she writes on sundays

  • the spaces we move from

    Lately, I’ve felt more aware than I’d care to admit about two things:

    Point 1: I’m single.

    Point 2: I’m childless.
    (I’m not though a childless cat lady; though maybe I vote like one)

    Obviously, this caused me to do my scroll of the last time I talked about single in a collection of words because heaven forbid someone who is single talks about being single.


    Earlier this year I got to do something I absolutely love to do: bake and care for people I love. I made desserts for a marriage retreat our church had. I (with help of my amazing assitant) baked a dessert for each couple. I helped set-up, I helped bartend mocktails, I tried to do everything I could so that the couples, the people I love and support, were able to set some time aside for themselves. I did everything I could to support the couple who came to run the retreat who happen to be humans I adore more than life. Being able to support the relationships of humans I love is always a top priority and I was absolutely glad to do it.


    When I got home that Saturday night after more or less being kicked out of clean up, I sat on the floor and I cried. Just a little.


    I didn’t neccesarily cry because I was sad I wasn’t married. I didn’t cry becuase I was tired. In all fairness those events and doing all of that fill my soul in ways I can’t even articulate.


    I cried because walking into a space empty of a person for you can start to get heavier. All the moments wherein you feel just outside of a space.
    I’m more grateful than I can ever say about the humans I have in my life. I have the best ones known to man. I have ones near and ones far and everywhere in between.
    I have the absolute best people.


    And because of them I go through a shame spiral every time I feel like I need to bring up how singleness is hard.
    I feel like I delve into a part of christian guilt about saying singleness is hard. All I can hear in my head is all the times I’ve been told that God should be enough BLAH BLAH BLAH.
    I’m sorry high school youth group, I am absolutely whole without a man and God and I are doing just fine.
    And don’t even talk about my reaction to my singleness being brave.


    Lately I’ve just felt in almost all spaces of my life that I’m right outside the circle. Like I’m just enough to be included but it’s only on account of others.
    Like I’m allowed to dip my toes but not able to be fully submerged.
    It’s hard to start these conversations or to even speak them out because of every little thing in my head that tells me that they aren’t valid. That I’m whining. That I should be stronger.
    That I should just be grateful I have people.


    But isn’t it wild that we are so conditioned into feeling guilt or shame for a thing we are designed to want?
    I don’t know what you’ve been feeling guilt or shame for wanting these days.
    I don’t know what lies people have told you or spoke over you to make it seem like your desire is less than.
    I don’t know what season of life you’re looking at through the store windows.


    I just know that it is ok to have moments that it’s hard to be looking through a window.
    I know it’s ok to want that thing for yourself. Be it a spouse, a baby, a place of your own, a cat.
    And I know that you shouldn’t be feeling guilty for wanting any of it.


    I might talk about this more now, I might not. I might just tuck it into a box and deal with it later.


    But I guess I’ll just leave you with this:
    These words aren’t for pity. They aren’t for anyone to tell me all the stories of their cousin Brenda’s best friend who is hair dresser who met a man at 40. They aren’t for anyone to tell me let go and Let God.
    They aren’t for you to tell me I’m brave.


    They are a just a reminder that even the most independent, badass woman (and men) have deep breath to the toes moments, have sit on the kitchen floor in silence moments, have ponder the what-if moments and the take another breath, stand up and keep fucking going.
    I don’t know what moment of silence you have to keep fucking going from; but I’m here with you.
    You got this.
    With love,
    Meg

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  • Heal Loudly

    Heal loudly.
    Simply words in a comment on a TikTok on a video of a woman who got left at the altar.


    I had been scrolling the comments because sometimes they are like a mine field and sometimes they provide soil for gardens of hope.
    And then I paused on the words: HEAL LOUDLY.


    They made my heart stop a bit.
    Because there should be no shame in healing so why shouldn’t we heal loudly if that’s what we need to do?


    I personally have a lot more shame than I would care to admit about what feels like my inability to heal quietly. The words that flash through my brain more than I would like to admit are that it isn’t a big deal, I’m too weak, I should just get over it and live with it.
    And so, instead of speaking up when my heart feels like it’s breaking again, or when my face feels numb or when I would just like to be able to cry out of both eyes; I stay quiet.


