Breathing words again

Nearly every day this past month words have poured from my heart and head onto paper and screen. It started as just a few drops back in July – the first piece of prose I had written in years. And now it has turned into a river. Poetry I thought was lost is welling up inside.

Sometimes the words are poetic or profound, sometimes chaotic and incoherent. But the more I welcome them, allow them space to live and breathe, the more they come.

A friend complimented me today and I thought “I cannot help it! Often I am barely trying to write well... I’m simply trying to write. There's nothing special in that”.

I realise now that I had stopped feeling the same way as I used to.

I have always felt deeply, none more so than my teenage years. My most prolific period was during the usual periods of teenage angst (with some added complications along the way). Even as a fairly depressed 16 year old, I am so fond of the memories of sitting with other writer friends pouring out our souls in silence or together at Writer’s Camps.

But over the past few years I think I have begun to shut down. While pain, chaos and the mundane of life raged in and around me, it was easier to slowly close my heart; no longer hearing, seeing, writing, poetry. It was easier to feel less and give up words, than plumb the depths of wounds and thoughts and dreams.

I scribbled last night...

I stopped breathing

I stopped believing

I stopped feeling

The truth was

numbness is more painful

These days, though, I find myself feeling and breathing and releasing. Words reveal truths and pains and hope that I could not find elsewhere. They begin to tell the story that I have been safely locking up inside my heart.

Poet Gregory Orr describes this very process

“I believe in poetry as a way of surviving the emotional chaos, spiritual confusions and traumatic events that come with being alive… When I write a poem, I process experience. I take what’s inside me — the raw, chaotic material of feeling or memory — and translate it into words and then shape those words into the rhythmical language we call a poem. This process brings me a kind of wild joy. Before I was powerless and passive in the face of my confusion, but now I am active: the powerful shaper of my experience. I am transforming it into a lucid meaning."

I am beginning to breathe and feel and believe again. And I am so very grateful for the gift.

Beauty Comes

I know a girl. She is insanely talented, kind-hearted, loving and strong... and one of my most favourite people in the whole world.

Sometimes her life has been a mess. Sometime people have hurt her badly. But she believes in a God of hope and love and grace and transformation.

Among her many abilities, she is an artist.

Her art inspired me to write this poem.

for Lori (23-11-11)

the beauty comes
seemingly effortless
the colours and shades and objects
a reflection of a life lived
of battles fought
fears defeated
grace received and given
passion and love and brokenness
revealed in the open heart
of her beauty

pain is not her story
rejection and bitterness
will not hold her
the beauty comes
from wounds healed and healing
the beauty comes
from within

Do I dare?

This darkness constricts my being

I exist

I do not live

Breath comes and goes but does not revive

this broken, weary heart

What is life? Where does it come from?

When will the light stream in?

Those who wade into the darkness

bring flickers of light

breaths of fresh air and hope and grace

Do I dare to catch the them

to take a step towards the light?

I do not live

But maybe one day

as the flicker grows....

do I dare?

On noticing beauty

Sand moved heavily beneath my feet, making me conscious of every step. The roar of the waves was so loud I could hear nothing else. The wind was blowing so strong that I could not help but breathe the fresh salty air in deeply. It felt like the air and the noise and the waves were washing me as I walked, blowing through me and refreshing me.

I felt alive. It was beautiful.

These past few weeks have been extremely dark for me. Possibly some of the darkest I've ever experienced. But I feel compelled to wade out of my own darkness and write because October is Mental Health Month, Monday just gone was World Mental Health Day and I am someone struggling with a chronic mental health condition.

Last year during October, I picked up this great little free postcard created by the Mental Health Association of NSW. 10 Tips To Stress Less. Some of the suggestions were predictable. But one caught my eye.

Notice something beautiful.

As someone who had struggled with depression and anxiety for many years, I had heard pieces of advice such as 'remember to get your zzzz's' and 'talk about your troubles'.... but never 'notice something beautiful'. So I decided to become intentional about noticing and appreciating beauty in my days.

When sitting outside, I tried to notice the signs of life around me, instead of thinking about how my allergies were playing up. I listened even more earnestly to music, trying to hear the intricate beauty in clever instrumentation or lyrics. When I sat down to a fresh-brewed espresso I noticed how beautiful the smell was. I sought out poetry and stories and creative writing to inspire myself. I begun to cook more creatively and savor the wholesome beauty of food. And the more I opened myself to see beauty, the more beauty I noticed.

Then earlier this year when I suddenly dropped into a episode of Major Depression and Anxiety Disorder, noticing beauty became even more important... and harder to do.

On days when there feels like no end to the darkness, sitting in the sunshine and noticing the beautiful warmth it brings is a powerful antidote. On days when I feel there is no hope, taking time to stop and listen to my favourite cd's, noticing the beautiful rhythms and melodies, the poetry, begins to fill me with hope. And on days when I feel like I can do nothing right, creating a pot of hearty winter soup is nurturing for the soul. These things might seem very mundane, but noticing beauty in the mundane has saved me in so many ways these last few months.

This is how, at the end of the darkest of months, I stood on the beach and felt alive last week. I was able to see beyond the fog and darkness of my pain... and notice something beautiful.

Struggling with a mental illness is not easy. There are no quick fixes. Many don't understand or see what is happening to you. It feels isolating. But there is beauty in this world... And there is hope.

Take time to notice.

