Okay. So it might one day happen that you’re rushing through the grocery store on a school night, somewhere on your hastily scratched list between fire-roasted tomatoes and PB&J fixins’, just rolling the cart and contemplating life and what kind of cereal to buy.

And by you, of course, I mean me. And by me, I really mean all of us. Because that’s how these things work. That’s why we tell stories, ‘cause we’re all more the same than we are not, and it helps to find a home in the words of another.

But on this particular day in this particular aisle in this particular store, a song starts playing that has only told one story for longer than you can remember. You stop, can of organic tomatoes midway between shelf and cart, heart on the floor under the wheels of the cart of that exhausted looking mom and her sticky faced toddler rolling down the aisle toward the granola bars and fruit snacks.

It happens, it does, in the achy times. The holders of memory, — the songs and spaces and snippets of moments — they seem to be chasing us, reminding us of what was and what is and the big gaping hole in between the two. They come and find us, and we end up standing where we are, grocery store or concert hall or school or office or auto mechanic, rushing to cram our hearts back into our chests before anyone notices.

Right then, it’s possible that you could crumble into a pile of blame and self-recrimination. It’s possible that the sadness could take you over, because the loss, it is real and (on a good day) you’re way past the place of blaming yourself for having really big feels.

And listen, if it comes to that there’s probably a corner over by the organic lettuce that you could go hide in to shed some tears, but there are kids to feed and work to do, and reasons enough to soldier on. And besides, you’re trying to stretch this time.

Not trying, love. You ARE stretching. Because there is nothing else to be done.

So now you get to practice. Stretch past the way it’s always been, past the myths and repetition and separation. Stretch past the lies that love looks or feels a certain way or follows a timeline or shows up when and how we want it to. Past the self-protection that wants to shut it all down. Stretch past the really small idea that you ever know what is possible or what will happen or what the universe has in store.

While you’re at it, stretch WAY past the voices that have told you that the damage is too great for you to love and be loved and have love and know love.

Because that lie is the most wicked one of all.

And you, dear, you’re not just looking for a new way, you’re working for one. Walking on purpose toward something that looks like real healing. Something inside of you that dares to show up and stay steady and sustain. Something with courage and a lionheart. So instead of letting that song take you over, you take a breath right now, and you do what you’ve gotta do.

Focus in on the wisdom instead. Ask yourself your own best question.

What do I know to be true, right now?

And then answer (yes, right there in that grocery store aisle). No time like the present and the song is still playing, after all.

You can’t hold on to what isn’t, of course, that’s true. But you can dig deep into your gut and determine what it is you believe. Not the beliefs that landed you here (those were based on some seriously self-sabotaging bullshit), but the ones that live deeper than that.

You can ask yourself what the highest manifestation of love feels like when you’re wide open and ready, and you can channel that with all you have. You can slip-slide all sneaky like past the hurt that likes to close things down and expand into the open space on the other side. You can remember that a wise man once told you that you’d be happier when you quit trying to make meaning out of everything. And that a wise woman reminded you that the hardest thing of all was to stop being at war with yourself.

So stop being at war with yourself. Just for this moment.

You can remember that you’re here to love, and the only way you ever want to fight for anything is with unclenched fists and a wide-open heart. And yeah, open hands are good at letting go. But sometimes letting go is the only thing (fuckery of a cliche that it may be) that allows for the fullness of truth and the only way to allow space for a thing to return.

And you know what else open hands are good for? Grabbing possibility and holding on tight when the time comes.

You can remind yourself that you’ve written your own instruction manual many a time before, finding almost decade-old words in the deepest recesses of your brain, floating toward you as if delivered. Back then you thought you were writing to another, rather than freezing in time for yourself to breadcrumb your way back to one day in the canned goods aisle, but no matter. They are here now for a reason.

“Find your way to living in that sweet spot – between grief and acceptance – welcoming the ache but not nurturing it, holding the angst but not feeding it – and you’ll come to a different place.“

So when this happens, because in high likelihood it will, you’re going to have to put down that can of fire roasted tomatoes and you’re gonna have to reach deeper and deeper into the place where the love lives. The place that is the foundation and bedrock of you. The one that trusts and believes and hopes and knows. Sink down into that, because I promise it is here.

What do you believe? What do you know to be true? What does your heart tell you is still possible? Just how big can you love?

Whatever the answer to the last question, I guarantee is exponentially bigger than you can imagine. It always is.

You are here to love, and to heal (you’ve written all those words to yourself under the guise of writing for others too). The world knows it and mirrors it back to you every damn day. Give yourself grace for not always remembering, but deep down, I know you know it too.

The outcome of love (this or any other)? Not yours to know, nor control, nor wrangle into submission. Love is a slippery thing, and also when it’s time to stop sliding, all you can do is root down and hold your ground.

