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Posts Tagged ‘self-love’

Some of the Stories

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 4, 2025| 11 Comments »

 
 
It all serves.
                  —Joi Sharp
 
 
Strange, perhaps, this path
to learn to love myself—
throwing back Mad Dog 20/20
in a raucous backyard party.
Letting college boys touch me
just to feel wanted for a night.
The journals I kept to calculate
how many calories in a bowl of All Bran  
a banana muffin, a cucumber, a plum.
I don’t know why I had to date
that man who took what I
did not want to give. Why
I became quiet, quieter still.
I don’t know why I told that lie.
Don’t know why I couldn’t contain
my anger that one morning. Don’t know
why I said yes when I meant no.
But I do know I am the sum
of all these stories, and maybe
I had to go through self-loathing
before I could practice self-love.
I know all those choices brought me here
to this garden in late summer
where, despite a lack of rain,
the nasturtiums are thriving
like tiny orange teachers in how to be soft.
There is a love so much greater than I am
that guides me to wrap the arms of my heart
around all the younger versions of myself
as if they are my children, helping me trust
there is nothing they could do
that would make them unlovable,
even when their actions caused pain.
Look, I say to my past, to myself. The roses
I thought were dead are blooming.
Things grow in the most surprising ways.
Soon, there will be sunflowers.
 

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Self-Compassion

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on July 12, 2023| 8 Comments »


            with thank you to Joi Sharp
 
 
It’s like the scent of rain
after a month of drought—
the way it rises up and fills the lungs
quiets the body
and softens the mind—

that’s what it’s like
when, after grasping
and spinning and reaching
and clenching, at last,
exhausted with my own fear,

I lay my hand on my own heart
and see through my thoughts
and practice loving
what is here beneath my palm:
this frightened woman

and the life that lives through her—
not a single promise I will be safe,
but when I press my open hand
into the beat of my anxious heart
what was dry becomes loamy,

what was cracked becomes rich,
and a faint sweetness
tendrils through me like incense,
soothing as a lullaby
that opens in the dark.

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