As a child, sitting on a wooden bench in a stained-glass Catholic church, perusing bible stories in miniature cardboard books while a priest spoke, feet unable to reach the floor, a good girl in a handmade dress, told to be seen but not heard
As a teenager, walking the locker-lined hallways in torn jeans and strange hair, avoiding eye contact to sidestep conversation, feeling unsure, awkward, and unknowable, safe in anonymity despite the enormous hoop earrings that suggested a bolder soul underneath
As a young adult, still sleeping in my childhood bed, writing graduate papers nightly and disappearing into a padded cubicle by day, flying just under the radar, laboring as if work provides life’s meaning, another spinning cog in capitalist machinery, lost in the system
As a new mother, negotiating a role I wasn’t equipped for, giving baths, wiping behinds, washing laundry, an introvert quietly sitting at playgroup, an imposter among women with better small-people skills, playing house, unpaid, unsure, selfless and without self
As a midlife puppet, enduring hormonal shifts and parent/teacher conferences, encouraging my little people, becoming braver as they do, beginning self-excavation through adventure, a glimmer of light suggests the unabashed me might yet exist underneath the rubble of other’s expectations
As a member of the over-the-hill gang, black balloons behind me, forward looking only, relishing every minute and rolling in each emotion, denying those who would bury me again, living fully knowing others have already gone, working at not accepting less for myself, acknowledging my inherent self-worth at last, a phoenix
Live Now and Zen 