    I attempt to just heal.
    I attempt to tuck away my grief, my physical and emotional pain.


    This weekend and the next few days are ridiculously hard for me. I would love to just bury myself under blankets and come out when we’re further into October.
    Screw it. Give me november.


    But then I remember; heal loudly.
    The last 3.5 or so years of my life have been filled with land mines and they actually fucking suck.


    And I realize when I give myself the permission to heal loudly, to reach out, to write, to lift some of the debris off my shoulders instead of begrudgingly carrying it around it helps.


    It takes courage to heal loudly. I think of people who go through unspeakable trauma and then use their voices to speak on behalf of those who aren’t able to speak.
    I think of people who chose to live even when the world keeps pushing them down.


    Healing loudly doesn’t look the same for everyone.


    But it does look like not being ashamed of the fact that you’re still healing. That you’re still grieving.
    That you still struggle to get out of bed but you do anyway.
    That’s also healing loudly.


    It’s funny when I think about how we put timelines on things. Yes, we know give or take how long a broken bone will take to heal, or when the stitches need to get out.
    But, why do we pass that certainity over to all parts of healing?


    We need to learn to heal loudly so that we can in fact heal. However that may look for you.
    For me, it’s writing. It’s acknowledging in words the break in my heart from my mom dying and the fact that I don’t go a day without thinking of her. It’s acknowleding in words that I might never be able to feel the left side of my face or smile again.


    It’s acknowleding how it’s hard to get out of bed most mornings.
    But, still getting the fuck out of bed.
    That’s healing loudly.


    My way of healing loudly is to create spaces for others to do so without shame.
    It’s sharing stories and moments and tears and anger. It’s allowing others, every once and awhile, into that 15 percent of my life that I keep behind the curtain so that they know that I in fact am not holding it all together.


    I’m healing loudly because it doesn’t matter that it’s been three years since my world shattered more than I thought possible- I just want you to know that it doesn’t matter how long it’s been for you either.


    I don’t know what you’re healing from. I don’t know how long it’s been or what happened to you.
    I don’t know if you feel shame or if you feel trapped or if you feel guilt.
    But I’m here to remind you- remind us.
    Let’s heal loudly.
    However that looks, however that is.


    Heal. Loudly.
    With love,
    Meg

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  • Fall has receipts

    My friend Amanda told me I need to replace my hatred for October with cozy socks.

    Well, basically.

    I’ve never been a basic fall girl like my best friend Tori whose love for sweaters and spooky season has rubbed off a bit on me in the last nine years of living in Washington. She goes full send into seasons essentially just for herself and that’s something that I absolutely love about her. Her no holds barred ability to show her love of something. Even if that something is just spooky season.

    It feels ironic and also kismet that her best friend hates fall.

    For me; fall brings all the ghosts out that I tried to keep dormant for too long.

    (And not the good ghosts like Devon Sawa as Casper.)

    But in the fall the ghosts return full force and cause me to have panic attacks and try to sneak into my brain to tell me all the ways that this is how it always is.

    It’s actually kind of funny. There are things to myself that I would absolutely never tell a tiny human. I was talking to my director last week about a few things and I said that the phrase I hate saying to tiny humans and to adults is simply “But you know better”. Because while tiny humans absolutely actually don’t, adults should.

    But I still can’t bring myself to say it.

    I also can’t ever bring myself to speaking over someone that “this is all there is”.

    Myself though?

    Fall is that reminder that the lie that says this is all there is might be true.

    Fall tells me that the other shoe will drop. That I’m not strong enough.

    Fall tells me I’m broken.

    Fall has receipts.

    That I’ll keep circling back to these ghosts because fall will inevitably create new ones.

    But I should love fall.

    Honestly.

    I’m a whiskey drinker, cozy couch loving, preschool teacher who loves an excuse for product art and a  writer.

    So what the heck do I do?

    I have to remember that I’m still here despite fall telling me I’m broken and alone.

