Unadorned in the Storm

Greeting Fear in the night, plus two (new!) exclusive to Substack poems

Photo by Hans Isaacson via Unsplash

Ballad for a Blooming Lotus

When we can run beside all that has been loosed,

bare feet pounding the ground like a drum, our hair wild,

streaming like ribbons of raven hued surrender behind our heads, 

made tight and tiny by thinking,

instead of running from - 

oh, my darling.

Now we become the animal we are

released from the cage of logic

that we’ve held on high

for ever so long,

free from the thoughts

we say keep us safe

but only ensnare and censor our senses.

Then - and only then -

will we taste the kind of sweetness that comes with quitting control,

and giving ourselves over to the ecstasy

that blooms like a lotus

from the mud

of the mirage

of magical thinking.

If any other soft, breathing thing in this world refused to feel

deeming thoughts

and plans

and the armor of preparedness

wiser than the waves that ripple ‘neath our wings,

such a magnificent creature would never feel the joy 

of being pulled by the pack

melted by the tides

gathered in like the first of the June strawberries, 

gloriously warm and red and ripe

perfectly on time

and longing to stain my palms pink

with the mark of Wildness.

So. What will it be, my dear?

Can you surrender your white knuckled certainty that joy is a lost cause?

Do you dare?

---

I woke at 4 am this morning and never did manage to get back to sleep, and while in the past I would have stressed and fretted and wrung my hands (and heart) about this unexpected turn of the wee hours, this morning felt a little different.

I’m no stranger to seasons of waking in the night, and turning over infinite stones of worry in my brain, the inky black darkness convincing me that:

my flaws

and imperfections

and half-hatched plans

are BIGGER and BADDER than they are in the daylight and will most certainly catch up with me, and when they do, they will certainly devour me whole.

(No wonder it’s tough to get back to sleep with these threats thumping around in my heart. You, too?)

This time of year, when we are walking our way through the last official days of a washed out winter, and dipping our toes into the burgeoning greens peeking up through the awakening ground (the crisp colors of crocuses popping up here and there), it feels fitting to be visited by all sorts of Big Feelings mid-slumber. The ghosts of winter won’t be left behind that easily. Recently, at the encouragement of a health practitioner, I made the decision to experiment with greeting this particular brand of nighttime bounty hunters in a different way, one that I hoped would feel a little more sturdy (and less scary).

The experiment goes like this: if or when I awoke in the night, my mind crammed with all sorts of worst case scenarios, what would happen if I held Fear like a child, perhaps the younger version of me? Blonde and soft and slight and scared, and oh-so-deserving of being held, not hardened against.

The poet, blonde and soft and slight and scared, approximately age 8.

Fear creeps in - she’s sneaky that way. In the quiet curves of late hours, there is a crossroads. There are questions. Despite how tight it feels in these corners, there are choices to be made.

Will I run from her? How can I stay? Is it possible to turn away from her seeking green eyes, begging me to be seen and heard? Instead of pushing, could I pull her towards me instead?

No matter what I choose to do with Fear in these moments, she’s watching me. Like a little kid who falls down and immediately glances at their parent before deciding whether to burst into tears or to jump up and keep playing, Fear is waiting for me react before she decides whether she can simply flow through or if she needs to be fearful of herself.

You see, the presence of Fear alone isn’t what evokes pain. No, the wise ones tell us that suffering starts in earnest when we start believing every story she spins, otherwise known as the Second Arrow philosophy.

For many reasons, it seems that a fair amount of people I talk to these days (including myself at times) feel terrified of feeling their feelings. We fear our Fear, we get anxious about our Anxiety, and even Peace can feel unnerving, its stillness suspicious, prone as many of us are to have our sense of safety broken by a Big Bad Wolf sooner or later. What do all these feeling mean - about us, about the next moment, about what is to come?

Yet, I’m more and more convinced that Big Feelings are not the problem. I believe the reason we suffer so deeply is because of the thoughts that follow the feelings:

What does it all mean - about us, about the next moment, about what is to come?

What stories do we attach to our feelings?

What weight do we impose on them?

What identities do we forge from these stories, and how do they harden our ability to flex and change and see ourselves anew?

Where exactly do we think we are headed when we bolt, running away from these soft, sentient experiences, the very ones that make us human?

Feelings show up in our bodies, whether we believe it or not. So, by being afraid of Fear, we become afraid of our own physical self. We push our bodies away, try in vain to separate our skin from our souls, and in the process we may binge television, food, social media, anything in an attempt to disconnect, to distract. The cycle goes round and round, and the result is a more harrowing kind of Fear, one that we cannot escape from. Of course not - what good is it to try to flee from your own lungs and legs and lymph? One will never win.