So find your roots. You’re gonna need ‘em.

So, what is yours? That can of organic fire roasted tomatoes and the cart full of nourishment. The eyes able to see the truth, the wisdom that knows it is time to seek healing.

And yes, the heart. YOUR heart. Fumbling and messy and wise. The heart that finally knows fully what it wants. And if you get steady enough with that, there’s not a sad song in the world that can shake you.

So pay for your groceries. Load up the car. Return to your home and sit down to type. Because moments of wisdom, they come and they go.

But a story written lasts forever.

The post A Story Written Lasts Forever (a self-talk story for the heartachy times) appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

“Not so much, but it’s really something I should not discuss because it should never have been in the first place. I’m sure karma and her friends are raining down upon my head. I deserve to battle alone…”

No.

That is a lie. A lie that your heart tells you because you are punishing yourself for the crime of being human.

You and me? We are so very human.

I don’t know the specifics of your story. I don’t know the exact reason you feel that karma has decreed that you suffer in solitude. But since I am human, just like you, I can fill in the blanks, and I can imagine.

So from that space, I will tell you now. It is not true. You don’t ever deserve to battle alone. None of us do.  So, do me a favor, dearest, and shut that down right now. Even just for the time you read this letter.

Now, it’s true that I don’t know a damn thing for sure about your story. But shared experience holds a pretty clear mirror, and I see beyond your words. I feel your heart, and I know.

I know, love. I know.

You have loved, haven’t you?  You have loved someone you believe you shouldn’t, and it is over, and you hurt, and maybe someone else has gotten hurt as well, someone you never wanted to hurt along the way.

You are punishing yourself for that. Holding yourself responsible, neon-lit scarlet letter upon your chest. Your heart is broken, but you don’t think you have the right to feel that grief, so even the sadness becomes another marker of all the ways you have done wrong.

But here’s the thing, I don’t know too many people who have gotten through very much life without at some point and in some way, loving someone we’re told we shouldn’t. If karma decreed that we be alone for the human act of loving when the world says we should not, then most of us would be destined to exist in perpetual solitary confinement. Some sort of horrible self-constructed purgatory, forever and ever.

Our hearts are beautiful and mysterious and sometimes selfish and not often very forward thinking.

And they do what they are here to do.

Love.

To seek love and find love and open to love, again and again, and again.

To fill in what is empty in us.

To allow ourselves even momentary kindness, or touch or desire.

To be seen and known, even for a brief time or a time outside of time, no matter what lies on the other side.

Bravely and recklessly. In kindness and fullness and in greed and desperation.

So, without knowing anything about what is happening for you right now, know this:

If the act of loving, even outside of contract or social acceptance or what the world decrees is ‘right’ makes you deserving of anything, it is entering the room with all of us who have stood where you are now standing.

All of who have loved and lost and broken, who have brought hurt to others. All of us who have confused and tangled our own hearts, or made questionable choices to quench our own desires, or stepped outside of our own integrity to taste what called to our souls or our bodies or our longings for things we cannot even name.

This is a part the humanness that connects us.

Threads woven between broken and stumbling souls.

Fumbling and scared.

Wanting and open.

Holy and whole.

We don’t get here clean. We can’t. It’s not how we were made, us miraculous, stumbling, terribly messy, deeply wanting humans.

And my god, if I don’t believe we all deserve infinite tenderness inside of this truth.

I didn’t always know this. I didn’t know it when I made the choices that cost me my own grasp on integrity and all the stories I had told myself about who I was and the things I would and would not do.

Not when my choices left me dazed, months later, when it felt as if the entirety of the life I had known had burned down in the wake of my own decisions, collateral damage beyond my comprehension.

I didn’t know it when a few short years after that someone dear to me broke my trust to have a hidden relationship with someone I will love until the day that I die. I didn’t know it when I yelled and wailed and walked through the night with tears streaming down my face, sowing the seeds of anger and resentment and letting them take hold and root down deep.

I didn’t learn this lesson until I fell into a love that was a remembering.

A love where past and present and future and countless parallel lives tangled and exploded into life, as real and anything I could touch or taste in front of me. A love that was my first experience of what it was to be seen and loved for who and what I am, never once asked to be anything or anyone else. A love so holy it could never have felt wrong. This love, the groundwater and memory and inevitability of it, it pulled me forward in spite of everything I thought I knew about what was good or right.

In the process of this loving, I chose a path that was not the one the world would have had me make. One that brought great hurt to another and once again risked the foundation of the life I had rebuilt from the ashes. And in the process of this loving, I made a choice not between goodness and wholeness, as I first thought, but instead a choice that was an integration, finally, of the two.

In the aftermath of this love, there was a difference inside of me. A self that refused apology, that recognized that a such a love, it demands that we listen. It asks if we are willing to taste, to allow, to open. In the aftermath of this love, I found redemption and forgiveness was finally made possible.

