#jayenna

Step into your power.

There is star dust

In your soul,

Dragon fire

In your heart,

Fairy wings

In your fingertips.

Remember

Who you are.

Who you have always been.

Sacred.

Wild.

Untouchable.

You are MAGIC.

Painting is by Hannah Forster

I wonder if the flower trembles

When it's time

To blossom.

If it huddles tightly

In its fragrant bud,

Savoring the safety

Of a velvet hug.

I wonder if it aches

As each petal

Unfurls.

Leaving a gentle cocoon

To stand alone.

Exposed to sun, wind, rain,

And uncertain lovers.

He loves me.

He loves me not.

I wonder if it shivers

With laughter as insects

Alight.

Does it feel

Pleasure or fear

As strange bugs

Find its secret nectar?

I wonder if there is a sense of loss

As each colorful leaf turns

Paper brown.

Without a backward glance

The plant turns to the future,

Leaving behind the flashiness of blossoms

For the practicality of seeds.

Forgotten

Each petal

Falls.

Each tightly furled bud

Knows death in its roots,

And still it

Blooms.

Dear friends,

Heed the flower's

Wisdom.

Tremble

If you must

But always

Blossom.

J

You are allowed to hope.

A world without hope is a world without DaVinci, Michealangelo, and Galileo. None of these great thinkers would have lifted a brush, chisel, pen if it weren’t for hope. Hope that the world could be bigger than it currently seemed. Hope that what seemed impossible could one day become reality.

Hope is the fuel of every ambitious endeavor. It is what caused early humans to plant seeds along the Nile. Centuries later, hope sent rockets into space.

Hope is a defining characteristic of great leaders. A key element of every uprising and global shift. Dangerously powerful. Incendiary. Contagious. Breathtaking. Give people hope and they will overthrow dictators. Give people hope and they will overcome race, gender, bigotry and misogyny.  Give people hope and you will see more charity, compassion and generosity.

The Earth does not grieve

When the Sun moves

His attention elsewhere.

She knows she is

Too big,

Too much,

Too grand

To be known

All at once

All the time.

She also knows

How to pull

Her warmth inward

And care for herself

Until he returns.

Anyone who has been broken remembers well the incident. It is a moment of complete weakness and humility. There is no pretending. There is not even hope. Just the rawness of complete and utter destruction. All the threads unravel from our grasp and the puppet show collapses. And we cry over the pieces of ourselves. Jagged, shards of a broken mirror, reflecting our fragments. An eye, an ear, the corner of a mouth. A Picasso of a life scattered beneath the feet of passerby. Because people do not stop to notice the broken. In our lowest moment, we are made lower by a world that refuses to look at pain. And there is no putting it back together. As if a little scotch tape could close a severed artery. The shards of who we are, become who we were, ground to dust beneath the traffic of life moving forward.

In this moment, there is nothing to hold on to. Only phantoms that seem foreign and strange. Memories of an alien life from ‘before.’ A world where we did not know the pain of our own limitations. Where we lived in the illusion that we were the hero and that our adventure would lead to great things. In our broken pieces, we finally see that we are all the things. Hero, villain, sage, innocent, explorer, novice, mother, child. Countless faces, more than we’d ever imagined stare up at us, each with their own story in our lives. Each with their own role in our destructions.

And as these many stories grind down beneath the forward movement of life, a beautiful thing happens. We still breathe. Our eyes are gone and yet we see the people hurry past. Our ears are powder and yet we hear the symphony of life.

Because when everything you are is destroyed that is when you can finally become. You didn’t even know you were trying all this time to become. That beneath the layers that life had piled on top of you, the layers that you’d piled on top of yourself, beneath the need to stay safe, stay familiar, stay home, that beneath all the fears, hopes, dreams and things, you were really just an egg, waiting to hatch.

I wonder what it feels like for the phoenix the first time it bursts into flame. As the pressure builds and the temperature rises, it must feel absolute terror. All of its growth, its feathers, bones, talons, eyes and beak, all of its investment in life comes to an explosive end and it must begin anew.

If you’ve broken, you know this. If you are in the process of breaking, you know this. We resist and resist and resist, grasping at the strings of our puppet show. Desperately needing the world we’ve constructed to go on turning. To stay the same. To stay safe. To stay known. Because exploding into flames is terrifying.

I am grateful for the things that broke me. In my resistance, in my terror, in my grasping, and in my naive desperation to keep life small, I broke. In spite of myself, life happened. And I am grateful. I can finally become.

-Jayenna

The world may not want your story. It’s not their battle. It’s not relevant to them. But that doesn’t mean you don’t need to tell it. Your story is who you are. It’s your wisdom. It’s your weak spots. It’s the developed pieces and the tender parts. They may not need to understand your story. But if you do not understand your story, you will go into the next battle, not knowing if you’re carrying a battle ax or a broad sword, not knowing who your allies and your enemies are, not knowing if you are the hero or the villain.

The world may not care where you came from, what you’ve seen or who has hurt you. But the world doesn’t matter. You’re the one who has to live it. Speak your story. Say it to loved ones, friends, a therapist. Scribble it in a journal. Dance it on a stage. Sing it in a song. Because once you own your story, you can write the ending.