Before, During, After

Just before for the storm, the air is full. It’s as if I’ve been putting things, little things − things people said or did− into my backpack. That backpack slowly fills just as molecules of atmosphere pick up water. The backpack, the molecules, don’t really notice as they gain weight and girth, until they are ready to burst. Yet, people know.

People sense that a storm is in the making. They pick up the signs with their senses. Intuition interprets newly formed details. Nothing goes without notice to our subconscious. The slightest change in the sights, in the smells, in the tilt of a head, in the tone of a voice, nothing escapes. Yet we brush most away as having no meaning. Sometimes we do the same to other people. We know, but we don’t pay attention to the truth that is building, growing, about to become a storm.

Then comes the storm, bursting with energy, scaring the thoughts of peace from my mind, leaving behind only thoughts of survival and salvaging any and all of the priceless things that a minute ago I didn’t think to value. The storm brings out something from the core of each one of us. We become more of each part of us. Life is about blood pumping, heart beating, loving and learning to see past the snow with our souls.

After the storm, the calm is most deafening. We’re left with a beautiful silence in which we understand our actual size in comparison to he feeling, the power, and the wonder of laid in our path to walk through and conquer.

Love, compassion, forgiveness before, during, after. No storm can touch their power.

−me strauss Letting me be