Babies and puppies will always cause some kind of visceral, deep rooted reaction.
You need a night sky, devoid of city lights and full of stars to feel your appropriate size.
Fewer sounds are more calming than a river flowing, rain hitting your rooftop, or a dog snoring nearby.
Nothing tastes as good as when your grandmother made it.
Nothing comforts like the right pair of pajama pants, and
procrastinating cleaning the bathroom always takes longer than actually cleaning it.
Time is finite and infinite. It’s a construct without construction and we know so little in our tiny human brains about what happens, how the universes expand, and where our consciousness ends up in the grand scheme of things that we are little more than specs of stardust in a grand swirling ocean of time and space.
You always discover these things too late: that you’ve loved, that you’ve lost, and that you wished you would have tried harder.
We will always blame ourselves for things we cannot control,
We will always forgive others more often than they probably deserve.
Every love song written is written about you and how you deserve love.
I know that when you start loving yourself, truly, you start asking for what you deserve and
this is how we learn our worth, internally, not externally.
And letters that I write to myself, in the darkest nights of my soul are always the messiest, truest words I ever speak. True for the moment. Even if it is hard and ugly truth.
Writing, from pen to paper, is a line of truth between that infinite, unaware conscious and the swirling cosmos of existence.
So my exercise for you today, dear writer, is not to journal.
It is not to blog, or pound out letters aiming for a word count.
Sit with your breath for a solid five minutes,
just your breath,
let the chaos that you’ve been pushing to the back of your mind with endless tasks, fill the silent spaces between inhalation and exhalation.
When all that’s left, is the ocean pulling in and rushing out
and your weight is heavy against the solid seat of the earth
…write
Write about what is running torrents in your mind.
Write your worries, your fears, your wins and losses.
Write down the set backs and jump starts and the hopes.
Write a love letter to yourself.
Show patience, understanding and care as you would if you were writing to your child or someone you love beyond bounds.
Be kind.
Be honest.
Be true.
Call yourself sweet things, like Love and Darling and Starshine.
Be hopeful.
Then, tuck it away.
Get on with your work, see if the chaos has settled just a bit.
You never forget. Do you? That first love. The first erratic heart palpitations, the unbridled joy and shaking knees when they’d walk into the room? It’s true. The memories of those people, places, experiences have shaped the way we approach or flee from similar feelings that arise along the path of our life. It is the same in writing.
I’m sure, if you’re a writer with some years and miles behind you, you’ve gained experience, plowed through or given up on projects, and learned a little bit from every sentence and every stanza. Even if you’re fairly new to the craft, you still probably remember your first attempts and have learned from them, how to be a little better each time.
I still have a folder of my poetry from high school. I don’t keep it in hopes that someday I can revamp them to share with the world. Great goddess no. I keep them to remind myself of the first tremblings of love that struck me when I realized I could put words to paper to mirror the chaos inside. That I could write out feelings and emotions. That I had a voice. That I could use it. I keep those rambling, teenage angsty writings to remind myself of the first throes of passion, as awkward and stumbling as they were, and why every new project should be approached, with the same stirrings of love, excitement and untempered desire.
I also keep them to show myself how far I’ve come. How much I’ve learned, and how much I’ve improved.
I believe the grace and goodness of a writer comes, in part, from remembering the passion and applying our ever-growing knowledge to it. If we’re all one or the other, our writing will either be an incomprehensible mess, fliting off through the meadow picking daisies and talking to forest creatures, or a stoic, by the book repetition of perfectly punctuated lines that feels more like a textbook on fiction, than an actual story.
A good story is a balance of passion and craft and remembering why we fell in love with writing in the first place helps us to approach our new projects with the fervor of that kid in Freshman English without having to rhyme every stanza or create perfect stereotypes for her characters. Just like when you are seeped in first love, your joy shows through your writing when you are doing it without too much emphasis on what it can and should do for your future endeavors, but just to enjoy the shivers it brings you in the present.
At the same time, like the earned experience of an older lover, you know how to manipulate the language, intensify the feelings, and push the right buttons with a perfect amount of pressure to bring your readers over the top in their own emotional response, all while doing it with good grammar and in a timely manner.