When there is a chance for a love like that, I learned. We take it. And we don’t always take it the way we believe we should. And we don’t always take it without betraying others, or ourselves. Sometimes, integrity, the real and rooted kind, is something we only find through the path of that betrayal.

And if that was true for me, then it was also true for the others who had broken my trust and brought hurt to my doorstep. There was no forgiveness of self without the forgiveness of others.

It is true, when we stumble off the path that marks our relationship with our own integrity, that profoundly personal and incomparable relationship, there is work to be done. Hard, painful, deeply humbling work.  None of my words are here are to offer excuse or absolution. That is between you and whatever and whoever you answer to in the deepest part of your soul. It may require penance or the hard work of rebuilding or the letting go of what refuses to repair.

And every last one of those will hurt and come with costs I cannot know or name.

So no, I’m not handing out free passes or making light of what has been done. God knows I am still carrying the marks of my own choices. And god knows, it may be something you live with now and forever, as it has been for me. This knowing of what it is for your actions to impact another, maybe even someone you dearly and deeply love, is not a thing that can be undone. I’m not going to sugar coat or gloss over that reality. But I’m not going to let you sink into the pit of self-loathing either.

And I am going to tell you that there is redemption, even now, right there waiting for you.

It’s true, redemption and forgiveness are sticky things, almost always. But never more so than when we are asked to shine that light on our own hopelessly human hearts.

And maybe its presumptuous of me to type this, when I don’t really know a damn thing of what your heart is living right now, and there are days when I know my own work of self-forgiveness is a patched up, beaten around work in perpetual progress.

And possibly this is simply my own attempt to remind or even convince myself that I am worthy, in spite of the times in my life when I’ve left the path of my own integrity, and brought havoc by the act of my own loving.

Or maybe it is only this, that we need to meet each other here. That we must.

We must remind one another of the fact that we are here, and alive and human, so terribly and beautifully and sometimes painfully alive. And that very thing is what makes it so blindly brilliant, so achingly true.

We are not defined only by our actions in the moments we step off the path. I cannot believe that because that would damn me and you and all of us. I believe that ultimately, what defines us is the way we keep stepping back on. The way we trip and struggle through the wilderness of our selves, the way we wander through the dark desert night believing ourselves worthy of being cast out. And still, somehow, when the light rises in the sky, our path appears again, and we step back on, put one foot in front of the other, and onward we go.

And you, my dear friend, are finding your way back to the path. Even if you can’t feel it or see it right now, you are.

And you deserve to be there. And so do I. And so do all the rest of us.

We are here, you and I and everyone we loved in the light and all of those we have loved in the shadowy spaces.

Our hearts doing the thing they are made to do, pulsing and yearning and casting aside all doubt in the hope that we will be met and seen and known in holiness and in wholeness, with our guilt and our scars and every last ounce of hope remaining in our bones.

Here we are, you and I. Hearts beating. Still loving. No matter what.

______

Photo from header image by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

The post Terribly and beautifully and painfully alive. appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

The time of grasping tight and trying hard and still, in the end, being forced to let go. Of fingers locked tight and pried stiff from that which you’d hoped to hold for so very long.

It’s been the falling down time. The confused and lost and broken time. The ill-fitting skin that begs to be shed time. The kneecaps bruised from prayer time. The time of keening howl that rises from the center of the earth and pleads, no more. Not now. Please.

The endings, they came to you slowly. Pulling away inch by imperceptible inch. Till suddenly you realized the hand you’d held for years had slipped from yours and you were now reaching across a chasm of relentless empty.

And they came sudden. Hard and fast, so that there you were, without warning, curled in a fetal position on the rough carpet of an unfamiliar hotel room floor, black eyeliner smeared across your face and a lifetime ocean of tears being pulled like the tides from your obliterated heart.

You knew it was coming. You collected the red flags and tucked them back in the corner  – hidden behind stacks of books scrawled with all the stories you told yourself so that you could continue to believe what you desperately needed to believe. Every now and then you took out those flags and counted them, didn’t you? As if by will you could force their numbers to decrease.  You couldn’t.  We never can.

And you. You had no idea. Blinders and rose-colored glasses have been your specialty for years. You’ve got a closet full. They kept you so safe. But on that last day there were no storm clouds, no early warning system to get you to shelter. Just a tornado that swept in from the east and flattened every last thing it touched. Until in the aftermath there was just you, standing in the midst of the rubble of a entire life.

You’ve been left. You walked into strong open arms and found a home that you imagined would be shelter and protection into a beautiful future. You had so much hope and faith, cloaked in all that tender cynicism. And such a hard layer of hurt hiding just beneath your fearlessly optimistic heart. And still, you gave yourself over to the sheer bliss of believing. You didn’t know you still had it in you to be that happy.

