before the sun sets
sitting here in the final moments of the setting sun of july 3rd and wanting to take a moment to remind you and i just how loved we are, just how powerful we are, just how precious we are…
this life thing, it is insane. it is brutal and beautiful and unpredictable and fragile. it is all so temporary. this thing of time. the thing of life. and i hope with all my heart you and i and we get to know what it means to live. to love ourselves. and to do it all so free.
we are all so worthy of living a life that is well, balanced, and drenched in care that feeds your needs as well as your soul. yet, i know for so many, here and now and long long after, may never even know what that means.
and for me, that just does not settle well, i can not accept the absurdity of the facts and nonfiction horror we can know, participate in, and even can be.
before the sun sets I want to pause here in creation and captivity with you and let you know I care, let you know I hope for a life and livelihood that is smooth and soft and strong and sustains you and all your dreams. i need to say to you the very things I sometimes wonder why I didn’t say to them (them as in my folks, my friends, my foes, foreign and and forefront to my heart) before the crater in my chest catalyzed into the compassion that allows me now to more clearly see. the worthiness of you. and the worthiness of we.
as I sit here held by the setting sun and trusting that the dark will bring us day, i am also sitting with how much of a statistic i am. the fun facts of my reality. my life. and with no judgement to me and all the depth and degrees of disconnection and disease that I am among - in my own story, ancestry, and genetic code as well as the very fibers and friction that weaves us as one. be it gun violence, be it domestic violence, addiction, mental health, racism, sexism, poverty, abuse, institutionalized harm, indoctrinated harm, it has lived in my cellular structure for far too long and where I used to be so ashamed by those realities, I am now awakened and angry and agile and allowing it all to guide me towards the work I am here to do and the life im meant to live and none of it singular to me.
for i now know I am not alone. be it statistics or be it stories. the narrative of struggle and inequity is not singular to me and that tells me we have great work to do. for we are all so worthy of so much better, beautiful, and just. and aren’t we just the ones to make it? create it? and care for it and each other like no other?
it all feels like love to me.
it feels like liberation.
and isn’t that what we’re celebrating?
I am sitting here as the light fades and the sky begins to sound with cicadas and fireworks and a cough that is coming from the depths of my chest and lungs. I find it oddly ironic and absolutely symbolic that these last few days a soar throat has transpired into the driest and depthiest (is that a word? it is now) coughs i’ve experience in a very, very long time… maybe even ever…
I haven’t been forcing this cough and yet it feels almost like it is forcing me. to get it all out. the old. the buried. the deep. gasps of air and grief. and maybe even the things never said and still need to be.
I am trying not to suppress it. I am trying to trust it and listen to my body as it makes these coughs and exasperations of release.
I hope wherever you land tonight in lungs, in life, and in this time of shining light on liberation that you can breathe steadily and deep. I hope you are able to slow down and allow your heart to take up space and your ask your throat what it needs to speak.
I hope you soften. and forgive yourself. and offer that freely to all. for this human thing is so hard and there is so much right now that is wanting us to resist our own awakenings and deny the duty and diligence of knowing our peace, ease, and joy.
as this sun sets and I continue sitting with the stats, the story, and the struggles that make me me, I am thankful, so very thankful, for the ways it has all opened me up to just how much bigger it all is than me and that I can have influence, impact, and live into that integrity. True gold.
all impacts everything.
and we are all worthy of contribution.
we are all worthy of a life and legacy of love and a lightness that knows no burden.
please, help create that world with me.
so very independent.
so very connected.
so very loved.
so very free.