*If you feel hopeless, overwhelmed and unable to make sense of your thoughts, please talk to someone. Seek out help. It is there. If you don't have a friend, teacher, pastor, doctor or someone to talk to, please call Lifeline on 13 11 14. You can also check out the following websites for advice and encouragement:
Beyond Blue
Sane
Mental Health Association NSW
Inspire - ReachOut

Sharing our secrets

I love people. I love listening to their stories. I love the deep beauty and richness of sharing lives with one another.

I build walls. Deep, hard to penetrate walls. I live in fear of burdening others with my pain. I build walls and live in fear of people not fighting hard enough to penetrate them.
The deeper the pain, the more I withdraw from deep connection, the stricter the facade. I am happy to care for others pain, but not my own.

As I was reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince this morning I came across a beautiful set of scenes. Harry is struggling to come to terms with a dark truth - the prophecy revealed that he alone must battle Voldermort, and only one of them will survive. He is dealing with an enormity of grief over the loss of his Godfather Sirius and the new reality of life in the wizarding world. He feels utterly alone in his pain. Then Dumbledore speaks with him....

'Now I think I am correct in saying that you have not told anybody that you know what the prophecy said?'
'No,' said Harry.
'A wise decision, on the whole," said Dumbledore. 'Although I think you ought to relax it in favour of your friends, Mr Ronald Weasley and Miss Hermione Granger. Yes,' he continued, when Harry looked startled, 'I think they ought to know. You do them a disservice by not confiding something this important to them.'
'I didn't want -'
'- to worry or frighten them?' said Dumbledore, surveying Harry over the top of his half-moon spectacles. 'Or perhaps, to confess that you yourself are worried and frightened? You need your friends, Harry. As you so rightly said, Sirius would not have wanted you to shut yourself away.' (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince; pg 78-79)

Why are we tempted to shield those closest to us, from our deepest selves? Am I afraid to admit, not just to them but to myself, the depth of my own uncertainty, fear or pain?

And then later when Harry finally reveals the truth of the prophecy to his friends Ron and Hermione...

Harry did not really listen. A warmth was spreading through him that had nothing to do with the sunlight; a tight obstruction in his chest seemed to be dissolving. He knew that Ron and Hermione were more shocked than they were letting on, but the mere fact that they were still there on either side of him, speaking bracing words of comfort, not shrinking from him as though he was contaminated or dangerous, was worth more than he could ever tell them. (pg 97)

It's in the telling and the sharing that we find freedom.... feel warmth spreading. Not just for ourselves, but for our friends. By sharing we give them the ability to love and care for us. And we show our love by daring to tell our secrets.
This reminds me of Frederick Buechner's beautiful explanation of our secrets:

"I have come to believe that by and large the human family all has the same secrets, which are both very telling and very important to tell. They are telling in the sense that they tell what is perhaps the central paradox of our condition—that what we hunger for perhaps more than anything else is to be known in our full humanness, and yet that is often just what we also fear more than anything else. It is important to tell at least from time to time the secret of who we truly and fully are—even if we tell it only to ourselves—because otherwise we run the risk of losing track of who we truly and fully are and little by little come to accept instead the highly edited version which we put forth in hope that the world will find it more acceptable than the real thing. It is important to tell our secrets too because it makes it easier that way to see where we have been in our lives and where we are going. It also makes it easier for other people to tell us a secret or two of their own, and exchanges like that have a lot to do with what being a family is all about and what being human is all about." from Telling Secrets (italics my own) (pg 2-3)

I live in hope that I, and we, can learn to share secrets more and live in the freedom of sharing ourselves.
Now to start knocking down some of those walls....

I hurt too

I continue to search for the treasures in this darkness.
Relationship is a treasure. I'm grateful for the people willing to wade into the darkness with me. I am blessed that they hurt with me and that I can hurt with them too... this is grace.

The truth about darkness

A couple of weeks ago I walked off a cliff, into darkness.... I had no idea it was coming. But it is a darkness I know well. A darkness I thought I had defeated.

There are things I’ve learnt about the darkness....
In the darkness it is hard to tell a truth from a lie.
Yet somehow a voice* makes its way through the haze today.

“You do not belong to the darkness. The darkness is only passing."

In a moment of clarity, I know I have a choice.
I can believe a lie.
I can believe the truth....
I do not belong to the darkness.

“....its truth is seen in him and in you, because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining.” 1 John 2:8 TNIV
“You are all children of the light and children of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness.” 1 Thessalonians 5:5 TNIV

*much thanks to Mars Hill Bible Church’s Podcast and Rob Bell’s message from 29/5

Celebrities and band-aid solutions

I recently wrote a blog called "Celebrities and band-aid solutions" (on my professional blog) about how 'funky' poverty alleviation has become... unfortunately, the reality is that sometimes we can do more harm than good when we 'help' those in poverty. Check it out!

Celebrities and band-aid solutions

#2 Treasures of darkness

“I will give you the treasures of darkness, riches stored in secret places, so that you may know that I am the LORD, the God of Israel, who summons you by name.” Isaiah 45:3

this passage from Isaiah has sustained me in some of the darkest moments of my life. I'll never forget the first time I read it... it was like it was written for me in that exact moment.

I was experiencing a seemingly never-ending darkness - depression - which I could not make sense of. It seemed that no matter how hard I worked at my mental health, and no matter how hard I trusted and prayed, it appeared pointless. And yet, as I read the above words, I heard the promise of redemption, of some kind of fulfillment... and there was hope. I realised that it was in the very place of darkness and incomprehensible pain that the truth would be revealed.

I have caught glimpses of the promise since. I have known the beauty of hope and the refreshment of light. I have seen the fruits of my time of darkness and I have been grateful.

But the darkness creeps back in. And I am struggling to find the treasure.