I feel like I haven’t blogged for a while and don’t have much in my head for blogging because I’ve been writing. But then I got a little nudge to suggest that maybe I share on here what I’m writing around and about.
My main project – which definitely has become a project thanks to my lovely ladies at the writing group I run – is fictionalising my teenage-hood. It was quite dysfunctional and traumatic and has had some long lasting influences, but recently I did some QEC intergenerational healing and that seems to have given a firm foundation to be safe writing from.
Then in Write Club – an online group I meet with at 8am on a Wednesday morning – we were commissioned to write something around lineage and our lives. So this is what I’m going to share because I feel in sharing it I am putting a stake in the ground to say “this is who I really am and I’m going to stop chasing something I’m not”.
So here goes
It is inspired by Memet Murat Idan’s phrase ‘not every lake dreams to be an ocean’, but also of discovering that my Hireath is not just a physical place but a heart place. It is as much about belong with the authentic person God created me to be as it is being in the physical place I belong. And it is from this places of belonging with the authentic me that I feel i can write about the things where I was trying to be something non-authentic – like many of us go through in childhood.
The poem is called “I am a lake not an ocean“
I am a lake not an ocean
Though for years I railed against this.
I wanted to be an ocean with a capital O
Roll with the big ships, change courses of people’s lives
Kick arse with the big boys.
Be part of the noticeable team.
I despised the majestic mountains that hemmed me in
Rolled and pushed at the wild flower strewn banks that encased me.
Did not appreciate who I was and what I was called to be.
Now? Now I can look clearly.
I see where I end and where land begins
Appreciate the flora and the fauna of experience that surround me
Relish in the mountains that contain me.
Remain in place though storms blow and buffet my surface.
Let the pebbles chatter and churn on my shores without trying to hold them,
can trust the process of the flowing in and through.
As a lake I am always here, but now I know where here is.
The waterfalls flow in and the bubbling stream empties onward to the sea.
I glory in it as I watch the sky change above me.
I can contain the storms and sadnesses,
know when to release the glories and the joys.
A boat is tied to the wooden jetty that reaches into my waters
My children, family and friends are free to use it when they wish.
They can rest or row or glide or sail across my waters
Even if the waves rise high from unexpected breezes
I am always willing to keep them safe.
I maybe a lake but what happens within me eventually changes the oceans of the world
if I am willing to release the flow.
When I read this to The Write Club group I felt something shift in the atmosphere as if now I had spoken it into the world something had shifted. I am now the most contented little lake ever with no desire be anything else
Some references –
Hiraeth is a longing for one’s homeland, but it’s not mere homesickness. It’s an expression of the bond one feels with one’s home country when one is away from it. The only English word that comes close to translation would be longing/longingess https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-English-equivalent-to-the-Welsh-word-Hiraeth-I-come-from-a-Welsh-speaking-family-so-I-know-what-the-word-means-in-Welsh-but-I-am-stuck-for-an-appropriate-English-translation
Find out more about Memet Murat Idan on https://mehmetmuratildanresmiwebsitesi.wordpress.com/
Aspirational Adventures 