    Because I still show up in fall.

    Eight days after my mom died I performed on a stage in front of an audience for the first time since high school. I was in a Halloween music review and the next day I got a plane to spend a week in Kingsburg leading up to my mom’s memorial.

    There was no way I wasn’t getting on that stage. 

    I needed fall to be something more than what it was. 

    I needed something to remind me I could survive fall.

    And now, I sit here, with an immensely clenched fist on my emotions, I realized I have survived fall.

    Specifically, I have survived fall every year since 2008 when the words in my brain told me the world around me would be lighter without me.

    I think sometimes when I write I need to remind myself that I’ve survived the things that I didn’t think I could. 

    I need to drag myself out of the hole that feels like I can’t do it. 

    I need to drag myself out of the hole that says this is all there is.

    I need to gather the hope the falls before this has created.

    I need to lean in to fall.

    Because fall has receipts.

    With love,

    Meg

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  • Hope isn’t a firework

    I’ve lived a lot of life with the persistent fear that I’m letting people down. 

    And to be completely and utterly honest I’ve lived the last three years mostly with the gut wrenching fear that I’m letting my mom down with every step I take.

    That I haven’t been strong enough, smart enough. That I’m not able to take care of myself.

    That I’m not making her proud and that she’s be so disappointed in all the ways I’ve failed.

    And I know that all sounds so heavy but if we don’t ever let the heavy things out than all we will do is let them continually weigh us down.

    I feel as if I have a lot of evidence in my life of all the ways I’ve been chosen last, been written off a list, not been enough for the people I wanted to be enough for.

    That I’m literally just right outside the map with no way if knowing how to be apart of the journey again.

    When I was in Ecuador on one of the first days of the world race myself and my team of 6 other women were handed a map of how to get to where we needed to go.

    The issue was the place we were and the place we were going weren’t actually on the map- the map was the middle.

    We just had to choose to go off and get to the middle without actually having the tools.

    And right now, in the moment, I feel like that again. Like I’m looking at a map and I have to get to the end without all the information.

    And I feel like I’ve already failed.

    I know it’s not true.

    I know that I’m not always letting people down.

    I know I’m not a last choice.

    I know that no one actually has a complete map.

    Lately, the heavy has been more heavy than I know what to do with.

    And hope feels like fireworks in the distance that is gone in a flash.

    But, if there is anything I know that is true it’s that we have to choose to face the lies and the words that go against who we are. We have to not be afraid of them.

    We have to stare them in the face.

    So that’s what I’m doing right now.

    Staring the words in the face that become ticker tape on my brain sometimes.

    Staring them in the face because the more I do the more I realize they are untrue.

    Want to join me?

    Want to stare the things in the face that feel so true until you realize they are mirage that flickers off in the distance?

    And let’s replace it all with what is true and full of gritty steadfast hope.

    That’s all.

    With love,

    Meg

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  • Time to stir

    I’m making myself try.
    I’m sitting here, out in the world, deciding that I can be capabale of putting words on a page. I can be capable of finding something to talk about, something in me can untangle and I can keep trying to figure out the wisps of phrases in my brain.
    A few weeks ago at church I kept having the image of kids in a pool spinning the water in circles. Making a whirpool and going as fast as they could to get the water to whip them around so fast. I remember doing that as a kid and it was always so fun. But, as I thought about it that day I was struck with the fact that the water was moving.
    The water moves even in stillness.
    The kids in the image in my head amped up the movement. The spinning of the water moved things around, brought things to the surface and shook things up.
    But, even without the spinning the water moved.
    I have felt, without a doubt, like still water lately.
    I know that I’m still moving. I know that there is movement in the places that feel stuck. I know there is movement in the places where I feel right out of the water.
    It’s just damn hard.
    I’m a little petrified right now of the water getting spun around quickly. Because, I’ve felt like all that’s come up is the grit and the leaves and the lost pool toys long forgotten.
    I’m a little bit scared because it always seems nothing good comes from the stirring.