And you’ve done the leaving. You’ve walked away from the deepest of loves because you had to break before you were broken again. Because your wrecked runs so deep that there wasn’t enough love in all this world to hold your ache. Because in the end, you had to save yourself. Because, in the end, that’s all any of us can ever do. And nobody knows as well as you, just how much it costs to leave.

But here you are, love. Here WE are.

Still standing. Fierce with the reality of love and loss. Wearing the truth of our hearts on our tattered sleeves. And yes, this one very nearly took us out. And yes, there were days when the darkness was heavy and the climb out of that rabbit hole required us to mine our depths for strength we didn’t even know we had.

And here we are.

Broken open by hope. Cracked wide by loss. Full of longing and grief and the burn of that phoenix fire.   Warrior painted with ashes. Embers from the blaze still clinging to our newborn skin, leaving us forever marked with scars of rebirth.

And just look at you. Heart broken but still beating. Arms empty but still open. Face raised to the sky and giving thanks for the light, even when it hurts your eyes.

My god, you are beautiful.

And this love. This loss. The one you have pulled around you like a blanket that still keeps you warm at night. Even though it is tattered and worn and full of holes and has no shelter to offer. It is a conduit. A bridge that you have unwillingly crossed. On one side who you were, and on the other who you will be. It was a long, lonely walk.

The ache is a ferocious kind of alchemy, the catalyst for transformation. The unanswered call? It creates the space and the silence you needed to learn to once again hear your own voice. The unmet hope gifts a crystalized understanding of your holy need. The longing that still curls in stubbornly hopeful tendrils from your open wounds? These will be your roots, seeking through hard earth to find you exactly what you need to thrive. The grief that took you the ground? It will help form the bedrock of your eventual rise.

So here we are, you and I. Grief is both relentless isolation and a common language that all hearts speak. Look into my sea glass eyes. Let me see your angel face. We come together in our sorrow because loss knows loss and needs no translation. And we come together in our joy, and our hope and our begin again – because always, it is together that we rise.

So yes love, I know this has been a losing time. And I know there were moments you imagined you might not survive. But here you still are, just like me. Here we still stand. Here our hearts still beat. Here we still love.

And in the end, you are here, broken and whole and still alive. Made even more tenderly beautiful in the depths of the shatter. Finding your way back to the truth of your soul and listening to the song of your stubbornly beating heart. And in the end, there is no greater testament to the power of love than this.

 I tell stories with music as well as words.  Listen with me on spotify.
A playlist for the ache || A playlist for the dream ||  A playlist for a hopeful heart

The post broken || open {a love letter for the broken-hearted} appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

It’s true.  Not everything will be okay. This is not okay. It’s the deepest ache. It’s a solid core of loss layered on top of loss. I know it is.

But there you are in that small, quiet room, and although it – all of it – may not be okay – you will.

You will.

I feel this deep and true and right in the marrow of my bones. You will be okay and more than okay and so much more than you could possibly know.

There will be love. The kind of love that changes everything. And maybe more heartache. And so much laughter and breathless kisses and the hard fall of tears.

There is so much more ahead.  And it is so very good.  I promise.  I know this.

I hope that I get to see you love what you are. To know yourself as gift and worth and truth.

That you see what a huge thing it is to have the courage to break your own heart.  That you have chosen wholeness – even when it has shattered you. And that you will one day see that you can be whole and broken in the exact same spaces, that they nestle side by side – and that this is the way of things.  Not your punishment for wrongdoing, or for not trying hard enough – but just the way of things.

That you can stand and look at yourself in a mirror and see your goodness right there, see the worth of what you bring on the surface of your skin, just like I do.  That you trust there is brilliance to come.

That you own what is yours to own, both the bad AND the good.  That you do not insist on owning it all.  It was never all yours to hold.  Release to the wind, love.  Let it be carried away on the breeze.

It does not serve you now.

I know you, and your darkness and your shadow and all the things for which you practice self-flagellation.  And I still see you as good, and true and strong and powerful and exquisitely present in this world.

You have not chosen the easy way. Life has not granted you a gentle path. Not even close. But you have followed your own trail, again and again and again. You have done what you needed to move forward. You have placed one foot in front of the other and kept on going – even when that was the most difficult thing to do.

You have defined your space and your territory.  You have said  ‘This is mine.  You may not enter now’.  And you meant it. And you stood by it, even when it was impossibly hard.

And all of this, my friend, is no small thing. 

In fact, these are all very large things.  Infinite and powerful and true.

The voices in your head that say otherwise? These are born not from truth but from the stories others have created for you. These stories do not have to be yours. Even if they once were, you need not accept them any longer.

Give them back. Every last one.

You’ll write a new story now, on a blank page, with a new pen and in your own incomparable voice.

