The cage no longer fits

Showing up, Slowing down, Spilling out

Dec 11, 2023

What made your heart beat faster, cheeks flush, pools forming in your eyes?

Why did you hold back the tears, the fear, the rage?

What did you think would happen if you let yourself spill out the way children run free through their emotions, unafraid to be seen, having not yet learned they should hide?

I built a cage around myself when I was just a little bird.

I learned not to make a sound and if I did, I sang only what they wanted to hear, not too loud, not too soft, just right.

And when I accidentally let out something else I wove a story to justify the unwanted song and always took full responsibility for the mistake.

But I no longer fit the cage.

I don’t know their favorite songs anymore. I’ve replaced them with my own.

My wings long to stretch. They push against what I thought kept me safe.

Staying here is no longer an option. I am no longer small and quiet and alone.

I want to touch the freedom that is self-trust.

But what happens when I set myself free?

What happens when I let the tears, the fear, the rage spill out?

—

An unfinished piece I wrote in a recent Blue Sky writing group.

Dear sweet friend,

I write to you on a gray Sunday afternoon curled up in our dimly lit bedroom next to my sick baby (who is most definitely not a baby any longer but will remain as such in my mama heart forever I’m sure).

His unnaturally hot little hand curls around my finger squeezing at random as if trying to share his dreams with me through mores code.

I am tired and tender and unsure about many things and could easily have decided not to write today. But as I lay pinned to the bed under Omi’s warm body I picked up the only book within reach, turned to the dogeared page that I’d left off on, and read this:

“Of this there can be no question—creative work requires a loyalty as complete as the loyalty of water to the force of gravity.“ — A quote by Mary Oliver, via Susan Griffin’s book Out of Silence, Sound. Out of Nothing, Something.

So, here we are in an act of loyalty to the creative practice of showing up.

May we continue to meet ourselves and one another in the moment, however that may look and feel.

Where the ocean meets the earth. A lighthouse seen through a rocky cave on the Oregon Coast.

I’m experimenting with adding “integration” time to my calendar with as much importance as any other appointment. I tend to forget that I am a living breathing plant-like species that requires time to alchemize all that swirls around me, work projects that push me out of my comfort zone, impending holidays, my sick children, a world of grief, the fact that children are being murdered. Sometimes the only way to keep moving forward is to create space for no expectation to move at all. To pause for integration, locate stillness, allow what hurts to slowly heal, digest information gathered, locate inner wisdom, and cultivate the tethering of connection. We are not alone. When your heart breaks mine does too. It takes time to piece it back together.
The past two weekends I’ve had the privilege of participating in the expansive container of
Marlee Grace
’s class Writing the Personal. It’s been just what my heart/writing practice needed and I’ve gathered many nuggets of wisdom and inspiration, which are already seeping into and stirring up my writing process in much-needed ways.
Two quotes that Mar shared in class that have opened particularly potent portals (say that five times fast, I dare ya) for me:
1. “I don’t mean to argue that writing personally is for everyone. What I’m saying is: don’t avoid yourself. The story that comes calling might be your own and it might not go away if you don’t open the door. I don’t believe in writer’s block. I only believe in fear. And you can be afraid and still write something.
  — Melissa Febos
2. It took me some years to discover what I was. Which was a writer. By which I mean not a “good” writer or a “bad” writer but simply a writer, a person whose most absorbed and passionate hours are spent arranging words on paper. Had my credentials been in order I would never have become a writer. Had I been blessed with even limited access to my own mind there would have been no reason to write. I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see, and what it means. What I want and what I fear.
  — Joan Didion

With love and gratitude,
Raina

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P.S. Close your eyes for a moment. What longs to spill out of you? What are you protecting yourself from by holding it in? What might happen if you set yourself free? 💌