You know that feeling when you walk down the stairs and you misstep. That split second when you realize you might fall, fall fall. An invisible hand rises from your lower belly past your stomach and locks around your heart. Your breathing stops. Someone blocked the door to your throat and put a heavy weight…
To be held. To be heard. To be hugged. To be touched. To be teased. To be tickled. To be savored, soothed, and seen. To be wished for, wooed, and witnessed. To be cherished. Yes, to be cherished. Not to be loved. Not necessarily. Because sometimes, love goes unexpressed. Locked away behind bolted doors. Hidden…
Doing the work. For many people, it involves daring to open up again. To be vulnerable. To connect. To let others in. Apparently, people put up walls when they get hurt. Some slowly, brick by brick, until the wall is so high they can’t see who’s in front of them anymore, and if that person…
For many years, I didn’t take off my shoes when simply going for a stroll on the beach. You know, one of those days when you don’t go sunbathing but you want to be close to the ocean. “I’ll get sand in my socks,” I would think. “I’ll have to take off my shoes, wipe…
When people disappear from our lives, it’s considered normal to grieve. Perhaps not for as long as we need, and perhaps not as intensely as we sometimes do, but we accept that with the loss of a person – whatever shape that loss takes – comes grief. Less normalized or talked about is the grief…
I found the poem below as I was going through old journal entries. While I only started writing for personal reasons more frequently a few months later, I like the idea that Inspiration had already announced itself. I wrote this poem initially in Dutch, then translated it to English to be able to share it…