So today, take a few minutes and remember your first love (human or word based) and think about what stirred your heart so much about it. Think about the unbridled joy and relentless passion. Try to replicated it on the page, put yourself in the new love phase with your writing and see where it takes you. Don’t stop to judge or rewrite, or edit. Just…do what comes naturally. It’s not like anyone else will be privy to these thoughts. They’re yours alone. So have fun with them.
The beautiful part of writing your own blog is that, while you can stay with one theme, sometimes its nice to get off the written path and…improvise a bit. Coming up with a blog this week (after I have somehow misplaced my blog plan for the year) saw me wobbling between some kind of self-promotion, poetry, or writing advice.
Well, I haven’t refined a poem that I’m ready to share yet, and I often get annoyed with too much self-promotion (my own mostly). I have lots of writing advice, but today I want to talk about time.
Time is a tricky sort of celestial magic. It is elusive and easy to lose, yet feels infinite and ongoing. The problem is that humans have such short spans of it to spend. And the more we spend, the faster what we have left goes. It is relative, and yet some moments can stop it. Days are long, but years are short. And the amount we are given is never guaranteed, nor is it ever enough.
So what do you plan to do with the time you have left?
I realize that working, sleeping, eating, caring for family and general ‘stay alive’ skills factor in. I’m talking about the minutes when you have a breadth of time to yourself.
Just before bed.
Right after you wake up.
That 15 minute break at work
the 20 minutes your baby is napping
The 2 minutes, sitting in your car before the kids get out.
The hours on your hands when your nest is empty.
The Saturday morning, the Wednesday afternoon, the Tuesday night…
You see, I just had another birthday, and every year when that date rolls around (especially since hitting 40) there is an urgent sense of morbidity.
What if this is the year?
That I get hit by someone watching their phone instead of the road while I’m out running. That my dog (or one, or all in a congregated attack of cats) trips me down the stairs. That I throw myself in front of my children, (or someone else’s) when a random gunman open fires at the grocery store. That I catch a benign case of the flu and run myself into walking pneumonia, and stop breathing in the night.
That the shadow on my pancreas has become a full-fledged tumor.
What if this is the last year I have left?
What do I want leave behind? I’m not trying to be a downer, or anticipate death. But time…
Time doesn’t slow for any of us. And time can stop us, dead, with the slightest universal plot twist.
What if this is the last year you have left? What if it’s the last month?
We don’t have time to wait. There is never a perfect time to do what you’ve always wanted to do. We have a limited time offer to live.
I have moments to enjoy with my children. I have a lot more naps in the sun with my dog. I have mountains to climb, smiles to spread, joy to foster, power to reclaim, and hurtful patterns to break. I don’t want to waste another minute on people who do not see my worth. I don’t want to waste a second on making the same mistakes that robbed me of time, or dignity, or love. I have so many more books to write. I have so many more poems to scribble down. More students to teach. More coffee to drink. More places to travel. More steps, more breaths, more life. And I want to pack as much of it all in, to every moment I have available.
Make a list. Today. This very minute. Pretend that it is all you have left to hope for and not much time to make it a reality. And start today. This very minute.
Time is not on our side. It is a ever-quickening beast, thundering beside us, and gaining ground. Your job, tiny chess-piece of the infinite universe, is to learn to move, and love, and live, every single moment you are here. So that when that monitor blip begins to slow, and the metronome of your heart ticks to ever-expanding spaces of silence… you know that you spent every beat of it well.
Good morning ladies and gents. Once in a while, especially now that I’m trying to carve out more time in my packed days for reading, I like to offer up a review of some of the books I’ve read. In particular, I love being able to share authors with you who are great a story telling (fiction), offer excellent advice (nonfiction), and who’s styles are captivating, whether in fiction or nonfiction.
It makes it even more fun when it’s an author I’ve met and like, because I get more insights into their creative process, their style, and the quality of their work.
So, today, I’m reviewing “Something Lost” by Bernadette Marie, the first book in her Funerals and Weddings Series. Bernadette is an incredibly accomplished and prolific writer with more than 50 books published (Jesus, I’m slacking over here). She is also the head of 5 Prince Publishing as well as a mother of five (all boys…ya’ll this woman has raised 5. Boys.) And somehow, in her spare time she’s also earned a 2nd degree black belt in Tang Soo Do. So, she’s just all-around awesome. To find out more about her, her books, and audiobooks, please visit the links above.
