My Dear Child

My dear child, I am here for you.
My dear child, you've been so brave,
but its time to let your grief out.
It is safe now.
You can let it all out now.

My dear child, I assure you,
there is so much strength in you,
even through your tears.

My dear child, I am here for you.
My dear child, you've been incredibly courageous,
but it's time to let your rage out.
It is safe now.
You can let it all out now.

My dear child, don't doubt your power;
it is coursing through your veins.
My dear child, stop casting your doubts
into your dreams;
you are here to be free.

My dearest child,
you know deep down just who you are;
hold fast to your visions
and follow your heart.
Our love has been with you
right from the start.

An End to Unending Grief

This poem is a kind of letter to my inner child.

There seems nothing to do
but sit with you
as you grieve an unending grief.

My words, I know, would offer little comfort.
My words would make but a feeble salve
for a wound so grave;
they'd fail to staunch the bleeding.
But I hope the love I pour into you
and your willful, stubborn wound
would dull the sharpness of your pain.

There seems nothing to do
but sit with you
as you grieve an unending grief.

My words, though I try,
cannot make a reliable tourniquet
for this kind of wound.
My words, though clever, would merely
suppress and repress your tears,
and those surely, must be expressed.
But I hope the silence I hold for you
wraps gently 'round your wound.
I hope the hugs I offer you
fill the chill I know you feel
with unceasing warmth.

There seems nothing to do
but sit with you
as you grieve an unending grief.

Please forgive me my occasional impatience.
Please forgive me my desire to turn away.
I can't help but find it hard
to look at you,
to look at me,
with all my scars.
But I am learning. I am growing. I am strengthening.
I am becoming strong enough
and brave enough
to carry you with all your history. 

I shall carry you and your history
with the gentleness,
with the tenderness you never knew.
I shall hold you and your history
close to my beating heart
until you learn what comfort is.
I shall carry you and your history
until you're ready to trust the ground beneath us,
to trust our legs beneath us.

One day, I hope you'll open your tear filled eyes
and see that the dawn has already arrived.
One day I hope you'll see
that there is, indeed, an end to this unending grief.
But I promise to love you,
to embrace you,
to carry you
until that day arrives.

A Prayer to Replace the Darkness

Mother, Father, God, I invite You and I invoke You into my heart
so that it may carry only love.
Mother, Father, God, I invite You and I invoke You into my mind
so that it may carry only peace.
Mother, Father, God, I invite You and I invoke You into my soul
so that it may carry only light.

Dear God, until today I have carried  in my heart
the heavy burdens of self-judgement and self-reproach.
Dear God, until today I have carried in my mind
the heavy burdens of chaos and turmoil.
Dear God, until today I have carried in my soul
pockets of darkness where I felt certain of my inferiority,
pockets of darkness where I felt I must remain hidden and silent,
pockets of darkness where I felt the absence of love.

Dear Mother, Father, God, I invite You into the places within my heart
that have long doubted the presence of Your love for me.
May Your loving compassion support and assure my heart today.
Dear Mother, Father, God, I invite You into the places within my mind
that have long carried shame, guilt, and fear.
May Your loving grace teach me to view myself as Your beloved and holy child.
Dear Mother, Father, God, I invite You into the places within my soul
that have long wished to feel Your embrace but could only bear witness to the pain.
May Your loving light seep into all the dark pockets of my soul that have longed for dawn yet felt only the chill of the night.

Dear God, please fill my heart, mind, and soul with Your infinite loving grace.
Dear God, please replace the darkness with Your infinite healing light.
Dear God, please replace the nightmares that roam through my mind with Your infinite peace.
Thank You, God. Thank You, God. Thank You, God.
Let this be so. And so it is. Amen.

#MeToo Prayer

    Today I am sharing a prayer I wrote in honor of the #metoo movement on the morning of October 23rd.     As a survivor myself, there is a certain kind of grief that fills my chest whenever a news-story mentions r*pe/sexual assault; I grieve for all my fellow survivors. So this morning when I woke with this weight on my heart, I came up with a prayer.

Dear Mother, Father, God, please fill this grief with love, light, grace, & peace. Dear Mother, Father, God, please fill this grief with love, light, grace , & peace until it overflows to all those who share this grief & shame with me. Dear Mother, Father, God, please comfort us with Your loving assurance, please embrace us with tenderness. Dear Mother, Father, God, please erase our fears, please erase our shame & guilt. Fill us instead with Your strength, Your power, Your infinite healing light. As we grieve & mourn our perceived powerlessness & loss of innocence, please dear God, fill our heavy hearts with Your love, light, grace, & peace. Remind us that our traumas can't separate us from Your love. Remind us that we are still perfect, whole, & complete. Remind us that nothing we experience is proof of having been abandoned by You. Fill our hearts, dear God. Fill our heavy hearts, dear God, with peace that surpasses all understanding. Asé. Aho. Amen. Let this be. And so it is.

Re-Parenting Oneself

    I have learned a lot about why I so often feel like I am walking a tight-rope between sanity and insanity. I recently watched "The Wisdom of Trauma" and Dr. Gabor Mate says in the documentary that many of us have a tendency to react to the present as if we were experiencing the past. Everything we see, we see through the lens of our past pain and this means we constantly struggle to be present. Along with the book, The Soul of Prosperity, written by Rev. Jim Webb, I have also been reading Never Broken by the Alaskan singer-song writer, Jewel and Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder, by Gabor Mate. Today, I'll just briefly talk about Never Broken.

