Meeting with my former self

There you are old friend
I thought I'd lost you
Or perhaps I locked you away
Because it was too painful to look you in the eye

I forgot your humor
Sometimes too dark
And often completely absurd
But you were always looking for the chance to laugh

I remember your eyes
Sparkling with life and vigor
And hope, lots of that
Hope came to your brim and overflowed

You were so outgoing
A people person through and through
You lived to connect
And embrace others in all their glory and mess

I recall your creativity
With words, with paint
And sometimes even with voice
Not caring if it was perfect, but loving the expression

And old friend
I am getting to know you again
Almost as the first time
But with the wisdom found in brokenness

I lost you in the mire
In the desperation
Forcing the shattered into form

I couldn't hold onto you while I chased the pieces

I'm transforming
Into me, an expression of you
The best of both
But this time,  I'm choosing to love all of us

Enough

Enough
The haze of lonely, difficult days
As I try to piece back together my brokenness
This foreign world of being on my own
Love lost. He told me I wasn't enough.
Because he didn't believe he was.

Enough
Skeptically I look at my form
Still soft, but more fleshy than I remember
A body that bore babies, and bore illness
The glancing looks tell me it's not enough
From people that don't believe they are

Enough
Trying to keep my cool
The early wakeup calls and constant needs
Pinterest fails and emotional crashes
Mommy blogs tell me I'm not enough
Words from women struggling to believe they are

Enough
You call me forth. Life bringer.
Worth far deeper than my failed attempts
You called me so, I feel the knowing.
Because to you I am always enough
I have begun to believe I am.

Expand and Retract

A picture is not a person
I remind myself
But my facade is cracking
As I recoil from the image on the screen

How can it draw out so much
Fire and grief pulsating in unison

Memories are not a person
But they can still burn
I know they only have the power I give them
But today I can't seem to take it back
Why do I feel so much
Yet somehow nothing, in the same breath

Sounds are not a person
But they can stir up that which was contained
Cries for daddy... music from a former life
And I try so hard to be unmovable
My thought life expands
And runs away with me. I can't catch it.

He is a person
But I can't look him in the eye
I can only forgive and release
And pray for blessings... before I feel it
The will drops an anchor
Slowly, my thoughts find a resting place

Vulnerable

To see beyond the what is
To the what could be
Is both light as freedom
And heavy as

Expectation

Believing for sun
In the face of the storm
I feel the flight of the heart
But the jolt of the

Unsettled

To trust in spite
Of a world of distortion
Makes me living love
But also

Vulnerable