Now onto “Something Lost“.
The book begins at the funeral of Coach Diaz, a beloved basketball coach, father and mentor. His favorite five players, now grown up, return to pay their respects. Among them, is Craig Turner, a once troubled youth who found balance and stability on his team and with Coach’s support. He also once dated the coach’s daughter, Rachel, despite being warned not to. The two meet and rekindle the flame after having lived through some rough and terrible events.
The book is so well written that the story almost plays out like a movie in your head. Readers experience the ups and downs of a relationship that has painful ties to the past, while hope for a different kind of future. Bernadette’s ability to connect readers to her characters through their emotional honest and head-on exploration of hard topics like suicide, depression, self-harm, and abusive parents deepen this book into more than just an average romance novel. “Something Lost” explores what it is to be human, what we do to survive terrible loss, and how we come back from it to be stronger people still capable of honesty and love. The story moves quickly and the chemistry between Rachel and Craig is playful and heated.
I love that Bernadette Marie gives such sexual power and freedom to her female leads. One of my favorite parts about the book is how Rachel admits and prides herself on the fact that she means to seduce Craig and make him hers. And she’s strongly determined in this goal. Another brilliant and timely theme in the book is about the awareness of mental health, the openness of the characters in talking about it, supporting one another, and justifying the importance of it with seeking help and being active participants in their healing process. It’s an important concept that is long overdue to be accepted and practiced in mainstream. I’ve always believed that genre fiction stands as a bellwether for societal change and Marie approaches it with love, respect, and honesty.
The character dynamics between the main characters are wonderful, passionate and sweet, but the dynamics between the side characters (the other members of the team, Rachel’s mother and brother, and her best friend) help to build an interesting world of connected lives that are each unique. This is an art for any author writing series as it makes the reader want to know more about the ‘side’ characters, and promotes the next books focusing on them.
All in all, I loved being able to wind down at the end of a busy day with this book. It wasn’t that it was mindless–quite the contrary, it was a way for my overworked brain to relax and let someone else tell a good story to me. I’ll definately be checking out the rest of this series and all of her titles. With over 50, it should keep me in books for at least a couple of years.
It’s been awhile since I regaled you with a little verse. Okay, to be honest, I don’t know if I’ve ever ‘regaled’ anyone with anything I’ve written. But here’s a poem I scribbled down and now it’s part yours.
Misjudged
have you ever
thought you knew everything
about a human heart
only to find out,
in clips and phrases
the everyday
exchange of words,
those priceless commodities,
that you didn’t, in fact,
like them at all?
With every volley of
thought-provoking ideals
and self-doubting forays
trying to figure out the complexities
of life
and love
and sex
that every one of those micro chasms of worlds
in their lit-up brains
from the sadness to the fury
the senseless damage survived,
the deep, erotic bites hungered after
and the sweet forgiveness
you discover,
layer by layer
that you didn’t like them
not at all.
No—in all,
and all along,
you, in fact,
loved them.
It was a goal heavy year. I talked briefly a few weeks ago about how to set up your own yearly goals in a manageable way, but today I want to talk about you. That’s right…not some bullet list on a webpage or a chart of tick-them-off boxes. I want to talk about the beautiful human on the other side of the screen. Stop looking over your shoulder, it’s you. I mean you.
Now maybe I know you, personally. Maybe we’ve never met. The point is, I think you’re amazing. You may not believe me. It’s okay. I’ve talked A LOT about not believing everything you read…and my words are no different. So allow me to offer proof.
This year has been tough. Hell, the last two have been a raging dumpster fire…for nearly everyone who wasn’t making a personal rocket ship to go play Spaceman Spiff while countless other humans suffered in poverty, starvation, and lack of medical care on the Earth. No wonder they were so anxious to leave for ten minutes and show how awesome it is to have money… but I digress…
The point I’m trying to make is that you’ve survived 100% of all your worst days.
A moment of silence for 2021...
