What experiences in life are you longing for? To fall deeply in love? To raise little ones? To feel that you’ve realized your potential at work? What is underneath? To know the ecstasy of being seen? To guide and advocate for another? To struggle and win? Is life our opportunity to feel every human feeling and burn with it?
Author: Naya Elle James
How do you cope with uncertainty?
Invisibility is a tricky thing. On one hand, it saved me. It was a way I coped with living in a childhood home where if I shut up and hid, it would hurt less. There wasn’t room for me anyway with all those other feelings as loud as thunder booming through the enclosed walls
Whatever you’re feeling, dance.
I could feel the bones of my spine winding like strands of DNA as I followed the energy down, down to the ground. The shape of a turtle. I’m protecting the soft parts of my body, the open curves and tender heart. I close my arms around my sides in case the front of my lungs that stretch past the ribs might be vulnerable, pulling it all towards center and letting the shell of my strong back contain it all. Mine. My space, my center, my feet tucked under to root me deep into the earth. I am safe.
Dismantling the tenuous structures
I got the feeling last night when I was driving home. Home. Unplugged. It happened as I rounded the corner onto Harkness, a few blocks away from my nearly empty place. We had to leave a few things that didn’t fit into the truck, and the cat who wouldn’t come out of hiding when the moving truck left. I felt the pop—when you pull the cord out of the wall and the light goes off.
Do people change?
My hands and feet are swollen, long days of packing, loading, unloading, carrying and pushing weight, up and down stairs and hills, but we have finally, finally arrived in our new home and it’s beautiful.
Want to rise?
Do you ever feel like you’re not meant for this world? This morning I sat to meditate and that’s what kept coming to me. I’m not meant for this world. I’m meant for a world that exists in the future. But then how do we get to the future without thoughts of not wanting what we have?
Blue bird on a forest floor in a new forest
Blue bird on a forest floor in a new forest, will you show me the way?
I don’t know this forest. It’s new and you’re a good friend for me, I can tell. Before I met you, I was a city girl. But before that, I was a mountain dweller, like you. Today I return to hear your song. Will you mentor me on how to be a mountain girl again? I might have forgotten a few things, like how to get snow off the car window when it’s crusty and frozen. Like how to keep my socks dry when the snow is two feet high. Like how to put layers on my little one – snow boots, mittens with a string through the jacket so they don’t get lost. Those little clips to keep them put on the pink ribbed cuff covered in frozen streaks of snot.
I’m so sorry…
This week I have started and stopped writing several times. It’s been my intent to refrain from engaging in political conversations, but it feels impossible not to process what’s happening in the world here on the page.
Taking a beat
My stepmom, once upon a time, told me that you should always know how your partner is each and every day. I took that to heart and over time opened my mind to include all the people in my innermost circle. Not only does it feel loving, it anchors me to my relationships and holds me accountable.
Standing on the river bank
When I first started writing as a conscious way of processing experiences and feelings, it was an act of desperation. It was at a time where I was completely out of balance – in a bad relationship, single parenting, running my own business, in an undesirable living situation and with not enough support. I was becoming increasingly self-destructive and isolated, ashamed to reach out for help and let people see what was going on in my head and home.