    I saw a therapist for about 3.5 years. I ebbed with how much I saw him but it was always at least twice a month and for some seasons every week. I was always so anxious heading into a session. It felt like I never knew what was going to come to the surface and I wasn’t ever fully prepared for it.
    Things always stirred to the surface and it felt as if they were never pretty.
    Because the things that settle on the bottom usually aren’t the good things.
    I’m sitting here trying to scan my brain for any example, anything that gives me an example of something bringing good things to the surface when they are stirred.


    I know that you stir things to keep them from burning, you stir them to mix flavors or to combine ingredients.
    Staring at my computer though; I’m unwillingly to step into something that might stir the depths on my inside.


    Have you ever known in your depths that you needed to leap, you needed to step outside of what was and you needed to let go of a little control?
    Like, you just had to trust that there was something to catch you?
    I don’t feel on the precipice of a big life change at least outwardly.
    But I do feel like I have a death grip on the thing that’s trying to create a whirlpool inside of me and I’m just refusing to unclench my fist.


    I believe we are in an interesting span of time. I think we’re just beginning to fully grasp the depths of ourselves and we’re beginning to grasp our abilities to see beyond who the world may sees us as.
    We just have to choose to believe that we’re up to the challenge of figuring out all that we are.
    We have to choose to unclench our fist and let the whirpool bring the good we don’t yet believe it can.


    I’m afraid right now. I’m afraid of the straw that may break the camel’s back, I’m afraid of the other shoe dropping. I’m afraid of the wizard being found behind the curtain.


    But, I’m also afraid if I don’t unclench my fist now I might never find my way back home to myself again.


    So, I’m going to do some things that might cause stirring. I’m going to let people in to places I’ve forced to be still and I’m going to speak words that create movement.


    That’s all. And everything.
    With love,
    Meg

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  • Smothered Flames

    I have no words.

    It’s been a really hard place for me to be in. A place where I feel incapable of communicating or saying what I mean, or feel. I’m a writer who has spent most of her life using words that come out of my brain as a place to land. I’ve discovered more than I can even explain via my own writing. I’ve untangled, I’ve stared at words on the screen that I had no clue where they came from but just knew that they were true and real.

    I’ve found the end of the rope through my words on more occasions than I can even count.

    I’ve found hope in between the lines of my own writing because at the end of the day, when I write it, I know that it’s there. When I write something I know that there is something more in me, something I can grab on too.

    Something that is more real than the things that feel dark.

    But right now, there is none of that.

    It feels like I’m standing in a hole and I have all the pieces to something that will help me out of the hole, but it’s a piece of Ikea furniture and I have no instruction and I don’t have that damn little tool to help me build it.

    The only way out of the hole is to build it.

    But, instead of building it, I’ve just sat there, not trying because right now it’s easier to stay in the hole than get hurt by the fall again.

    Three years ago today I wrote that I was starting to not be afraid of the other shoe dropping.

    And then a month later my mom died.

    Now, I’m sitting here in this bar, writing these words feeling like I’m just throwing a pity party.

    Because I know I’m strong enough to get out of the damn hole.

    I’ve been thinking a lot about how my high school youth pastor used to talk about how it was better to be a Christian whose fire was completely out than a lukewarm Christian. I remember, like most things from high school youth group, feeling so incredibly ashamed of that. I remember thinking that I just had to stay “on fire”. I had to do all the things I needed to do. I had to show up, be everything. I needed to sing on the worship team, and go to every bible study.

    I couldn’t let the fire die because than I would be less than.

    But here I am over 20 years outside of high school youth group and I would like to call bullshit on my youth pastor.

    I would much rather have some dying embers of faith than feel as if a wet towel had smothered all the flames.

    At the beginning of this I said that I haven’t been able to write; that isn’t completely true. I have been writing.

    The words have just all felt completely and utterly devoid of hope.

    Which, I know isn’t true.

    Because choosing to write is choosing to believe in the hope that there is something at the end of the words.

    Choosing to write is choosing to believe I might be able to be a little stronger than I was before I started writing.

    Choosing to write is choosing to believe even though I feel incapable of it; I’m still someone who has the ability to stir hope and light.