At the start of a new year we have a tendency to look back (sometimes like Indian Jones on the destructive explosions of warplanes and tanks going over cliffs, shaking on torn knees, dirty, bent, beat to hell, and wondering how we survived, still clinging to our favorite hats) and worry that the next year will only be worse—Nazis, aliens…Shia LaBeouf—it could get a lot worse.
But it could get a whole lot better.
And we have some say in that. Now, we don’t always have a say in the bigger things of the world. I’ll never change the inequality of women or be able to change the mind of every little girl who’s been told, (like her mother and her mother before her…and so on) that being skinny is the height of desirability and beauty.
But I can shift the way I speak around my daughters. I can shift the way I talk to my friends (and speak up for them when they cannot speak well of themselves). I can shift the way I talk to myself.
I can’t fight capitalism. But I can support companies that pay their workers a living wage. I can’t change lobbyists, or billionaires, or any number of corrupt, societal ruining forces. But I can lend a helping hand. I can volunteer. I can protest. I can stand up and use my voice, I can vote…
When we look at the battles ahead of us in this new year, let us pick ones we can charge into wisely. And please, for the love of mental health, let us start with the ones in our own heads.
The direction of your life, the ability to lift yourself above old and destructive habits has everything to do with how you speak to yourself. Your voice is the only one in your head 24/7. Your body is the only one you live in. Your voice, your mind, your heart, your body—every single one of those things is beautiful. Every one of them is enough. And they (read: you) deserve to be taken care of, loved, and respected.
So when we look into this new year, I only ask that you change one thing.
I want you to change how you talk to yourself. Be bigger than what the world wants you to be. Take up space and use that space to spread compassion and acceptance. Be outspoken with your understanding, your need for justice, and most of all, be outspoken with love.
Life is short. This could be the first year of a long and beautiful rest-of-your-life.
It could be your last year on Earth.
You simply do not know, so spend it with your heart and passions in mind. Draw and hold boundaries where they need to be and do not apologize for cutting out the people who are hurtful or refuse to acknowledge that you are enough. Speak well of yourself. Speak kindly to yourself. Accept every soul-bump as part of being beautifully human. Don’t be cruel, but take no bullshit.
We humans–we’re a beautiful mess. Falling in and out of love, drunk on passion and enthusiasm one minute, and stumbling into the gutter of disappointment the next. I say, just do your best, little human. Until you know better, then do the better. Be kind to yourself, be kind to others. But don’t give away your light and energy to people who don’t appreciate and return it.
It’s just that simple. And just that complex. It’s just. that. human.
Today is my mom, (Christine Wickstrom’s) birthday, so before I get all poetic on your asses, let us take a moment:
Dear Mom:
Here’s to another trip around the sun with the woman who loved, fed, raised, and let me survive my teenage-hood. You’re a spiritual whirlwind, a passionate crusader, the raucous laughter I hear in my own voice, and the sturdy rock on which I was built. Also, sorry for using the word ‘asses’ up there…and again just now. Have a lovely day, take naps, eat good food, enjoy the sunshine and the new dawn of spring. I love you to the moon and back again.
Old Soul
They used to say,
over coffee cups
behind her turned back
that she was an old soul
Even at six
when she struggled to sit pious
in pews too hard for anything
but retribution
Or dreamed beside lazy rivers
in tall, cool grass
feet barefoot and setting roots
in worship of the bigger gods
An old soul, she thought, was
used, misused, tarnished
and dented
worn thin like soles
on the bottom of shoes
She thought her soul
looked like beaten leather
unfairly pocketed
and scarred with use
Everyone else got a new one
right out of the box
the day they were born
the 'new soul' smell still clinging
smooth, shiny, glowing
with kinetic possibility
But what choice did she have?
Old was far better than none.
Six turned to sixteen
and all the years blended
in hues of decisions
and roads taken
the ones where she felt,
memories walked beside her
and footsteps recalled
and every where felt like home
in far off rooms of her old soul.
Sixteen to thirty
and on to forty
and on, and on
and her dented soul carried
tears and laughter
just as well as any other
better
Because new souls, she learned,
were breakable and brittle
they faltered in storms and
dented at the slightest strike
In the same span of years
the glittering glow of the new
was thin like a grocery store bag,
plastic urban jellyfish, aimless
and at the whim of every breeze that blew
But old souls
are stalwart souls
They grounded roots
feet in dirt and
sturdy branches rising.
