Hello, friends!
Whew. What a week it has been.
Tuesday. I hadn’t been online all day. Instead, I was immersed in the world of a two-year-old. Eating, playing, swimming and exploring this beautiful world and all that it has to offer a toddler.
I got into bed and opened my phone only to read about the shooting in Texas at the elementary school. I closed my phone. I decided not to read more. I have trouble sleeping on a good day. Because of that, I am very mindful of what I take in before bed. I put my phone down and picked up Dune. Off to Arrakis for the evening.
Wednesday. We’re up early. After storybooks and coffee, I open my phone back up. I’m ready to read more about, what feels like yet, another tragedy in my homeland of the US of A. After a few articles and scrolling through my community’s take on the event. I turn my phone back off and hug my daughter. I sit in gratitude that I’m not raising my child in America. I open my heart to experience the pain that the parents and community who lost 14 of their children might be feeling. I think about all the people who have lost loved ones to gun violence, and what they might be feeling after learning about this event. I sit in the pain and continue hugging my little one.
The night before a friend shared a podcast they thought I might enjoy – The Ezra Klein Show, A Conversation With Ada Limón, in Six Poems.
I remember it as I’m lacing my shoes for my afternoon walk. I look it up and read the description. It hits me hard – in all the right ways.
“‘One of the biggest things about poetry is that it holds all of humanity,’ the poet Ada Limón tells me. ‘It holds the huge and enormous and tumbling sphere of human emotions.’
When the news feels sodden with violence and division, it can be hard to know where to put the difficult emotions it provokes. Poetry may seem an unlikely destination for those emotions, especially to those who don’t read it regularly. But Limón’s poems are unique for the deep attention they pay to both the world’s wounds and its redemptive beauty. In otherwise dark times, they have the power to open us up to the wonder and awe that the world still inspires.”
I listen to it as I walk through the park – feeling the heaviness in my chest lift, just a little.
It’s important to feel all the feels. I don’t shy away from heavy, hard, sticky, uncomfortable feelings. I lean into them as best I can in the moment. And once I feel like I’ve given them space to breathe, I move. In this instance, I walked it out.
I leave you with these questions –
What did this week’s news bring up for you?
How are you processing it?
How are you physically moving it through you?
Sending you a warm and gentle hug,
Clara
