"Whoever you are, no matter how lonely..."

It's taken years to get here, to a place where I know I am someone, valued, worthy, the journey has been long and arduous and I have to admit that I was sometimes helped by people whom I hope I never have to see again. Response to situations out of survival, response to being bullied, ignored, disrespected... realizing that it was time to rise above all that, to recognize my own given-at-birth self worth and go from there. Of course there has also been the loving help of friends and family, reminding me of what they love about me and the help of poets who have never met me, yet who write as if they have seen straight through to the lonely heartspaces I have nurtured all this time. Read Mary Oliver's "Wild Geese"... 

You do not have to be good. 

You do not have to walk on your knees 

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. 

You only have to let the soft animal of your body 

love what it loves. 

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. 

Meanwhile the world goes on. 

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain 

are moving across the landscapes, 

over the prairies and the deep trees, 

the mountains and the rivers. 

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, 

are heading home again. 

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, 

the world offers itself to your imagination, 

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-- 

over and over announcing your place 

in the family of things. 

...and weep with relief and gratitude because you know she's right. I printed this poem out on a tiny piece of paper, put it in a silver pill box I found of my grandmother's and strung it with beads on a necklace. I wear it on days when I need to. We're here on this planet to take care of each other. In order to do that, we know we need to be aware of our self worth, of our "place in the family of things". How could it be otherwise? No one gets to tell us that we are not worthy to breathe this crisp autumn air, to wet our feet at the salty seaside, to take the hand of the one we love, to marvel at the beauty and mystery of the glowing moon. I wish I could give you the gift of love right here and now, it's here for the taking, the love of self, the opening it creates to allow others in, the ever expanding ripple effect of remembering and keeping your place in the family of things. 

E.E.Cummings (1894-1962) says "here's to opening and upward, to leaf and to sap"