Fingers tasting every flavor of life
without being swayed to break.
Old souls have lived it all before
and are wise to the ways
of errant breezes and
the fickle affections of years.
Old souls, she learned, came back
loved and experienced once more,
into only those vessels
strong enough to carry them.
Just a quick reminder that the poetry anthology is accepting submissions until September of 2021. I’m already receiving some truly amazing work. In the next few months I will be featuring and promoting the poets who have submitted their work. I encourage you to support their work and check out their other writing endeavors. If you have something to contribute to the “Wilderness of Soul” please feel free to contact me at sereichert@comcast.net.
Today, I’m offering up a couple of poems in semi-celebration of this strange month of ‘love’. Enjoy the broad spectrum of heart.
SCARS
Growing a scar is hard.
The wound never stops throbbing
It’s enough to keep you awake at night
And irritated during the day.
The thrashed skin, angry and red,
Prying open at the slightest provocation
So you wrap the bandage
Good and tight,
Until the rest of the limb
Distal to the wound
Throbs with its chokehold,
Gasping for blood.
No blood,
But no pain either
And no dead skin,
Hanging to catch on your clothes.
Reminding you
At every minute
Bump against door,
Hair toss
Or paper turn
That someone,
You love
Cut you.
Lizzy
We were girls in tall grass
Running with scraped knees
And dry throats.
Disappearing into the past
When things were simple
When life was sunshine
And big-dipper gazing
We were the past
I can’t quite recall anymore
But the whisper of memory I hold on to
Like the edge of a cliff
What if I forget?
Will we both stop existing?
Will we snuff out
Without the constant loop playing
Over and over in my memory?
Do I keep you alive?
Or does your memory keep me?
Your bike gears were gritty with sand
and the vinyl on your seat was cracked
so you never sat.
You were never still.
You were perpetual motion
And magic kept you aloft.
How still and fallen you lay now.
The earth is tender and cruel
Around bones that once
Commanded the rotation of the skies.
Please tell me I’m not the only one who remembers these movies. I think, they may be partly to blame for my current profession (not the karate instructor—the other one, that pays even less). I loved the quirky, unrealistic way that the original frumpy romance novelist came upon adventure and began living the kinds of stories she only wrote about before. I also loved that by the second film we see her living this exotic and adventurous life and still suffering writers block brought on by lack of romance in her characters.
How I imagine I look as a tough-ass romance novelist
What I actually look like, flannel pjs and all.
Because no matter how much adventure, vine-swinging, sheik angering, and Jewel finding you do, if you’re not in love with your novel, no one else will be either.
Bam. Mic drop. Blog finished, I can go take a nap….
*sigh* ok, I’ll elaborate.
Romance isn’t just about what happens between the sheets in a typical Harlequin. Romance is about creating a smolder, a heat, an intrigue between your characters, and between your story and your readers.
When I titled this blog, I worried I would lose those writers who focus on different genres and have little need for ‘romance’. Suck that (respectfully), we all need romance. Humans are born to seek out connection. Now, the phases of it and levels of requirement are different. But the truth remains that if there isn’t chemistry between your characters…be it platonic, hate, or lust…the story will fall flat.
Well, gee whiz, Sarah, what do I do about my Scifi Cowboy Inter-dimensional six book series where no speaking women exist because I’m THAT kind of author.
how much talent, great story writing, and acting did we lose in this era from all the stereotypical, misogynistic bullshit? The world may never know.
First of all—ugh, way to cut out 50% of the entire thinking, capable, and amazing population and demote us to some hot object in a skimpy space suit, so 1960’s of you. Secondly, your ‘lone star’ lead has to have some connection to someone or something. A loyal side kick, his long-lost brother, his space ship, or *puke* if you must, even some hot object in a space suit.
Otherwise, he lacks a pathway for your reader to connect to him. Characters that ‘don’t need anybody’ are fine, but you may find that attitude extends to your readers. They won’t need him either. Characters, even the lone wolf, are better if they really do need people and are just too afraid to say something, until somewhere in act three.