I wish for you so very much. Seaside wishes and spin the bottle daydreams. Lucky pennies and shooting stars. A safe place to fall and a high place to leap from into the deepest pool of the clearest water.

I hope that you shed the shackles of past and grief and loss and betrayal.  That you are possessiveness of your own wilderness.  That you stake your claim and encircle your space with charm and enchantment and only grant entrance to those who bring you fully alive.

I wish for you space to cultivate a relationship with your own divinity. No external god, but the divine that lives within your own stubbornly pulsing heart. I wish you the energy and emotion of the greatest love affair, given as a gift to yourself.

That you come home to the woman you are and the woman you are becoming. And then I hope you find what it is to love another in your mother tongue, a love that requires no translation and only delivers the ease of being fully known and fully seen.

A love that brings you alive and that carries you home.

No mistake, this is the phoenix fire part.

The burning down to ashes part.

The preparing to rise again.

This is a space without anchor, without moorings. Even the north star may be obscured by clouds.

But your compass lies within.

Your soul knows your truth north.

Can find it without map or directions.

You need only trust yourself enough to listen to the whispers of your valiant soul.

Lay your head in my lap, love. Tell me your stories.  The ones that have formed you into the gift that you are.

Now take a breath and let it go. Let it all go. Let the sea breeze carry it away. Let your tears fall.

You will be held now.  You will be carried. You can stop running. You can cease the endless motion and constant struggle.

You are home. You can rest now. You are safe.

And maybe, just maybe, now you can be still.

The post the solid core of loss upon loss. appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

back to the mat, no exceptions. fall asleep in savasana. cry in pigeon. laugh out loud in happy baby.

mascara and groomed brows, always.  red lipstick when you need it most. save your highest heels for the days you feel the lowest. wear clothing as costume. match it to your mood. always wear perfume, it helps you remember yourself. 

chin up. best foot forward.

find comfort in words and wine and the women who love you. cuddle sleeping children. leave your comfort zone, at least once a week. dance alone in the living room, at least once a day.

guyatri by candlelight. inhale. exhale. inhale again. do the work. do the work. do the work.

spin your hoop, your hips, your dreams. mountain top church every wednesday – never you mind the unmet dreams, you still can kiss the sky.

feet to pavement, music blasting in ears. forget everything but the run.

remember why you are here. remember yourself. remember yourself. remember yourself.

cultivate presence. become fierce about your autonomy. take long drives with the windows down.

bless everything, even your regrets. accept your regrets and allow them to teach you. welcome admiration but decline the pedestal. make friends with your unmet hope and allow it to guide you. kiss your solitude and allow it to work through you.

be infinitely tender. show up for others. live out loud. live as the personification of wide-open-vulnerable-crazy-free. stick your landings.

live in kindness. keep a prayer candle burning for someone at all times. give thanks, every day. practice intentional, loving touch. om namo guru dev namo.

tidy your space before bed. know it as an act of love. make your bed tightly with the brand new sheets. when your naked skin slides inside them for the first time, know it as a gift to yourself.

let the sadness flatten you. stay in bed until it lifts. do not rush your grief. do not rush your grief. do not rush your grief.

honor the divinity that is everywhere. get down with your inner badass. turn off your phone, and your computer and your mind.  find your heart center and send it compassion. see the holiness in everyone you meet. honor it.

know your worth. know your worth. know your worth. accept no less. become familiar with the space where compromise is unkind. nuture your exquisite loneliness. let it teach you.

light candles at every opportunity. touch your inked ribs lightly when you forget who you are.

let yourself be moved. seek out art. surround yourself with artists, creative, deep thinkers, high divers and earth shakers of all kinds. accept gifts offered with whole heart. even when such acceptance is difficult.  

stop behaving.

eat food that nourishes body and soul. cook with those you love. seek perspective. do not chastise yourself for believing and dreaming and trying. open yourself always to love.

know your body as holy, your want as holy and your shattered heart as whole.

continue to believe in lucky pennies, shooting stars and signs from the universe.

get rid of what does not serve. let go of what no longer feels like you – clothing, decorations, people. holding on just fills up space that could be put to much better use. hold tight to that which brings you to your highest realization of self.

ground your feet to the earth, at least once a day. reach for the sky every night. sit in the quiet darkness and let your mind go wild. find quiet peace in the midst of chaos. drink as many lattes as you want.

own your losses, wear them clean. write the letter. speak the truth. unleash your voice.

let the music be your mourning and your memory. let the music be your celebration and your reclamation. let the music be. let it wind it’s way through you. let it all wind it’s way through you. it will anyway, so don’t try to fight.

it’s okay if you fight.

remember your inherently flawed humanity exists nestled side by side with your inborn divinity.

forgive yourself everything.

and make sure you don’t forget buy a lavender plant. fall asleep with sprigs of it on your chest.  breathe it deeply, all the way inside.

it makes all the difference in the world.