    So, that’s it. That’s me right now.

    I guess, that at the end of it all, I’m here with my hands open, being a little more honest than I want.

    I feel absolutely unsettled by all of these words and normally that unsettledness would push me to not post them, to shut my computer, maybe to even delete them, but instead I’m choosing for a moment to lean in to the things that don’t feel settled in hopes that the action might help them settle.

    Let’s do our best to lean in.

     With love,

    Meg

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  • Choose your grief

     I’ve come to an immense realization today while texting my friend Emily and I’m going to try incredibly hard to articulate it.

    I’ve been trying to make peace with myself the last 6 months: that the darkness I feel is not my darkness. That the light I have inside is stronger than the darkness that tries to cover me.

    But, I’ve also spent the last 6 months numb to a point. If I’m not around people, if I’m home, if I’m alone it’s almost as if I have no emotions. Like I’m a vampire in Vampire Diaries and I’ve turned the switch off on my emotions and I just feel nothing.

    The numbness has made me battle the thing I’ve struggled with and pushed against most of my adult life: that I’m fake. That people think less of me for my inability to push through.

    That I’m not strong.

    A couple Sundays ago at church I was told about my strength, and I’ve had to listen to it a few times because I just don’t believe it.

    I would like to say I know those things aren’t true aren’t actually true. And the things that are: are. But sometimes, it’s hard to believe in things even when you know they aren’t true or are true.

    And for as honest as I am in my writing, as honest as I’ve been. As many things as I’ve said that are difficult for me to say, I know that there have been things I haven’t been able to figure out.

    I’m realizing today though something I’ve left a bit behind in my grieving: I need to grieve the person that I thought I was going to become at this point in my life as opposed to the person I’ve become because of the circumstances I’ve faced.

    On Sunday I cried for her. I cried for all the ways grief and pain have made me motionless. I cried for the ways the burnout changed how I look at life and the ways I look at the profession I feel so confident in.

    I cried for the person who was on the brink of coming back home to herself and then had a house dropped on her and she had to start the process again.

    I cried for all the things that have broken me and all the ways I feel broken.

    And I cried for all the times I couldn’t text or call my mom to tell her any of it.

    We don’t just grieve the people that left, or the places that we had to walk away from or even the things that made us feel less than we are.

    We have to grieve the person that would have been without all those things.

    We have to grieve the person that would be sitting in our place had none of it occurred.

    We have to grieve the other path that got left in dust.

    We have to grieve the us that would have been.

    And I think that I’ve been holding that woman for awhile.

    I think yesterday sitting on my couch crying, I stared at her. I looked and wonder who she was now. Where she lived. What her body looked like.

    What she was still doing.

    I wanted to ask her questions. I wanted to know in my knower that she was strong in all the ways I currently am not.

    I want to know she would have been ok, on that other path.

    I know I’m ok on this path.

    If I wasn’t; not to mince words, I probably just wouldn’t be here anymore.

    I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt that all of my houses that have fallen on me over the last 3 years fell in the correct order.

    I’m not saying the houses had to happen- like they happened for a reason- but at the end of the day the storm was going to come and the houses were going to drop.

    I grieve my mom every day. Sometimes subconsciously, sometimes incredibly consciously.

    My grief isn’t always joyous. I just don’t grieve that conversations that could never be, but I grieve the conversations that were, the ones that sliced like a knife.

    I grieve the quiet, still moments.

    And all along the way I have to grieve the other part of me.

    I have to grieve the person who felt like she had a handle on the things that were broken.

    And in a way, I have to grieve the person that accepts that they are broken.

    It’s weird, but I feel lighter now. Lighter with the knowledge that I’m beginning to realize it isn’t actually me. It’s the ghost of the me that never was.

    Almost as if I’m being chased by the thing that I can’t ever be because I have become who I am.

    Bottom line:

    Grief is a bitch.

    It has more twists and turns than we can ever account for.

    We don’t just grieve death. We grieve divorce, we grieve what illness takes away. We grieve friendships that took. We grieve jobs that became places we had to walk away from in spite of.