“Hurrumph—well, I write non-fiction only. There is no romance. Its fact and common knowledge. I do not deal in fluff.”
Lady, (or mister?) listen. The numbers of readers you will get from a book that is all fact and no heart (i.e. romance) will be disappointing. I can’t think of a single person who goes back to their high school American history book and eats up 100 pages on the American Revolution (I’m sure they exist okay, there’s nothing wrong with a good ol’ informative book). I can, however, name numerous people all salivating over Hamilton tickets. Why? Because THAT story, makes us fall in love with the characters. The writer found romance in the people, situation, and actions of the time. It created a bond by connecting us to common feelings, needs, and emotions. And that’s what romance is really about in writing. Appealing to the human divine in all of us.
So, in this made-up month of love, explore your current work in progress and ask yourself if you are in love with these characters, their story. Ask if your character is hell-bent and heart centered on someone or something three-dimensional to ground themselves to. Is it throwing spice into the reading? Or is the plot fizzling? Where and how can you use romance to draw in and maintain your reader’s attention?
After all, romance is not romance, if it doesn’t have an anchor of reality at its heart.
Hello kids. Listen, lately this blog has been heavy handed with the writerly stuff. Let’s face it, a lot is going on in the world and sometimes its nice to focus on something we can control, something we can improve, something we can do.
I began this blog with a rant that just sprung out of the general feeling of hopelessness, anger, frustration and worry. For my family, my community, my country. I began on a three paragraph spewing about inequality and why the government and richest among us love to stoke the fires of divisiveness. I began, this early morning, festering outwardly what I’ve been festering inwardly for the last three an a half years.
Because our country has turned to a festering shit pile that’s hard to ignore. But we all know it. We all see ourselves behaving like hateful, ignorant assholes, but…everyone’s doing it so it makes it ok? See? Witness how easy it is for me to fall back into the loop that keeps me up at night, gives me anxiety, and makes me plan to move off the grid and become a hermit.
But today is about reprieve. A break. A rest.
Something different is called for. And so, to take a side road from writing (while not diving into the sewage that our current state of affairs has become), I want to talk about song lyrics.
Specifically, those lyrics from songs that stick into the sides of our hearts. That spur inspiration in our brains. That connect us as human beings. Surely you’ve got a few rambling around in your neurons. I’m going to give you a few here, and links to the songs.
Your exercise this week is to listen to some of your favorites and something new. Think about the words and how they correspond with your own experiences.
Writing is not as powerful if, at some point, the reader (or listener) doesn’t sit back and say to themselves ‘man, I’ve been there’.
Your job, in essence is to find a way to connect to a complete stranger by letting their words affect you.
Here you go:
I heard this one earlier in the week and it had been years. As I’ve aged, it’s struck different and more meaningful emotions in me.
“Once upon a time there was an ocean But now it’s a mountain range Something unstoppable set into motion Nothing is different, but everything’s changed
It’s a dead end job, and you gets tired of sittin’ And it’s like a nicotine habit you’re always thinking about quittin’ I think about quittin’ every day of the week When I look out my window it’s brown and it’s bleak
Outta here How am I gonna get outta here? I’m thinking outta here When am I gonna get outta here? And when will I cash in my lottery ticket And bury my past with my burdens and strife? I want to shake every limb in the garden of Eden And make every love the love of my life
I figure that once upon a time I was an ocean But now I’m a mountain range Something unstoppable set into motion Nothing is different, but everything’s changed
Found a room in the heart of the city, down by the bridge Hot plate and TV and beer in the fridge But I’m easy, I’m open, that’s my gift I can flow with the traffic, I can drift with the drift Home again? Naw, never going home again Think about home again? I never think about homeBut then comes a letter from home The handwriting’s fragile and strange Something unstoppable set into motion Nothing is different, but everything’s changed
The light through the stained glass was cobalt and red And the frayed cuffs and collars were mended by haloes of golden thread The choir sang, “Once Upon A Time There Was An Ocean” And all the old hymns and family names came fluttering down as leaves of emotion
As nothing is different, but everything’s changed”
This man is brilliant, in voice and lyric. There’s something dark and gritty in him that brings out the underbelly of love:
“Love ain’t nothing more than black magic You better want what you wish for It might happen I drank your poison Fell under your spell Love is hell and nothing more than black magic
Love is like a bag of drugs it blows out both your knees Innocence gets tangled when you hang it on a string Both our eyes were foggy glass, too high to ever see The devil’s sleight of hand, twisting fate with ancient ink”
This song…is on my alarm in the morning…Because what we have is what we are and where we’ve been has gotten us this far.