The post 115 ways to heal your own broken heart. appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

there is no way to save this.

there
is
no
way
to
save
this.

the ending
was written
long before
you ever heard
the tentative starting notes
no last ditch efforts
no swan song redemption
there is no rescuing
to be done
here

so, let it fall
let it all come down
crumble like earth quake
like forest blaze
like armageddon times
stand amidst the rubble
with trembling legs
and stardust skin

survey the damage
hold your grief close
usher it inside
name it truth
and go ahead
let it twist you
it has to
there is no other way

there
is
no
other
way

fall to the ground
let it take you down
on your knees now
so that the debris presses deep
into tender bone
marks your skin
with the harsh truth of
never again

because this?
this was fated
like the falling was fated
like the bliss was fated
like that night where
infinity touched your soul
was going to happen
no matter what
you could not have changed things

you
could
not
have
changed
things.

it’s not just good things
and beginnings that are meant to be
sometimes
endings
are written first
and we live
just to catch up
to the inevitable
finish

you know this
you know it lover
you held on
you repaired
you patched
and you kept it all together
as long as you could

but
now it is time
to let it fall
to release fists clenched
tight around emptiness
to open
to let go
to admit
that it is done

now
it
is
finally
done

forgive yourself
this ending
this aching unmet dream
do not name it
failure
or
catastrophe
it is not
another mistake
for you to own

it simply
is what
it is.
it is what must be
what was always
going to be.

lift your eyes
let it all out
all the full moon howl
and the primal wail and
the grief
you’ve kept locked
in bones.
let it all come
down now

let
it
all
come
down

release your walls
now
invite the potential
of wide
open spaces
all the way in
and know that
after endings
come the beginnings of things.

begin again, lover

always
always

begin again.

The post always, always, begin again appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

This is a love letter.A love letter to women in transition.

This, then, is also a love letter for all women. For at one time or another we will all find ourselves moving between spaces and lives and iterations of ourselves.  Indeed, perhaps we always are.

~~~

Dearest,

This is not easy. I know that. When I look down the length of my own body I can still see the indentations of gravel on kneecaps from the time I spent on the hard ground, howling at the moon.

We all go to the earth sometimes, down to the depths of ourselves and sit with the center of our pain. It aches to be, to dance, to live and breathe and eat and sleep in this space that is neither here nor there. Somewhere in the namelessness. Somewhere in the wild nothingness of the ether. Somewhere in between.

There will come a time – there will come many times – when we must stagger the liminal spaces between this life and that. When the night sky has deepened to the color of an unhealed bruise and only the haunted remain awake. When that ceaseless moan ramps up its siren song in the melancholy hush of 3am. When the cacophony of voices deafens and hands grasp from all sides pulling, grabbing, pleading us to stay. Or to go.

staystaystaygostaygogogogo.

The liminal space is best friends with desperate bargains. With grasping and pleading. With prayers from those usually far too busy to kneel. With the disordered embrace of childhood religion. With the distancing from faith that sustains. With the desperate push-pull. With the exquisite intermingling of loss and longing.

It is a space of disequilibrium. Of quaking knees and unsteady breath. Of a yearning for balance that is nowhere to be found.

Balance, she is a tricky bitch. The tightrope is stretched taut, high above an anxious audience. The space fills with an expectant hush so loud it transforms your being into an echo. Half of the souls below are hoping you’ll make it, the other half wait for you to fall. You will freeze in the middle, guaranteed. You’ll be convinced you have to stay, await a clear answer that delivers you the certainty of the exact right choice. The one that will make everyone happy.  The one that delivers truth without regret. The one that will take you to the other side without collateral damage.

And I wish I could say that that answer will come. That you will do what you need to do and cross to the other side and everything will be the same.  And maybe it will. But darling, transition is no time for the hopeless task of satisfying everyone. You’ll drive yourself mad trying.  We all do.  But now it is time for doing exactly what scares you the most.

JUMP.

You think you need a tightrope act, but you really need trapeze release. You have to let go before you’re holding on to anything solid. Have to feel that brief, terrifying moment of freefall and trust that you will be caught if you need be caught. Fall if you need to fall. Land where you need to land.

Feel the air rushing past your body. Trust. And trust. And trust. Speak your bone truth. Discover the root of your endless compassion. Un-learn lessons that have kept your heart on lockdown. Embrace what you need. Discard what does not serve. Bless your tender kneecaps. Bless your holy longing. Bless your wild soul.

And know you won’t be alone at the end. We will all be with you. Everyone who has leaped. Everyone who has landed. Everyone who has found their way through the liminal spaces, and everyone who still lives there. You’ll be full with your own fierce reality. Unapologetically, divinely you. And the ceaseless moan and the echoing gasp and the desperate prayers will fade. And you will be filled with the song of yourself.

It’s time to turn up the volume and dance, love. Damn, you make beautiful music. 

The post Staggering the liminal spaces {a love letter to women in transition} appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

~~~~~~~

You wake up.  The sky is blue. The children laugh.  You forget to clear the breakfast dishes and the honey dries into sticky lacquer on the cover of the library book.  There are only hours separating you from the implosion.  You do not yet know this.  You may sense the approaching tempest, the remnant of some primitive instinct whispering losslossloss in the spaces just below the wind.  But you do not predict that this is the day.  You do not know to savor the aching sweetness of the final moments.  We never do.  Ignorance is not protection; this is the way of things.

