Just Write {36}

Finally, I had time to sit with all of the submissions to the Use Your Words essay contest. With each and every one, my heart found touchpoints, the kind that mothers feel when we share our stories, the details of the beautiful mess. Reflections. She said, the lights were too bright in the hospital and she said she was scared on African soul, a new boy put in her arms, he’s yours now.

What do I do with him? Where do I start? Who will tell me what to do? 

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She said she was scared on a hospital bed, arms spread out in the operating room. My life is over and begun. 

Every word and every line and every essay, a theme. We are all so scared at the start–that enormous engulfing fear, like lava, she said, how she flew over a volcano and saw Mother Earth spit it forth–covering and engulfing. Swallowed.

Oh you Mamas. I loved your words and I sit with them and shake my head like how in the world will I choose one winner? Every single one holds such beauty. Thank you.

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It was just a garage sale but nothing is just anything and so it was there that I met mothers. Round bellied expectant ones and others redirecting their littles; Come back over here, stay by Mama. I want to reach out to every single one. Do just one kind thing because I know what they’re about to do and I know what they’re doing. And having words here with other mothers has confirmed my heart’s assumption that we are all the same and when we tell the truth of all the parts of this enormous job we find a connection that heals. It restores us to getting up to do it all again the next day, in whatever way that suits us.

So when she and I, we stood in front of my house and talked about a place for mothers, for women and others to come alive through creativity and life in person, Mother Earth stood still all around. This community, it needs this very thing, I wanted to scream it. It’ll be a workshop she said, for art. And mothers will be able to come with their kids, a place to hang out, little easels out in the sun for small hands to paint. My heart did all kinds of swell-y skipping fast around because for two years now I’ve been trying to figure it out. We need this place. Where should it be? What should it be? Who should do it? These questions have been pressing down hard on me and then she described it. Standing right there while she bought tables from my driveway to paint gray for the workshop.

Nothing is just anything. Everything is something and the miracle is showing up to watch the something unfold.

(Learn more about the Make. Do. Workshop on facebook.)

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This is the 36th installment of Just Write, an exercise in free writing your ordinary and extraordinary moments. {Please see the details here.}  I would love to read your freely written words so join me and link up below. You can add the url of your post at any time. Just be sure it’s a link to your Just Write post, not to your main page. Then please link back to this post in your post so people know where to go if they’d like to join in.) (Any links not following those two guidelines will be deleted.)

Also. Please take a moment to visit someone else who has linked up! It’s a really good way to meet new writers and get inspired by the meaning behind their moments. Word?