My friend, Lindsay Swoboda, wrote a beautiful, relatable, practical, and inspiring memoir about her life as a military wife called Holding On and Letting Go: A life in Motion. As a part of her launch team, I am joining in a blog hop sharing my thoughts and poems on the topic of holding on and letting go.
I wanted to start with what I’m letting go of this season. To me, it feels like letting go first is necessary to strip away the rhythms and identities that no longer serve us in order to see what’s worth holding onto.
Letting go- a poem
When the bleeding stops
A woman reaches out to touch his robes
Not knowing what or how to wish
Only ravaged by a desire for different
Fingers outstretched in desperation
But what happens
When the thing that defines you,
for better or worse,
For familiarity,
Vanishes like a miracle
You can’t quite believe?
What happens
When the unclean becomes clean
When the world opens up
In a suffocating freedom
A paralyzing pause
The terrible silence as
The crowd moves on
Jesus flits to his next subject
And you are no longer the spectacle yourself
Just a woman?
No bleeding to distract or blame
No cramping to contain
No rules to regiment her life around
Did she stand there? Alone?
For how long?
Was she tempted to keep quiet?
Stay separate
Relief and disbelief
Flowing with
Resistance and un-asked-for resilience
Brave to touch his robes
Braver still to go home
Just a woman
I am shocked and grateful that OCD has become so quiet in my life, an afterthought. As such, I am letting go of my identity as an OCD sufferer. OCD will always be part of my story, but instead of being defined by this internal battle, I am moving into just living. As a woman, a mom, a friend, a daughter, a creative. Not someone who is consumed by fears of being not enough. Not someone who is relentlessly ravaged by accusations and compulsions.
I am just woman, with regular thoughts and insecurities. I wrote another poem including the title of Lindsay’s memoir:
Just a woman
Soft and silly
Tenacious and tender
Holding on and letting go
Just a woman
Full of love and insecurity
Finally free
I am also letting go of hurry, urgency, and asking the question, what does this say about me? I am releasing the weight of my diagnosis and afflictions, false promises of certainty and solutions. Some other things I am letting go of: shame, guilt, output connected to worth, vocation connected to worth, performance connected to worth. Actually, a big theme is letting go of earning my worth at all.
So this brings me to what I am holding onto in this season.
Holding on—a poem
I close my eyes
I picture a small ember aglow behind my sternum, burning, stirring, spurring
stoked not by shame or fear
guilt and obligation have no place here
yet, it still burns
I still burn
tethered to my determination
to thrive
to live
to create beauty
craving fire, full blown consumption
can I be satisfied with this small flame?
I'm sick of making meaning
assigning worth
I want to feel it know it live it
without doubt
without discussion
without caveat
or explanation
without mustering up anything
I find myself in a sobering space
the guilt that burned also
warmed
learning to "stay lit without the storm"
fueled by the same determination that brought me to healing
trusting in my own ability to make magic
finding the magic was in me all along
Can I allow myself to receive what I have not worked for?
exposing my soft belly of insecurity
if I'm not riddled in angst, who am I?
absent of striving, will I disappear?
I picture a small ember aglow behind my sternum, stirring, spurring
still burning
still me
On the other side of a big move, quitting my job, and healing from OCD, I’m holding on to my creative spark, my desire for community, the deep joy and satisfaction I get from sharing my creations, my time, my heart with others. I’m holding on to my love of nature, daily rituals like plunging, painting, and writing poetry. I’m holding on to small delights, solitude and breathing room.
The last line in Lindsay’s title is A life in Motion.
A life in motion is a life in tension, constantly ebbing and flowing. Rife with paradox. When I was first diagnosed with OCD, I imagined recovery as floating, unbothered by the weight of intrusive thoughts, guilt, and obligations. Now, in recovery, I relate to this sense of floating, but I imagine myself floating not in a calm lake or pool, but a winding river. The journey allows for floating sometimes, but also requires me to shift and respond to the world around me, the small tides within me.
A life in motion-a poem
The ebb and flow of a life in motion
emptiness or expansion?
floating, aimless
or buoyed, held?
I float, yes,
also swim and dive
tread and bob
At times, I stand,
feet skimming slimy sand,
pollen floating on the surface,
ripples stretching out from me, then,
back toward me until their beginning and end are indecipherable.
Both/and all the time
still and still moving
making peace with
the ebb and flow of the world around me
and the ebb and flow within me
Even if healing/health can be described as floating, floating is not as effortless as it appears (at least for me.) Floating is sustained by a thousand constant, nearly imperceptible micromovements needed to stay afloat. I want to delight in each movement, still and still moving.
***
What about you? What are you holding onto? What are you letting go of? How do you see the tension in your life as beautiful?
***
This post is part of a blog hop with author Lindsay Swoboda in support of her book Holding On and Letting Go: A Life in Motion.
Click here to view the next post in the series.
I have Lindsay's book on my shelf, all ready for a quiet, summer moment. I'm excited to dive in!
Also, love your thought about floating. Going to think on that one for awhile.
Loved this combination of poetry!
And I love what you said about floating at the end. I’ve always found floating to be extremely challenging.