Behind the scenes: thirty-one - a poem (exploration)
Behind the scenes: thirty-one - a poem (exploration)
Diving deeper into the words from my poem, 31 - the last of the poems where I played with the idea of 3 time points in my life where things changed.
This is an exploration of the poem shared here:
31, thirsty for hope it’s been a dark night but there’s a halo of light on the horizon flickering on and off sometimes it lasts long enough to light the whole day.
31, thirsty for hope
it’s been a dark night
Two years before, at twenty-nine, I put so much pressure on myself for the launch of my natural skincare business that I burned myself out with stress, and had a six-week flare up of diarrhoea. With exhaustion, feeling too painful to stand or sit, I had no other option but to slow down. However by the time my tummy calmed down and rebalanced, I had developed a peri-anal abscess, which when operated on turned into a peri-anal fistula.
Before this I had never even heard about a fistula.
It changed my life beyond recognition, and I didn’t know what to do with myself. I couldn’t sit, which meant I couldn’t drive. Everything felt painful and I didn’t know how to cope with something I had no idea how to shift. My writing from that time is dark. I felt at the mercy of fate and the world. Most of my energy went into fighting with what was, because I believed so strongly it should be different. It couldn’t be this.
but there’s a halo of light on the horizon
flickering on and off
One day, a few months after I’d turned thirty-one, I was lying on our bed (somewhere I spent far too much time) to ease the pain of standing and inability to sit. As the tears rolled down both sides of my cheeks on to the pillow, I had a realisation.
This is shared in my book on page 58 (a turning point):
Tears rolled down my temples onto the pillow. Something suddenly surfaced on the screen of my mind.
So when I heal this fistula and it's all better, I'm still going to be in this messy, fucked up feeling headspace that I'm currently living in. Life will still feel hard.
In that moment I realised it was time to change on a deeper level, because I was pinning all my struggle and darkness on this fistula. Creating the myth that when it was healed everything would be rosy.
From this moment I slowly, one baby step at a time, began taking my power back. Slowly stepping out of victim mode and into the power within. Realising I was always at choice.
I get to make the final decision on how I feel, respond, act. That was the beginning of a new chapter in my journey.
…
sometimes it lasts long enough
to light the whole day.
I’ve had many conversations with different people over the years about hope. Some believe it’s a waste of energy, some believe it’s a light that keeps you moving forward. So far it is still one of the top words I use for describing what it is that sometimes makes a hard day bearable, and my ability to keep moving forward: hope.
Below is an exploration of hope from the 2016 version of myself:
I wonder if hope and gratitude are often like dance partners on the floor of emotions, because gratitude is definitely one of the key ingredients that has also kept me moving forward when things have felt really hard.
In this ‘new chapter’, before I even knew about it, more and more I was choosing the phrase life happens for you, not to you. And from that space, the light became stronger. Not always visibly, but there nonetheless. I had no idea the journey the next ten years would be, but like a seed planted on that day of the realisation, my tears, my hope, my gratitude, my love watered it and sent the roots deep down into the fertile soil.
So, like a tree, through the wild winds of life and the crazy storms that have shaken my branches, my roots run deep, always nourished by Mother Earth and all she offers.
What does the word hope conjure for you?
What are the words and emotions that guide you through the darker times?
If this stirred something in you, please share with me, it is always such a joy to hear back from you :)
Love,
Kali