It’s too hard to coordinate getting photos into the post this week – covid fatigue, burnout fatigue, parenting fatigue, emotional fatigue – it’s been a rough two weeks. So instead, you get a poem that I wrote last week, which I am definitely counting as ‘making something’.
<3
On Healing: A Letter To Myself With Broader Application
No one ever told me healing hurt this much
or if they did,
my heart wasn’t ready to understand:
Healing isn’t the gradual and effortless
knitting together of new skin over open wounds
It’s uncovering a part of your body to realise
that instead of smooth scar tissue,
there’s a wound plugged only with dirt and grit and stubbornness
and the skin around it is inflamed
and that’s why you’ve been aching
aching
aching
Healing is the unstoppering of wound with foreign bodies
A splinter lodged in your palm that only you can remove
with a sterilised needled gifted to you by a therapist
or a TikTok
or a friend who went through something similar once.
Healing is the placing of a magnifying glass over your soul,
so that you can clearly see the inner structures of a part of your insides
you never thought you’d see
to discern which bits are you
and which bits are part of the fabric you were wearing when you fell
And sometimes, you get seasick trying to tell the difference
and so does the nurse assigned to help you.
Healing is plucking gravel, one laborious stone at a time, from your
knee, where you slipped thinking all was well,
when really the footwear you placed your trust in was slick and slippery as sin
And just as charming
And just as impractical for keeping your footing on a slick and slippery slope.
Healing hurts far worse
than the numbness that lies beyond exhaustion,
the brain fogogog-og-ogg– of burnout
when you only realised some years later
that you didn’t just burn your candle at both ends,
you burned it in the middle too, then set fire to the stick
until the whole thing went up in a blaze, engraved with concepts
like friends
like family
like peace
Until one day,
the flame burned
out.
Healing is the long, arduous slog up a slope you ran quite quickly down,
led by others who ran before you who never knew,
had never been taught,
that the quickest way to the river that quenches thirst
just beyond the craggy, bloodstained hills
isn’t to barrel down the slope headlong
until you roll, crashing with broken limbs, into the gully,
and then to haul yourself back up the other side,
but rather to zipline across the gully in the first place
using the wire the clever ones who came before you strung.
But you didn’t know that
And neither did your role models
And so into the gully you ran.
Healing is a journey, fraught with tears and tempers and frustrations;
But, my love—
It took you years to get here.
Why do you keep assuming it’ll only take weeks to get back out?
What a good thing I packed you some water
and a rainbow
and a tiny, happy potato the internet once made.
And now, what have you made this week? Don’t forget to tag your contribution, or even better, leave a link in the comments!! I love seeing what inspiring things other people have made 🙂 🙂 🙂
Want more? Check out my stories on Instagram and say hi, or join my never-actually-monthly-even-though-that’s-what-I-intend mailing list!
This blog is reader supported. If you’re enjoying it, leave a tip in the tip jar on the way out. <3