“Medici, cura te ipsum” or “Physician heal thyself,” Luke 4:23.
Today I was invited to attend Comfort in Community: Free Writing Session.* I felt compelled to accept it as a way of healing. The two-hour session was scheduled because “many of us,” were “gutted by the results of our national election.” I was invited to “pour onto the page…grief, anger, bafflement, and frustration, as well as laughter, joy and all the things that is keeping [me] afloat.”
So, I’m sharing with you the three pieces I wrote based on poems that were shared.
Inviting Spaciousness Poem by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, my comments:
“A small tight knot that got tangled. I don’t know how it got to be there. I am not sure what it is made of. I imagine it as thread to be used to knit a sweater. I imagine how my wife knits and often the thread gets tangled, and she asked me, who cannot knit, to help her find the knot, and do what I can to straighten it.
At first, I cried because I thought it would be too hard. I find it is not as hard as I thought it would be, and as I take it, hold it as I have not unwound it, unwind it, and then make it into a ball. A ball that can now be used as I see my wife's hands working fast with the needles as she makes a sweater, I hear is for me. I just cradled the ball, as I find out it’s going to be something I didn’t imagine, simply because she was stuck and asked me to help.
When I first picked it up, I was scared that I might break a thread, I might have to cut a cord. I might not be able to look at her if I failed, but she trusted me and encouraged me to try. My heart was frightened but it continued to beat as my courage overcame my cowardice, my faith wrapped over my fear. I was able to breathe, and with her giving me the change, I realized I was not alone and together we were making something better; something beautiful. We’d unraveled the knot, a knot we didn’t make, a knot that was tight, a knot that is no longer because somehow it taught us both to find how to straighten it into something we both could love.”
Election Poem by Alfred Lamotte, my comments:
“What did I vote for? It was a choice. Between birth and death. I voted for not against. I voted for my children, my old age. Their hope my hope…their life my death. The deepest part of me knows what I wanted, what I believed. I hoped that people like me would vote for those things I had believed were a part of them. I voted for the pursuit of happiness that was not restricted to one group, one tribe.
I wanted to hear the same songs I knew, and let others know I felt their pain because they felt mine. The fact we didn’t look like each other, love like each other, or even see each other didn’t matter that we were not like each other. It was a piston in an engine I thought would get us over the edge, allow us to turn the page on an uncomfortable and ugly past. But I was wrong.
I voted for love and was hit with hate. I voted with courage of my conviction and was slandered by the bellicose bullies of surrender. I vote for humanity and saw my vote trampled on, spit and pissed on as if I didn’t matter. I saw a cesspool of deniers and as I woke up and hoped that it’s been a dream, I realized the nightmare is real. I voted to be happy and now I have to compose myself with a mascara that doesn’t run because happiness will be elusive for some time.
It’s not because my vote wasn’t counted, but rather it was just dismissed, and I am deemed invisible again. I didn’t vote for death. I voted for life. I voted for a dream of freedom, peace, sanctity, and love that I think doesn’t seem possible anymore. But it doesn’t matter what they think.
I will vote again because I matter and every time they see me, they who didn’t vote for the things I hold precious will realize I think and believe I matter, and that’s the victory I will take to the grave no matter who gets elected. Unless they find a way to take that away too, then it will not be worth living anymore. But I will still be able to say I voted.”
Continue Poem by Maya Angelou, my comments:
Written as a letter to my sons. “The election may be over, but the war is not. This is just one battle and as I think about the years I have left; I may have only one more election to work for as I think about the legacy, I will leave you both. I will continue to try. I will continue to believe. I will continue to fight for you and your generation as I fear this could be my last election. As I write these words, it’s as if I am telling them.
Consider this part of your inheritance. Rather than leave you money you can spend I want to leave you hope you can have. Rather than leave you a portfolio or a desire to pocket things that are not really yours I leave you a desire to give other kindness and think of your dad as one who would rather send good thoughts than memes that bully. That each day you would find a way to do a random act of kindness and know that your dad would often send “hugs and love,” or GBYA, God bless you always. I want you to remember that in 2024 I did what I could. I donated my time, money and resilient will as I felt the time for the arc of justice was about to bend toward justice, but it hasn’t yet.
It’s been a long time, and I’m tired, but I have not given up and I won’t. It may have been too early for a woman to be elected president, but today it’s not too early to just be kind. It’s not too early to hold your head up high, ignore the hate and contempt of those too fragile to really know what they have missed. It’s not too early to realize that what I once told you is true. Racism exists. Sexism exists. Hate exists. But among these you will find that love exists because I did. It’s hard to realize that in the midst of all the hate you can find love, you can find hope. You can and will. And more than anything else in my last will and testament you will find an undying hope that as long as you are alive, my hope, prayers, and faith that you too will find the desire to fight for it.”
And please remember, there are others who don’t look like you, but believe like you do, and I believe want to “focus on things that binds us.” Remember that more than anything else.
Thank you for reading and sharing “The Man with The Key,” which will always be free.
Tanya Shaffer's Off-Leash Chronicles | Substack
Beautiful and very helpful. Thank you. I was able to go with Jess to a McNay Museum art workshop where we worked through our feelings in creative community. Your writing and earnest hope is inspirational and very needed. God Bless.