Peace through pain

Writing towards stillness

“I am afraid of silence. Silence creates a pathway to peace through pain, the pain of a distracted and frantic mind before it becomes still”

—Terry Tempest Williams from When Women Were Birds

Photo by Motoki Tonn on Unsplash

The last two weeks or so have been…heavy. To say the least. Heavy of normal life things, world things, not so normal world things. I take my own medicine again and again of writing when I’m heavy, trudging up the hill of a page to feel lighter. Something in me - call it the Ego, the “lizard-brain”, the “ones who shout their bad advice”- doesn’t want to write. It doesn’t want to let the anger out. It wants to conceal the truth of my words from myself because it’s afraid of silence.

There is a moment of silence when I woman-up and grab my journal and pen. When I slump down into the pillows and curl my body in. Before I begin the act of writing, there is silence. And it’s terrifying.

How do I begin?

Will the page hold?

Will it actually make me feel better?

And so the pathway to peace begins with the first words. In one entry I simple wrote “I feel,” as my first steps down the cobblestone letters. I don’t go into this exercise knowing how I feel, that’s exactly the point. I. Don’t. Know. My body physically feels frozen and tight in that unknowing. The only thing able to move is my wrist.

And without hinderance, I let myself pour.

.

.

.

October 6, 2023
I feel over-needed. Over-worked. Bags under my eyes. Bags piled up in the closet. Bags hauling out of houses. Bags of trash. Bags I don't want to look through. Carrying book bags I don't want to carry, but I also don't want to argue about it. Bags to go donate. Bags to mail. "Added to bag" because those bags feel better than other bags. I even thought about ordering a bag for my coffee pods- to recycle...To be better for the earth overstuffed with bags. Designer bags - (she had 30 at-least, does she use them all??) I even feel other peoples baggage. Straw bags? Yes. Plastic? No. But Target plastic bags, yes, because they're good little trash bags. They hang on doorknobs. They sit on the stoop. The dogs even use bags. They collect our bags daily and haul them to where all the others are. Market bags. Snack bags. Loud popcorn bags. No wonder I'm so heavy.
It's too much to carry. Imagine a life without anything to carry your stuff in? Would you still want that stuff? Would you choose to walk freely with your two hands as your holders? Or hunched over with your back overloaded, over-needed and over-worked?
-n

I sat there and stared at the page. At the ease with no scratch-outs or word changes, at the comical absurdity and truth about how I apparently felt about bags, and then at the Peace. My body enters an entirely different stillness at the end of a page than the beginning. A river running free. A mountain top clearing. Eyes lifting towards the sky.

Who are we to judge our pain? The shadows looming over your shoulder must not compare to anyone else’s, or any previous to you. Their weight is heavy and their worth is true. It doesn’t matter if you think it “matters,” if you think what is frustrating you, making you angry, or taking your attention is “important.” It is. It simply is important. It simply does matter. If it’s causing you not to feel like you, it needs to come out. We are not walking in direct sunlight, nor should we pretend to.

Look back and see the shadows, the dark is half the knowing.

• Begin your page with “I feel”

• Pour and pour and pour your pain

• Honor, witness and feel the Peace the lingers.

Thank you, friends. For reading. For showing up to your blank pages. For sharing your voice in any capacity. I have no doubt that the part of you ancient and half awake appreciates and LOVES when you write. Wether it be in a journal, a sticky not, or in an app on your phone.

Much love,

Nicole