But with a sharp crystal shatter it is done.  It’s a harsh slice, a vacuum of undoing.  Reality settles cold in the vastness of newly empty spaces. There you stand, dead center, eye of storm.  Face lifts to the heavens. Tender kneecaps find solid earth.  The body bends in a supplication that is the exact opposite of prayer.  Shrapnel of unwritten love letters spins the room round.  Scattered shards catch light and glitter with the fierce tenacity of things that will never be. It’s all slow motion now. There is a reckless beauty in the breakdown; this is the way of things.

You have stood here before.   You will stand here again.  In goodbye there is no first time or last time.  There is only this time, and the wrenching ache of it.   We are born with the knowing that this will come and come and come again.  The muscle memory of heartache holds no comfort.  Preparation is futile. Practice does not make perfect.  It is still – it will always be – gasping breath and primal howl and bleeding out from the places we hold most sacred.  The force of it will flatten, guaranteed.  Heartbreak has its own agenda; this is the way of things.

You pick up the pen, a desperate purge of words. You bleed letters now.  You always do when it comes to this. It’s a bitter end scrawl on neat lined paper.  You look down. Thick black ink seeps from pen, covering the soft pad of fingers, the raised veins, the curve of bone.  Darkness spreads across the page.  Your hand and just-written words are obliterated by stain.  It is fitting that truth flow has left body marked and words concealed.  It will eventually wash away.  The visible stain and the slow fade to forgetting; this is the way of things.

You stand later that night, on a street wet from rain.  Arms wrap around frail body, a desperate attempt to hold yourself whole.  Hazy streetlights glow, bone truth echoes in the damp night air. You look up into windows containing lives that could have been yours. But things fall apart.  Lives continue their trajectories without you. The heart gains new fault lines with each loss.  They slip against each other, and things fall down.   When the ground stops moving we patch things together as best we can. We are all earthquakes waiting to happen.  Parallel lives and the aftermath of disaster; this is the way of things.

And it finally comes, as it must.  That cry from your deep, ancient center.  The gash of loss. The frantic exile from skin and want and home. The full moon calls forth your grief song now.  Tear off your clothes, light fire to dreams.  It’s just you and the wolves and the unseen wild things.  The world spins on, – it always has and always will. But you belong right now to the exquisite otherness of loss. Give yourself over to it.  It is the only choice.   There is no place for you amongst the tame, pretty things. You must follow the spiral down.  The inevitable descent into the underworld; this is the way of things.

But dawn comes. Shadows lift.  You are shivering.  Naked.  Alone.  As alone as you have ever been.  The sun rises.   The earth’s waking rhythms are a call to rebirth.  From the ashes you emerge.  There is a tender ferocity about you now.  A solid core of strength at the center of grief’s deep well.  It is true, you think, that freedom is the only language our hearts know how to speak.

It is true that there are things in life that can never be explained to those who have not lived them.  It is true that loss is sometimes the only way to become more of yourself.    It is true that survival sometimes only comes from inviting a million different deaths. It is true that the first notes of that song will always transport you to a state of breathless worship.  It is true that you can be loved in a way that changes everything, and find that everything has remained exactly the same.   Layers of truth are always hidden in the folds of great loss; this is the way of things.

Your skin is a glorious road map of scars gifted by love and by devastation.   Your heart is inked with the essence of unspoken words and stories yet to find life.   Your breath will always remember what it was to love without translation. Your bones are the only things that know the whole truth.

The horizon calls to you now, speaks your true name. The name you were given by the universe the day you were born and the name that is whispered by the wind with every rebirth.   The name your spirit recognizes as belonging only to you. You walk forward as if compelled.

You walk eternally, hopefully forward.   This, always, is the way of things.

The post This is the way of things appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

“Is the fear of losing something worth the good that having it brings? I think I just live in such a state of fear of being broken by love that I don’t even trust in it anymore.”

Oh love, there are so many things I do not know. So many I will never know. A handful that require giant blinders, protecting me from what I’m not yet willing to know. The list of things of which I am dead certain is far shorter. But of the few tender truths on which I would stake my existence, this is one that I know to be solid and real.

We are here to love, and love hard, every chance that we get. 

