healing – Page 3

March 26, 2018 By HallieZ 2 Comments

Happy Birthday to My Son

This day. A sacred day.

The day my son came from his mother’s womb.

I know well the opening, the blood, the sweat, and the tears that brought him into the world. His sisters came with the same rush. The same yells and the same power.

I like to imagine him, the wrinkles, the snot. I wonder if my silent boy cried, or if he just stared, unblinking, into his mother’s eyes.

Words fail me.

This day, my son began a slow march of loss and grief that no child should ever be forced to travel.

When I look back at the things I do know, the day he was found in the street next to an orphanage, the day my friends saw him for the first time, and thought of me. When I think about the phone call, and my return call saying YES…

I can’t tell you it was all worth it. Because that seems to shallow of a thing to say in the face of his loss.

However. He is mine and I am his. He is beloved and belongs.

On this day of his birth, we celebrate with legos and streamers. We plan nerf gun wars and we are about to go pick out the birthday donuts.

On this day of his birth, we honor his family of origin. We honor their lineage, their courage. We honor their tears. We honor the travail in which his mother brought him forth.

I have a million things I want to say about this boy.

He is 6 years old today!!

A million things I want to tell you, I want the whole world to know.

And yet, I feel a shift has come.

6 years old, and I feel his story becoming his own in a way that is different from before. I feel the sharing of his story now, today, is more private. His coming into our family was a loud bang, an event, a great to-do.

Part of this year, is him stepping into the quiet. The unknown. The world of his own choosing.

My son.

My only son.

You did not smell of me. You didn’t want me. I was afraid of you, and wanted you more than life itself. Very few things in the world have forced me to confront the darkest and lightest places in my soul the way your life has.

My son.

A miracle. A treasure. I love you forever.

Mama

March 25, 2018 By HallieZ 2 Comments

TOO MUCH

Be quieter

Hold your tongue

Just listen

You. Are.

TOO LOUD

You don’t need to cry

You are just being emotional

Enough already.

You. Feel.

TOO MUCH

You asked for it.

You knew this would happen.

It’s RIGHT.

Your Grief.

TOO MUCH

Too Free.

Tone it down.

Flirting. Misleading.

Your smile.

TOO MUCH

You.

Who you are.

Your desire.

Your dreams.

The passion.

Your energy.

Your truth.

Your love.

Always. ALL WAYS.

You are.

TOO MUCH

We. Are. All. Done. With. You.

March 17, 2018 By HallieZ 2 Comments

Yes, I Changed

I look out the window at my desk.

It is a view to die for.

I listen to this song.

The words beat in my heart, I dive into the wonder of Creation outside my window.

So many times, he said to me:

You’re the one who changed. I am the same. You weren’t supposed to change.

That wasn’t the deal.

Out my window, the trees look like they are clapping their hands. The winds are high.

I see the sheen of the buds, just under the skin of the trees.

They are about to break out. It’s going to happen overnight. I can tell.

Everything is rising.

Everything is being called up.

What can the buds do, but answer, and bloom?

I feel the weight and power of the river.

It cannot be stopped.

The current is strong and it remains.

Where would it go, but to the ocean?

Sometimes faster.

Sometimes slower.

Everything rising.

The Canada geese alight.

They fight.

Water splashing, the geese are rising.

They are being called upward and outward.

Where would they go, if not north?

Yes.

I changed.

I mean, I didn’t, and I did.

I had taken it for granted.

Daughter of the land, child of the seasons.

I thought that was what we all did.

I thought that was what we would do together.

The call to my soul was everything rising.

It was buds that could do nothing but bloom.

A current that could only go faster.

It was a bird in flight, who could not be caged.

I changed.

A girl became a woman.

A woman grew children.

A body stretched and rebuilt.

A heart wept and was healed.

Things were seen that could never be unseen.

And yes, I changed.

I changed.

Watching the trees clap their hands wasn’t enough anymore.

I had to clap with them.

Feeling the ocean dance around my bound body made my heart scream.

I had to break the ropes and dance in the ocean.

Where could the seed go, but toward the sun?

Where could the heart bend, but toward love?

I struggle to let go of what was, and what wasn’t.

There was only one way for me to grow.

That was toward LOVE.

Upward.

Outward.

Blooming.

Alive.

Moving.

Changing.

YES,

I Changed

February 26, 2018 By HallieZ Leave a Comment

Diamonds

I am walking out of the grocery store.

Yesterday, my friend told me to ask the Divine One to heal, to bring hope and freedom to the sexually traumatized parts of my mind and body. She told me to ask for specific moments of healing, and that she KNEW they would come to me if I asked.

After more than a year without flashbacks, an event had come out of nowhere this week, and started the vivid images and memories playing like a tape on repeat.

“what do I do?”

I ask, and it is a sigh, a sob, and a prayer.

The tapes play on silent, but the subtitles read:

Replaceable

PROPERTY

Old news

NO CHOICE

Saggy

WORTHLESS

THEN

I hear it like a soft whisper.

“loosen your waist”

“open your hips, let them swing the way they were meant to”

I imagine my skeleton, the way my bones move and glide together, the gait of a human being, in slow motion.

I breath deeply.

I drop my waist. I open my hips. They sway and swing.

I lift my eyes, instinctually, and a smile spreads across my face.

The girl scout cookie mama catches my eye, and we grin at each other, I suspect we are in on the wonder of it together.

These words pulse in my heart and up into my throat.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

And just like that, another wave of healing has broken over this weary soul.

Still I Rise by Maya Angelou

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may tread me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

January 28, 2018 By HallieZ Leave a Comment

Philomela

We are going to get a little crazy with some names here, for a minute, but stick with me, it will be worth it, I swear.

Philomela was a princess of Athens. Her sister Procne was married to the king of Thrace, who was a son of Ares.

Philomela traveled to Thrace to visit her sister. Somewhere along the way, her brother in law, the king of Thrace, raped her. She threatened to tell what he had done to her, and his answer was to cut out her tongue, and lock her up in a cabin in the forest.

Silenced, Philomela wiled away her days in sorrow and misery until she died.

JUST KIDDING!!

This warrior of a woman began to weave a tapestry, that told her story. Once she had finished it, she found a boy to carry it to her sister Procne. Her sister understood immediately, and rushed to Philomela’s rescue.

Procne got revenge on her wicked husband by killing their son and cooking him in a pie, so that he didn’t know he had eaten his own son until it was too late.

I know. SHE COOKED HER SON IN A PIE!!!!

So then this huge fight broke out and eventually Zeus got involved and turned all three of them into birds.

Philomela was turned into a Nightengale. You may find it interesting to note that the female nightingale does not sing.

Why have I bored you with this story?

Because it is F*$%ing AWESOME.

Take advantage of me and use me. Sure.

You can cut out my tongue. Go ahead.

Lock me in cabin. Do it.

Shut me up and sit me down.

Fine.

But I’ll just weave the most bad-ass story telling tapestry the world has ever seen, and my story will have a voice larger than any tongue could have made it.

What I’m Writing