“Every tree has got a root And every girl forbidden fruit and got her demons And the path I chose to go, a different girl so long ago I had my reasons
And she’s in my head so loud, screaming “Shouldn’t you be proud of what you came from? Oh, you’ve been crippled and you’ve walked on You’ve been shut up and you talked, so let’s talk some more”
Where is the hand for me to reach? Where is the moral I’ll ever teach myself? In all the black, in all the grief, I am redeemed
And its ripping at my heart Because Im dodging all the darts and on a slow train And then Ill wear it til it tatters And it shatters on the floor in instant replay
Oh, were all rotten and were pure And were just looking for the cure that feels like spring snow And all we have is who we are and where we’ve been got us this far, so let me go”
This woman’s voice and writing is so empowering. I recommend listening to this one while you’re out walking, or running, or moving. It’s a heart-helper.
“The way you smile When you believe in it, in your future It’s different, it’s different
Now we moving forward, ever backwards Never forward, ever backwards, never And when the going gets rough and life gets tough Don’t forget to breathe
I love it here ‘Cause I don’t have to explain to them Why I’m valuable, that I’m magical And back home they tear Tear my soul apart Love my broken heart I don’t know where to start
The way you smile when you believe in it, in your future It’s different”
I could go on ALL DAY. But I’ll only give you two more.
This has been a favorite of mine for a long time. It feels like a whole journey through life and the one lesson at the end you wished you’d known sooner. And this video, I believe, was compiled by some amateur videographers. It’s brilliant. It feels like what my soul would do, if it were untethered from fear.
“Hello, my old heart How have you been? Are you still there inside my chest? I’ve been so worried, you’ve been so still Barely beating at all
Oh, oh, don’t leave me here alone Don’t tell me that we’ve grown For having loved a little while Oh, oh, I don’t wanna be alone I wanna find a home And I wanna share it with you
Hello, my old heart It’s been so long Since I’ve given you away And every day, I add another stone To the walls I built around you To keep you safe
Oh, oh, don’t leave me here alone Don’t tell me that we’ve grown For having loved a little while Oh, oh, I don’t wanna be alone I wanna find a home And I wanna share it with you
Hello, my old heart How have you been? How is it being locked away? Don’t you worry, in there, you’re safe And it’s true, you’ll never beat But you’ll never break
Nothing lasts forever Some things aren’t meant to be But you’ll never find the answers Until you set your old heart free Until you set your old heart free”
If you haven’t been listening to them so far it’s cool. But, PLEASE LISTEN TO THIS ONE. PLEASE WATCH THIS ONE. In today’s hurtful environment, we all need to be reminded that every man is a son to a daughter. Every woman is a daughter to a father. We should always treat each other as if we are gifts, in need of love and understanding. It should be forefront in every heart and mind.
“What I’ve learnt from the ocean Hard to dance and rejoice in the motion Let the sun have its moment The moon will come What I’ve learnt from a soldier Every man is a son to a daughter And we only remember When we see the blood
Don’t grow up on me Keep that backstroke in your Afro Don’t you grow up on me Slow up homie Don’t you grow up on me Keep it OG sipping slowly Don’t you grow up on me Slow up homie
Don’t you show off on me Don’t you grow up on me Show off on me
What I’ve learnt from a traveler There’s no road that can lead to nirvana There’s a world to discover But home is love
What I’ve learnt from a mirror Look too hard and you’ll find you a stranger Love is just a decision The choice is yours”
All right, writers. The choice is yours, how you do this day. Are you an ocean or a mountain range? All you’ve gone through has led you to where you are today. And while love is like a bag of drugs that blows out both your knees, you’ll never find the answers until you set your old heart free. I hope you move forwards, ever. Backwards, never. And know that love is just a decision; the choice is yours. I hope you choose love.
Sarah Reichert Author 