I have been to the place of profound hurting. Where the sky is bleak, forbidding, and totally inhumane. I have felt almost crushed beneath it. I know the sadness that makes a person’s blood move slowly. I know the pain that draws a curtain over things.
I know the awful place where the light of day only highlighted my worst weaknesses. The golden sun that so nourished me became something that hurt me. The flowers and trees said they aren’t meant for me. In that dastardly, hurting place, every thing living and nonliving scraped and tore at the person I thought I was. I was in the dark on the brightest day. My feelings collapsed inward crushing me.
No word could find its way out. I was stuck. I was stuck. I was stuck. I was stuck on an island inside a cave where I was safe but every color was black. When I was awake, I could move like I was alive, but mostly all I did was rock. The rhythm of the rocking might have been what saved me.
One day someone gave me a glimpse of color, a simple white flower. It was words that the world needs my voice in the choir. It was something that led to me knowing that I could leave the hurting place when I decided to. So first I made friends with that flower. Then I met a book and made friends with it too. It was different, kind of goldish shade if I remember.
In no time at all, I had a rainbow of colors – parts of the world that I love, things that I wanted to be with, things I no longer wanted to give up. That brought me out of the dastardly, hurting place, and what I found was a miracle of color.
Rainbows are where you see them. In the sunrise, in the sunset, in the eyes of the most frightened person, in the heart of the person who is going to be our next life-long friend.
−me strauss Letting me be.
4 comments:
When you have been to the place which you describe, I think it must make you so atuned to others in a similar place.
Sometimes there are rainbows right in front of us, but we need another human being to point it out, or to describe it for us because we have trouble remembering what it looks like.
Your post makes me think about how gentle I want to be with myself and with others. We all are wounded healers.
Yeah, the rainbows are always there. We just need to feel safe enough to see them, to open our eyes so that the light doesn't hurt us.
Gentle gentle is such as sweet word when we hurt. Your words "wounded healers" says it all.
Beautiful words...thank you for putting them together and sharing them with the world. You always give me much to think about.
Thank you Tracey,
for coming back to listen in. It's nice to hear the sound of real humans talking. :)
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