    In Jewel's book she says that at some point on her journey she realized she had to re-parent or re-nurture herself... There's a whole lot of truth to that, but I have currently been parenting myself as reluctantly, and in some ways as savagely, as my own biological parents tried to raise us. By the time we left our biological parents we had already begun to carry our own bullies in our heads. We didn't need anyone else to berate us for not being good enough or for being overly emotional. My siblings and I have carried with us, to this day, an internal monologue that mirrors what our biological parents said to us...even though we can't remember their words, the emotional impact of our own words have been just as wounding as theirs.

    So not only did I become my own worst enemy, but once my life was good, I didn't want to grow up. So here I am now, the reluctant parent. In many ways I feel like I'm looking at life through the lens of my 8 year old self. I didn't want to grow up and now I'm experiencing all the reasons why. The responsibility of finding a place to live and searching for a new job that you pray you won't hate... I never wanted any part of the grown-up world, let alone re-parenting myself. In order to re-parent myself well, I need to learn to love myself unconditionally, which feels like a tall order.

Another Brief Prayer

Dear Mother, Father, God, I call on You right now.
Dear Mother, Father, God, I invoke Your presence here in this very moment.
Please fill me with Your strength and certainty, God, so that I may live courageously.
Please fill me with Your light and peace, God, so that I may live harmoniously.
Please, dear God, hold my hand as I step into my power, into my light.
Allow me to carry the courage and peace needed to lift my head high and walk into the world as an emissary of Your light and grace.
Dear God, erase my fears of the past repeating itself. Remind me that nowhere in the world am I unsafe.
Dear God, erase my fears of losing control. Remind me God, that I am perfect as I am. Please, dear God, restore my faith, my faith in myself and my faith in You. I wish to perceive the world through Your eyes, God, so please show me the divine order in the chaos I believe to be outside of me.
Thank you, God.
Thank you, God.
Thank you, God.
Amen.

Replacing Fears with Prayers

Prayers to address the following fears and concerns that arose this past week:
    Sometimes, I don't feel strong enough for the path I've chosen. I feel as though no matter how much healing I experience, I cannot manifest coherence in my life. I'm beginning to feel worn out. I don't know if I'll ever be able to leave this labyrinth of chaos behind. I heal a deep layer, sometimes many layers and then something explodes in my face.
 
    Please, dear God, help me see the grace in this chaos. Please dear God, share with me how this chaos is actually divine order. My faith is wearing thin, God, so please aid me in bolstering my faith right now. My heart has grown doubtful and is beginning to feel betrayed by You, God.
    So please, dear God, fill my heart with peace. Please, dear God, fill my heart with the infinite love You would have it know. Strengthen my heart with Your healing light. Restore a sense of peace to my heart today, God, for my heart is still trying to recover from the traumas of this lifetime and many others.
    Dear God, fill my mind once again with the certainty that You are always looking out for me. Dear God, fill my mind once again with the certainty that I am loved and cared for by the universe. Dear God, please strengthen the vision and the voice of my soul so that I may ignore the ego's lies and illusions.
    Dear God, I do not feel strong enough to fulfill Your vision for me, so please, lend me Your strength. Dear God, I do not feel whole enough to fulfill Your vision for me, so please show me my wholeness now. Dear God, I do not feel at peace enough to fulfill Your vision for me so please bless me with Your peace right now. Dear God, I do not feel wise enough to fulfill Your vision for me, so please pour Your wisdom into my crown. Dear God, I do not feel healed enough to fulfill Your vision for me. So please, dear God, grace me with Your healing light. 

    Dear God, please bring Your infinite love, Your infinite light, and Your infinite healing energy to and through the heart of my inner child. Please dear God, teach her; show my inner child what peace feels like. I was born into a warzone, God, so my inner child does not yet know the true meaning of peace; it is a foreign entity to her God. So please, Mother, Father, God, angels and ancestors, send my inner child all Your love, light, and healing grace. Light a candle in her darkness, in her hiding place and sit with her. Dear Mother, Father, God, angels, and ancestors, take her hand in Yours and comfort her. Hold her, rock her, caress her. Dear Mother, Father, God, angels, and ancestors, may the light You bring to her cut our chains to the trauma; may the light You bring to her free her from despair, free her from the feelings of shame and humiliation. Dear Mother, Father, God, angels, and ancestors, may the love You bring to her restore her faith, restore her sense of self-worth.
    I was born into a warzone, God, so please send my inner child a steady river of healing grace, of loving light. I ask that this river of healing remains constant so that, in time, she will trust You again, God. Let Your river of infinite love, light, and healing eternally flow through the heart of my inner child. Let Your infinite peace eternally flow into the mind of my inner child until Your peace displaces the warzone I have imagined still exists around me now. Dear God, let my inner child carry peace of mind. Let my inner child carry joy in her heart again. Dear God, let my inner child remember Your deep and abiding love for her; let her remember that Your grace surrounds her always. Let her remember that she is safe in Your loving arms. Amen. Asé. Aho. Let it be so. And so it is.

And now,
I picture an angel
placing around my shoulders
a blanket of peace.
It is so soft
it distracts me
from any residual discontent.