    We grieve faith we’ve had to leave behind in pursuit of the truth that heals us.

    We grieve the death of things that still follow us around.

    I know I’m not going to finish this pour of whiskey and walk out of this bar and be healed.

    I know I’m not going to automatically be able to actually fall asleep before 2 am.

    (I know I have friends who would yell at me for those statements).

    But I do that I am looking in the correct mirror now.

    I don’t what you’re grieving.

    I don’t know who you’re grieving,

    I don’t know what year the person exist in.

    I just do know that at some point we have to remember that the paths might never line up again.

    And that’s ok.

    With love,

    Meg

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  • I probably shouldn’t write this.

    I probably shouldn’t be doing this.

    I probably should save all these words for myself, but something inside me says even though they are bitter, ugly truths, sometimes we need those.

    I probably shouldn’t have sat on my couch reading in the silence while the room around me turned dark.

    I probably shouldn’t have made the decision to sit on my kitchen floor and stare at my laptop as if it’s holding a piece of me like a scratcher ticket with a truth about myself I’m not capable of bringing to the surface.

    I probably shouldn’t have tears in my eyes from not having said anything.

    Lately I feel like all the ghosts of my life are hanging around. All the words people have said to me, the actions that showed I was insignificant.

    All the times I wasn’t chosen.

    They’ve all been here.

    And the only thing I’ve been able to do is shut them out. Plug my ears and run.

    I found things and ways to shake them off, to numb whatever they are.

    Almost a year ago I got diagnosed with Bell’s Palsy. My face stopped working, my body stopped working, and I was so undeniably lost.

    The only thing that kept me moving were the people who were in my corner. The only thing that truly kept me going forward was their belief and love for me.

    Since August 20th I’ve been dealing with this thing, this inability to feel normal that has drug up all the ghosts that live in my past.

    When I was really young I wrote a card to my Grandma Reeve, my Kansas Grandma. The one I never really saw. I remember in the card telling her that I wasn’t normal. I never felt normal as a kid. I was a loner, I was overweight, wore glasses and had a funny sounding voice that people couldn’t understand and made fun of.

    She proceeding to write me back saying she didn’t want a normal grandchild and that she loved me how I was.

    But, each time I got made fun of, each time someone responded to me trying to talk with a “wawawawa” like they couldn’t understand me. I would fade away again.

    It was easier for me to be silent.

    When I was in second grade I will never forget my teacher telling my mom that they needed to figure out my voice. That I would never get anywhere with it.

    It was easier for me to be silent.

    That’s been a voice that’s come back in full force this year.

    It’s easier for me to be silent.

    Now, don’t get me wrong: I’m stubborn and I’ve not been silent. I’ve yelled back in the face of the thing that tells me I should be silent and for the most part, to the best of my ability shown up.

    But, tonight sitting on this kitchen floor, I’m realizing how much those ghosts have reappeared in more ways than I can even compute.

    And for every time I’ve shown up, there is another where I’ve stepped away with the feeling that it’s easier for me to be silent.

    When my world spun last year for 3 weeks I didn’t know if I’d ever find balance again, in all honesty, I don’t know if I have.

    I don’t want to write these next words because I know they aren’t true. I do know that- but I think I need to face them on a screen: I don’t know if it isn’t easier if I’m silent.

    I don’t know if I’m strong enough anymore to be stubborn enough to push the lies down.

    This past year has been harder than I have even had the words to communicate. And even with all reassurance that people don’t notice what my face is doing: I do. I feel at a loss, off balance and unable to be who I am in ways I know how.

    I spent the last 10 years building a confidence in myself that I hadn’t ever had before.

    I started to know who I was, what I was about and I liked myself for it.

    But then it was like the world played a uno reverse on me and suddenly I was going backwards.

    And all I see are the ghosts of the things that used to haunt me.

    So, tonight sitting on my kitchen floor I’m going to tell those ghosts that I see them.

    They won’t have space to follow me anymore.

    And even though I don’t fully believe those words: I have to say them anyway.

    This is usually where I’d tag a note, something to say hey we’re here. We’re together.