A wise woman once gifted me with those words, at a time when I was asking this exact question. She was right, of course. Wise women usually are. Yes, we are here to love. And yes, even with the fear of loss looming around every uncertain corner, it is worth it.

Always.

Love lifts us, giddy and hopeful, to the wildest heights. Sometimes we free fall into a gentle landing. Sometimes we get unceremoniously dumped from 30,000 feet. Sometimes love just up and leaves, and we are obliterated in its wake. Instead of happily ever after, our sunset ride is followed by a massive love hangover. And so we grow wary. Lose faith. Stop trusting. We embrace our cynicism, build walls around our fragile hearts and wail ‘I’ll-be-alone-forever-and-nobody-in-the-whole-wide-world-will-ever-see-me-want-me-love-me-ever’. 

And at our most bruised and tattered these boundaries are protective and wise and true. We need solitude during that shaky period when, in the eerie empty of 3 am darkness, the floor repeatedly falls out from under us. We need seclusion and distance and dark chocolate and dramatically scrawling journal entries and good girlfriends and movies that make us cry. But time and space eventually grant a reprieve, and we are brought back to our hearts. Back to our truth.

And the truth is that we don’t need to trust in love. Or in forever. Or even ourselves or our partners or the universe. We just need to trust in our hearts. Our wise and foolish, brave and battered hearts. Idealistic and cynical, cracked and patched and still – in spite of it all – stubbornly pumping love through our electric souls. Our hearts lead us into love. They lead us out. And then – crazy and hopeful and free– they knock down walls and move mountains to try again.

Our desire for love is a desire to be seen. To be known. To be witnessed as our truest, most naked selves. And not to be loved because of or in spite of or only if. But just to be loved. To be able to say ‘take it or leave it’ and to have our lovers say, “YES. We’ll take it.” All of it. Gladly and willingly and eagerly. Show yourself and you will be safe. Worshiped for the divine being you’ve always been. And you will be loved. And loved and loved and loved. Today and tomorrow and always. Forever.

But this world cannot promise to deliver us the sugar-spun forever we’ve been taught is our destiny. Nor can our lovers. We can’t even promise it to ourselves. And instead of grasping at false guarantees or guarding ourselves by rejecting love and forever entirely – perhaps what we really need is a new paradigm.

How about embracing a different definition of always or forever? One that is just as long as this moment. This breath. This heartbeat. So that your only task is to live this moment fully. Breathe this breath deep into your soul. Feel this heartbeat pump life through your body and into the world. And then live and breathe and feel the next one and the next one and the next.

Fear only comes from the projection of what has not happened yet. What may happen tomorrow or next week or next year or in our next lifetime. What may never happen. Fear is an imaginary dragon hell-bent on keeping you small. But your heart has done battle and survived. Your love is a fierce warrior priestess who refuses to be contained. You are what is real, here and now.

The present. Today . This moment. This is all we can know. All we hold. All we can ever promise. Anything before or after is a beautiful, wild, unknowable mystery. All of future is uncertain. All of love is uncertain. All of life is uncertain. What is ever guaranteed but change? And this need not feel unreliable or cause anxiety or be labeled cynicism or distrust or inability to commit.

Instead, let it feel like freedom and presence and truth.

Here’s the truth. We love wide open. We love people who deserve it and people who don’t. We love people who have held us through our darkest nights and people who have left us for dead by the side of the road. We love people who have earned our trust and people who should never have had it in the first place. And it cracks us, wide open, over and over again. Sometimes that love is too much. Our wounds cannot close when love keeps wrenching them open again and again. And we want it to stop. Beg it to stop. Please. Please. Please. No more. In our own moments of 3 am reckoning – whenever they arrive – we plead for something different. Something more contained. Something safer and easier and far, far more gentle.

But love is a risk, sweet girl. It always has been. It always will be.   And it is the most necessary, the most brutal, the most honest risk we ever take. Do what we will; our hearts will not be closed. They are meant to open. They are made for this. So are you love, it’s what you’re here for. It’s what we’re all here for.

Of that brief list of things that I know to be solid and true, here is another:

We are all broken by love. Broken and built. Built and broken. We are architects of unselfish desire. We are a lifesaving demolition team. We lay the foundation, we bring it crashing down around us, we kneel in the wreckage and scream the primal scream of the damned. And still, still, we love. And we become the most breathtaking mosaic of all of our fragments, all of our love, all of the pieces of our kaleidoscope hearts.

And this is so damn beautiful that it demands to be held to the light.

Hold it to the light, love.

You. Your precious heart. All of the loves that you hold. This is what is real. This is what is true. This is enough. So go ahead, give yourself over to love.

Eyes Lifted. Heart Open. Spirit Wild and Free. Forever.

The post Uncommon Sense: Go ahead, give yourself over to love appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.