I feel embarrassed that I missed your connection to writing through a bereaved mothers thread. This might be completely off the topic of what you were hoping, but I am wondering when/how you processed anger in this area of life. And if that’s writing you’ve ever shared in a public space.
One of my good friends and readers shared Ada’s poem with me after reading my post and she posted it in the comments. It felt like such a gift to receive her poem from my friend.
And ... I’m participating in a poetry workshop this Friday with Ava, and I’m pretty giddy over it, so you sharing this poem couldn’t be more timely.
I feel embarrassed that I missed your connection to writing through a bereaved mothers thread. This might be completely off the topic of what you were hoping, but I am wondering when/how you processed anger in this area of life. And if that’s writing you’ve ever shared in a public space.
I love the thought of some days requiring extra poetry. What a lovely prescription (as an alternative to the harsher medicine so often offered!)
Your words remind me of Rilke’s instructions for not giving up in his poem “Go to the Limits of your Longing”-
God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words we dimly hear:
You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.
Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.
Give me your hand.
I love this poem so much Julie. I wrote about grieving and loss and how sometimes sacred spaces become ache spaces as I ponder a Spring of gardening without my little helper, our former foster son https://pocketfulofprose.substack.com/p/am-i-procrastinating-or-grieving
One of my good friends and readers shared Ada’s poem with me after reading my post and she posted it in the comments. It felt like such a gift to receive her poem from my friend.
And ... I’m participating in a poetry workshop this Friday with Ava, and I’m pretty giddy over it, so you sharing this poem couldn’t be more timely.