    But I think sometimes, we have to get rid of the ghosties by ourselves.

    And that’s ok.

    With love,

    Meg

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  • Finish the sentence

    I have without a doubt been silencing myself.

    In the last couple months I’ve started more blogs and more pieces of words than I care to admit.

    I’ve absolutely written the things that I deem safe sans one collection of words back in June.

    Ever since those words I’ve been afraid that anything I write about the dark things I feel would negate the words I wrote then, the things I know to be true. The light I know I am.

    That me speaking of the things that have been hard would negate the things I know to be true.

    I have had a lot of beautiful, sparkly moments this summer. Moments with friends where I belly laugh and sitting in the sun and enjoying every moment.

    But, then there have been more moments than I can count that feel like depths I haven’t been to in awhile.

    And that is really damn scary to say.

    I’ve written in spaces that say I’ve moved past them but in reality the mornings I’ve been awake til 2 or 3 am and the days at work I’ve survived on 3-4 hours of sleep are more then I would care to admit.

    When I was at camp and had spent an evening on the absolute verge of a panic attack and I admitted to it Susan one of our directors-she asked if I had a mantra, something to say that grounded me in the moments where I felt like I could keep my breath or my head out of the darkness.

    I didn’t. But I came up with one.

    I am here.

    It’s a play off of the words of Hannah Brencher “be where your feet are”

    My feet are here.

    I am here.

    Then there is this:

    My word of the year this year is again.

    And I’ve had to work really damn hard to not tack the word on the sentence: it’s 2009, again.

    Because that’s honestly all that’s been in my brain. The recesses of my brain that hold dates and memories and pain just keep telling me that I must not be strong enough since I’m here, again.

    I want you to know human being reading this that I know, in my absolute knower, that it’s not true.

    I know I’m stronger, bolder, and so many things in between.

    I know.

    But, good god, I never want anyone to feel less than if they feel as if they’ve met the pages they’ve been in the book before.

    Something a Nigerian med student told me in a small village on the border of Russia in Ukraine (it’s just a fun sentence I had to say) was that he was never going back to Nigeria. He wasn’t the same so he couldn’t go back, he was going forward to Nigeria.

    I’ve been silencing myself because it feels like I’m going back.

    I’ve been silencing myself because I’m so afraid that the strength I have will be diminished if I admit I’ve met some mountains that have to be climbed that just so happen to look foothills I’ve climbed before.

    I’ve been silencing myself because I’m so afraid that people will think I’m a fraud that can’t just get over it.

    I’ve been silencing myself because it feels like 2009 and I don’t want to live through that again.

    But, when I silence myself I can’t get to the end of the sentence.

    When I silence myself, you don’t have the space to get to the end of the sentence in your book,

    The end of the sentence is this: it feels like 2009 again, but it’s not.

    And if we don’t get to the “but” we can’t negate everything that came before it.

    It feels like 2009 again, but I’m stronger.

    It feels like 2009 again, but I’ve rebuilt and I will again.

    It feels like 2009 again, but I am Meg in 2024.

    I don’t know how you are silencing yourself.

    I don’t know if you won’t let yourself get to the “but” that negates the thing that scares you that comes before it.

    To get to the overcoming we have to get to the “but” in the sentence.

    We have to change our language and our outlook.

    I don’t know if you feel up for sharing the end of your sentence and if you do please drop it in the comments or shoot me a message.

    Here’s mine (sorry for the language):

    It feels like 2009 again but, for fucks sake I’m still here.

    With love,

    Meg

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  • Buried strength

    I joked last night that I’m someone who is always going to circle back to the Labyrinth. It usually happens without me even noticing it as I write and then bam David Bowie has found his way into another one of my blogs.

    And it seems lately all the words I’ve been writing are scarier than I like to deal with.

    Today at church I desperately wanted to run. I felt myself wanting to not show up, to bow out and everything in between. I stayed knowing that normally my desire to run is actually the sign I should stay.

