tranquility of nature.
Those who take the time
will always be surprised
by what treasure is unearthed
when they walk with deliberate stillness
into the bosom of Mother Earth
and then step into themselves.

A Beautiful Life

I love my story,
I love my life
with its hassles and hardships
and joy and laughter.
I love my ADHD driven forgetfulness.
I love my social awkwardness.
For these are the reasons my words have weight.
If it were not for the struggles and strife in my life,
my words would sound hollow and insincere.
They would have no resonance,
and would feel disingenuous.
No one with a hard life
wants to hear advice
from someone who
has coasted through with ease.

My trials and tribulations
have colored the way I see reality;
the beauty in the world around me
seems magnified
as does the pain of the world.

It seems to me
that other kindred spirits see
from where my uplifting words
have arisen,
that my words have burgeoned,
have sprouted
out of muck
like the lotus blossoms.
And I have reason to believe
that fellow kindred spirits recognize me;
meaning they can see
that I do not take their pain lightly,
that I am not claiming
that the nursing of our
festering wounds
is easy.
For the lesions tend to
sting and chafe and ooze
before they become benign aches.

I am grateful for my suffering
for those moments have caused me
to seek my inner voice of wisdom.
I am grateful for my idiosyncrasies
for they have made me beautifully
and undeniably human.
I am grateful for my heartache
for it has expanded my capacity
to give love, to show patience
and express compassion.
I am grateful for my inability
to masquerade as someone else,
for it has led me to the truest
and deepest friendships.
I am grateful for all that life has given me,
the good, the bad, and the ugly,
for I was able to allow
the exquisite elegance of nature
to draw me out of the chaos,
to show me the beauty in all things.

My past pain is beautiful
for I can still laugh with delight.
My past hardships are beautiful
for I can still find bliss.
The entirety of my past is beautiful
for I have chronicled a journey
that reverberates with loving, healing
blessed assurance, and peace.

It Is Time

As I sit and listen to the silence,
I try to decipher my soul's whispered secrets
and to transcribe the healing visions of my heart.
Some days I settle in and the words simply flow.
But sometimes I have to wait
for the chaotic energy to quell
before the right words can be ushered
into my mind.

This delay is commonly a sign
that I have to reset the equilibrium
of doing and being.
So today, I must wait...and wait.
And as my focus shifts back within,
as I reattune my awareness
to the rhythm of my heart
and to the cadence of my breath,
I hear that it is time for me to trust my wings;
that it is time for me to take flight.
My dawn has arrived and it is time.

I feel I am being told
that I have successfully completed
all of the prerequisites needed
for the next leg of my journey,
that my convictions are now steadfast.
My heart is assuring me that
I have, at last, accepted my deservingness
and relinquished my obsession
with being the martyr.
My soul is confirming that
I have finally internalized
the idea that I have indeed, chosen this life
and the hardships it has entailed,
and that I now know myself to be a soul,
the soul that chose this storyline,
not the person who seemed to have suffered so. 

Given this, they tell me,
it is time to soar into your sweet, crisp dawn,
with a song of faith and hope in your heart;
this song will keep your wings strong
and your sight sure.

My heart and soul remind me
to call on my angels and guides
whenever I sense a brewing storm.
They tell me, "you are ready,
you are ready for everything!" 

The Day Has Come

After many battles fought and won,
the day has come, the day has come.

After restless nights come undone,
the day has come, the day has come.

After long days lost to grief outrun,
the day has come, the day has come.

My very own silky, brisk,
and invigorating dawn
has arrived in all of its glory;
rejuvenating my senses;
my sense of peace,
my sense of love,
my sense of compassion,
my sense of gratitude.

A brand new day has dawned for me today,
one unlike any other.
For today I find
that I no longer wish to restart my journey;
to have a childhood free of trauma and instability.
I no longer wish to be someone else.
I no longer wish for all the things I felt I didn't have enough of,
for I carried enough love in me
to make up for an apparent deficiency.
I carried enough strength and wisdom
to mend my heart and the hearts of others.

A brand new day has dawned for me today,
one unlike any other.
For today I finally know
that I need not fear the past,
that I need not acknowledge the ego's lies;
for the ego has believed
that things had happened to me
whereas I now believe
I put myself in the way of these circumstances.
That is to say,
I knew what was coming
before I returned to the earth plane.

And so I proclaim:

After many battles fought and won,
the day has come, the day has come.

After restless nights come undone,
the day has come, the day has come.

After long days lost to grief outrun,
the day has come, the day has come.

A Fall Into Grace

If a tragedy is a fall from grace,
a King dethroned,
a prince dishonored,
someone who had it all
and then lost it all,
then I think, perhaps
my story is the opposite.
I think it has been a fall into grace.

For my journey began
with a scarcity of safety,
a dearth of devoted care,
and a lack of love.
I began life with small thoughts
and a small sense of self.
I felt I was insignificant and inconsequential,
that I did not belong anywhere.
Frequently, I found myself wondering:
why am I even here?
For no one wanted or needed me.

Then one day, to our great relief,
my siblings and I got adopted...my first fall into grace.
Though my family life was now comfortable and loving,
my school experiences became my new source of hardship.
As I continued to encounter people who failed to see my worth,
I sadly, became one of them.
For I figured, if so few people saw my merit,
then maybe it just wasn't there.

This new thought of scarcity
hence entered into my subconscious
promoting episodes of self-sabotage
and a slew of self-recriminating thoughts.
But soon there was another fall into grace.

The summer of 2006,
I finally had experts confirm
that my socializing challenges were real
and had a name.
So I began to work
on the shortcomings they said I had
and started making friends with fellow "outcasts".
My fool-proof self-deprecating humor
made my newfound friends laugh
in our initial moments of conversation.

January 2010:
my biological mother decides to reveal
a time capsule I had buried 'neath
"the rich soil of positive memories"*.
Though this spurred a spiraling fall,
I managed to pull out of the nose dive
and sputter clumsily above the ground
for a few more years.

When I eventually crash landed
into the "wrong" degree,
I saw just a year later
that it had been a third fall into grace.
For I began my magical 2,000 mile trail;
a journey of divine healing.
I finally began mending
the broken vision I had of myself.

The people on this trail could see my worth
and they even held up a metaphorical mirror
so that I too could lay my eyes on it again.
Here among the mountains,
I was rediscovering
the powerful person I always was.
For it takes strength and courage
resilience and perseverance,
not to mention endless patience
to wade through the dark,
tumultuous waters
of grief-ridden self-loathing;
to keep choosing life when
the peace of death seems inviting;
to keep choosing life when
much of what you've seen of it
has appeared sinister.

And the best part is,
my healing journey
continued after the trail.
I became part of a second family.
A family made up of others
who have experienced trial by fire
and had come through it
with grim determination...
eventually softening into tranquil acceptance.
Leastways that's our goal, our desired finish line.

I feel I am richer in gratitude
than those who have led an easy life.
I feel I am richer in compassion
than those who have not faced adversity.
I feel that I am richer in patience
than those who never had to wait for love.
Even my dreams are richer, are grander
than those who never used daydreams
to draw themselves out of despair.
I am richer in hope than those who never needed it,
and richer in love,
for I have fallen into glorious grace
and I thank all the people who have lit the way.

*a quote pulled from one of my previous poems entitled "Time Capsule", shared back in 2015.