When we refuse to feel Fear, we don’t get to feel Joy. Zest. Wonder. Ecstasy. And though we may tell ourselves that we value an “even keel” kind of existence, one where we don’t feel the wobble at all, I believe that this kind of fixation with never needing to host the feelings we deem “too much”, we miss out on feeling altogether. We construct a beige, stainless steel, soulless kind of McMansion emotional life, where nothing stands out too much and we don’t hang too much on the walls. We bear down and do our best to believe that our habit of refusing to feel our feelings means that we are balanced and safe and smart (spoiler: it doesn’t).

When we won’t consent to soar to the heights of all the different emotional experiences we are capable of having, our days fall flat. I used to aspire to this, as there have always been people in my life who have longed subscribed to this brand of “safety”, but lately, I find my body won’t let me chase this anymore. I can’t be put back in the box. I need physical safety, absolutely, and it’s a privilege that I am experiencing that in this very moment. My luck is not lost on me. Once I know I am physically safe, I know I am surviving. But surviving isn’t thriving. I want to paint with a far more expansive palette than that. The canvas I’m creating requires all the colors.

More and more, I have no interest in this kind of sanitized sensory existence.

One of the ways I’ve gained my younger self’s trust and one of the reasons that Fear will breathe with me more often than not these days (and nights) is that I am taking steps to stop conforming to expectations around how and what I am willing to feel. What if Fear wasn’t off-limits?

I won’t contain myself based on others’ emotional limitations any longer.

I won’t believe that my joy and hope and belief in the beauty and goodness that is the bass note of the universe makes me unintelligent, naive, or irresponsible. If we don’t hold those things close, fill ourselves to the brim with joy, what is the ground on which we stand? What are we fighting for?

I am beginning to free myself from these restraints. It’s terrifying and tantalizing at once.

In Wicked, Elphaba declares, “…and if I’m flying solo, at least I’m flying free…” Gratefully, more people that I know than not are out here with me, hoisting the topsails of their own ships, dinged up as they are, and throwing their faces to the sky, unadorned in the storm, relishing the way the spray drenches their skin as they look the life they are sculpting full in the face as they ride the oceans of their emotions. I’m in good company, and so are you.

I’ve felt Fear inhabit my blood and infect my dreams. I will again, to be sure. But in the wee hours of this particular morning, I felt clarity in my very bones like blue untroubled water. I was at a crossroads, and I was determined to make a different choice.

This morning, when I woke at 4 am, I literally held my own hand, imagining it to be the hand of a scared child, a younger me. I wanted to show her that we don’t need to be afraid to feel Fear. It’s safe to let it visit. In that moment, laying beneath the dark of the city and the warmth of our hand-me-down quilt, she was safe to feel whatever was feeling. So was I.

Rather than demand that the discomforting sensations retreat, I let them fill me, fill us, lapping at our feet like the sea in July. I held her. I showed her that true safety isn’t the absence of the waves, it’s the self-trust that lets us wade into water knowing that we can get wet and still be ok. I opened my arms to the waves of Fear. And in letting them come, they felt freer to leave.

When I do this - instead of feeding the Fear, fighting with her, fretting about when she might leave, I inhale and exhale, again and again, rocking Fear with my breath. More nights than not, we eventually fall asleep together, and when I wake in the daylight, she’s nestled back into my Self. I’m grateful she’s there; if there’s truly an emergency, I can rely on her to let me know what I need to do to survive. She’s not so good at art projects though, and so as I cover this canvas of my life in colors that speak my soul, I know I don’t need her to speak up as much here. The more she breathes with me, the more she understands.

Feelings - including Fear - are waves breaking on a shore. We are mostly water, after all. What use is it to try and stop them coming? The sooner they arrive, the sooner they go. Of course, they arrive again, but once you see the pattern, you begin to trust that what comes must also go, whether we like it (worry, fear) or not (weather, friends).

---

I’m happy to have two poems for you today, Friends. The first (at the top of this post) is a love letter to letting go of the control that you were fooled into thinking made you safe. The second poem (just beyond the paywall below), is a different take on letting go, woven into what we know we truly are - star-stuff.

Take good care of your sweet selves, and please, alongside the continued work for justice, for ease, and for equity, choose a song to dance or sing to. Pick up something soft (be it a pet or a plant or a poem) and hold it like a lover. Make a nest for your joy and make sure that you nourish it as you would the smallest of birds learning how to be in the sky. We do not endure by worry alone. We aren’t made better for refusing our feelings when they knock.

One of the biggest joys for me is continuing to have you join me in this space each week. I am so, so grateful for every single one of you. Until next week!