    But, as I sat during worship and wrote I once again found myself replaying a scene from the labyrinth. When the main character Sarah at the end of the movie is trying to get her baby brother back finally from the Goblin King. She’s done all the tasks and she’s made it through the Labyrinth and now the Goblin king is toying with her and moving about and she keeps having to move her neck and change positions and try to keep finding him.

    She can’t remember the final line of the story and I believe that he thinks he’s bested her.

    But she takes a breath and realization fills her face and she says the final words of the story “you have no power over me”.

    Normally that’s the place I get too but I realized today in church that I’m currently right before the moment of realization. I’m in a place where it feels like my mind is blank and I have no idea what the words that should come out of my mouth are.

    I know that I know them but I can’t piece them together.

    I’m a strong human. I’ve always been stronger than I give myself credit for. And today while walking to find a place to clear the cobwebs I had a little conversation with myself about strength.

    Sarah in the Labyrinth didn’t realize what strength she had. She didn’t get that her whimsiness and her ability to see beyond what was, was actually strength. That those things and walking in who she was is what got her through the maze.

    She was the only one who could have done that journey. And it wasn’t the bad things in her life that made her strong. It wasn’t the things that she went through that were her strength.

    It was the things that she chose to keep and protect in spite of what was that were always her strength.

    As I was walking here I was thinking about all the worship songs and sermons and what not I’ve heard in my life that strength can only be found in God. That in him my weakness becomes strength.

    But what if all the things we thought “made us strong” were just the things that cover up where our real strength is. Where it actually lies.

    It’s funny how there are lies and things that have been whispered in our brain for so long start to turn into our own voice.

    Sarah was always told to grow up. To stop imagining. Her parents saw it as weakness, but instead it became what saved her. Her ability to dream and imagine.

    The thing I hear in my own voice now, as much as I’ve tried to get it away from me is that I am a burden, too much and that I have to be an island.

    It’s scary how quickly those things can flood my mind.

    But, today pondering Sarah I wonder what strengths those are covering.

    I pride myself in my ability to keep fucking going even when I’ve been absolutely inundated with grief and pain and health issues. Even when I can’t smile, I’ve kept moving.

    And that’s what I’ve claimed as my strength.

    But what if is covering up true strength?

    Here’s the deal: there is a lot of evangelical statements that I’m 100% not ok with. But, I think that there are times where we forget we are all uniquely made and equipped; however you believe people came into existence- we are all unique. We all have strengths that have been in us since we were born- it’s just up to us to allow ourselves to find them.

    I won’t mince words: my mental health has never bounced back since my mom passed. It was a pummeling of burnout and grief and now for almost a year dealing with this facial paralysis and unsteadiness. I’ve had some of my more scarier lows of my life in the last 5 months.

    But, like Sarah, my strength isn’t what it seems.

    My strength isn’t my ability to show up, or keep moving forward.

    Those are all the reactions of things that have happened to me, that have been done to me, that I’ve had to deal with. I have made them strengths out of survival but they aren’t actually where my strength lies.

    The things that have happened to us don’t make us who we are.

    I don’t know right now if I’m ready to look at the goblin king and say “you have no power over me”. Right now, I don’t know if I believe it.

    I do know this though: I will no longer give the darkness that has shadowed my life the credit for how strong I am. I’m going to choose to find the things that are actually my strengths, not the reactions to the dark things.

    I was strong before them, not because of them.

    Like I said a while back: when David killed Goliath, he didn’t prove it by carrying his head around.

    He was the proof.

    But he had the strength in him before he killed him, not just after.

    The strength didn’t come from the overcoming. The overcoming came from the strength.

    The strength was already there.

    Right now, everything in my life feels like it’s covering the strength I need.

    I don’t know how to distinguish between what I need to keep or what I don’t need to keep

    I do know, it feels like I’m holding a key to a treasure box. Something that’s been covered for so long because I didn’t think it was there,

    I thought I could only make diamonds from pressure- not that I contained them from the start.

    So here is where I am this week, staring at the Goblin King as I await the words I need to find the strength that was there even before the journey.

    I don’t know if you need the reminder that you already had the strength built in you like I did today.

    But I do and you do.

    With love,

    Meg

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