The Humble Journey To Healing Breakthroughs and the Necessary Steps In Between
a poetry collection in response to this week’s KTHT prompts
Monday: Write about what it means to be a humble wayshower for humanity’s awakening
Humility is important to me for delineating exactly how much we know, but also acknowledging how much we’ve yet to know.
It’s not a term to shrink or make smaller, but to adequately describe so as not to aggrandize the influence of one thing over another.
And perhaps that’s what we need for humanity’s awakening.
In the wake of algorithms promoting the most extreme, loud, angry of speech, perhaps what we need is a mandatory cool-down period, where we re-evaluate whether we truly have the full story before these notions get pushed forth.
Author’s note: It’s funny because I read wayshower as way-shower as in 🚿 shower, not as in “showing” someone something. After righting this course with a quick Google definition though, I caught on to the word humble and the concept of humility. Perhaps we, including me, have been too loud in our beliefs without acknowledging exactly how one narrative may not fit the next, imposing harm when our stories or lessons extracted from these stories are over-extended to where they do not belong. Maybe in clear delineating those boundaries of how much our experiences truly apply elsewhere we stop the promotion of extreme views as the norm.
Tuesday: Write about what sinking into a life of slow rejuvenation feels like
Sinking into the life of slow rejuvenation, you may picture someone sinking into the warm bubble bath soothing aroma permeating every breath, slowing down the heartbeat into a gentle, steady rhythm.
Or it could be finally sinking into movement in a way you feel truly present and taking in all that is around you without reminding yourself of what you need to do next week or what you forgot to do last week.
I admit, I haven’t been able to get off the hamster wheel during the weekdays, but on weekends, I do not rush.
There are no alarms.
I just simply be, weaving in from one task to another.
Author’s note: I try to spend at least half a day without electronics each day of the weekend. I find that for better or for worse, accessing the internet gives me an overwhelming plethora of things I could be doing. This could be unwitting reminds of work or school, but this could also just be the curious world of hobbies, which includes 18273612837 things I could possibly crochet right now. Sometimes I just need to sink into the boring mundane but beautiful quiet of my home and just walk to the beat of my own drum (my heart??? I guess?) without being urged on by the fascinating world of the internet.
My strength is that I get really excited about new things all the time, and it is also my weakness.
Wednesday: Write about the ways in which a recent overwhelming breakdown proved to be an undeniable breakthrough
I re-iterate the danger of pushing recent traumas into stories of resilience before addressing the source of the trauma, before changing the systems that generate this trauma, before adding new coping strategies beyond relying on resilience.
In breakdowns I’ve learned to label them as such without needing to succumb to another’s need for a triumph to be drawn from your terrible experience.
There is a pace to my healing, and the journey I’ve taken have taught me the range of time it may take — and I will follow that journey.
Perhaps somewhere faraway, there might be an undeniable breakthrough, but for now, I know to listen, to rest, to heal.
Author’s note: It’s kind of meta, this breakthrough! My breakthrough is to stop trying to make breakdowns about the breakthroughs. I’m always trying to be 9 steps ahead of healing by doing, trying and trying harder, and it’s honestly actually done more harm than good.
For me, being resilient had been an excuse to place me in more harm or to take away any existing support resources. While I think there’s incredible empowerment when breakthroughs come through, to force it before its time, or even worse, to rest all healing on this breakthrough without changing the system that’s perpetuating the breakdown can be incredibly harmful.
Thursday: Write a story about a character (could be you or someone else) who follows the nudges towards a most spectacular life.
It’s incredible how nudges can only be seen in hindsight.
It’s incredible how the brain forms narrative and pattern, given a constellation of random dots, sewing these elements into the beautiful fabric of your story.
So if it feels that right now each nudge is simply a rude jerk to the left off a stage, a door slammed into your face, a trip up the Golden Globes stairs,
maybe it’s because that’s exactly what you’re experience, and you don’t need to rush towards knowing exactly why.
Because only in the context of “having done”, can you ever create this story.
Author’s note: I’m writing these words for me today. I’m stuck. I feel like any and all millennials who aren’t seeped in incredible privilege probably feel stuck. We’re in a pandemic, there’s political unrest. But there’s also all of the systemic issues that this pandemic and political unrest has shone a light on that are finally coming into fruition. It’s just a whole lot to be handling for any given human, but it’s finally come into impact for a lot of our generation.
I don’t want to be bleak, but I also don’t want to promote toxic positivity. We’re a generation where maybe we’ll survive it all and in hindsight, look fondly at how we imperfectly made it through. I hold this hope. But I don’t blindly hold this hope while ignoring the other realistic possibility, the very possibility that we’ve hit a tipping point. That there won’t be a looking back because there won’t be a future to safely sit in, in order to look back.
Imagine holding those two pieces in your heart.
Friday: Write about the ways in which you generously share your gifts, talents and resources with the world
If I could share one single gift with the world, it would be the gift of asking a million questions.
Sure, it comes from a place of anxiety, but I’ve learned to shift it towards a place of curiousity.
I’ve learned to make it productive, I’ve learned to use it to shine light where darkness sits, to challenge rigid rules that no longer apply, to shift forward in a productive way that actually benefits all who come together.
I don’t know if it is a gift yet.
I simply know that this is what I know how to do, and I try to show up and use it in a way that is beneficial more than harmful, open to feedback on exactly how that might look.
Author’s note: I feel like the humility that I talked about in an earlier poem here links directly to this. I don’t want to downplay my strengths, but I don’t want to witness myself becoming one of those people who believe so strongly about their strengths that they downplay the damage they do on others. You know, the people who believe their life hacks work so strongly that they shame those who can’t seem to apply the advice to their own very different lives as “lazy”. I hate that.
I want to show up the best I can but if the feedback is truly, “we don’t need this”. that I also know to step back. Yknow?
Saturday: Write a piece using the words “the porcelain fragments of my hopes”
The porcelain fragments of my hopes glued back together, sealed with gold.
That is the traditional narrative of mending broken things.
But perhaps, some hopes are meant to lay to rest, smashed further into smithereens as you outgrow old vases.
Perhaps you don’t even need artificially nurtured indoor cut flowers, when you can extend the roots of a living, breathing plant to connect directly with mother nature.
I’m making space for the fact that porcelain fragments of my hopes may sound sad, as if something had been broken;
but perhaps I am simply being prepared for something better.
Author’s note: This is so interesting because of everything I said about Wednesday’s prompts about not rushing breakthroughs. But there is a space and time for breakthroughs, I’m not advocating for staying stagnant. When the right resources are in place and you’re healing at a pace comfortable to you, breakthroughs happen, and they’re empowering. Just like this piece.
Hi I’m Lucy Dan 蛋小姐 (she/her/她)and I want to thank Diana C. for this week’s amazing prompts, once again! You can find the prompts here:
^ by Nerissa Talique
