{day one} thirty one days of Story-telling permission

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:: this is a post of deep breathing // this is the start of 31 days of Story-telling permission ::

until last week, i had no idea i would be undertaking this project. i attempted to do 31 days of sacred seeking motherhood this time last year, but faltered very shortly after starting, due to my pure exhaustion + the change of having a newborn.

but now, i'm starting fresh. i read a post by Elora this past week that gutted me, sent me to the floor. and in it, she wrote six powerful words that have thrummed deep in my soul.

let's be writers?  

yes. let's really be. 

:: elora nicole :: 

and then i had a conversation with her, a beautiful meeting of souls. it was her that turned my floundering words into something concrete. she didn't put her words into my mouth, not at all. instead, she took my words and put them back into my mouth in a way that flowed. she laid His words and mine together on my tongue, and said, 

now write them down. 

you have permission. 

{photo by dramaticelegance}

and those words came slipping back in. let's be writers? and there it is, my Story, curled up like a cat at my back i'm finding that i've always had permission. it was waiting, resting at the edges of my soul, holding sacred space and waiting for me to realize that it's been there all along. 

and so i'm exhaling and doing something i'm not sure that i'm brave enough to undertake. i'm starting thirty-one days, barely into my twenty-third year of life, and i'm quivering inside. i know it's going to be messy and i know it's going to be vulnerable and i know there will be times that i simply will not want to do this. 

i am giving myself permission to miss a day. or ten. i am giving myself permission to live, to breathe, to tell my Story in the time and the space i need. 

this is less of a rule book, less of a laundry list of "31 ways to give yourself permission to tell your story." this is a journey, hand-in-hand. and if you want to sit down here and hold space with me at the edge of the water, there's room, right here. 

so this is day one. a messy, wild mishmash of faith and thrashing, of art, of writing, of freedom. expect to see Aslan here, because this is far from safe, but He is good. 

day one :: i have permission to tell my Story. 

a year of Light :: {my girl}

i wanted to write a post about thrashing. it's been on my heart and mind since my post last week since i allowed myself to exhale about my faith journey publicly. but then, i guess i am going to write on thrashing.

because i'm going to write about my girl.

i cannot believe it's been a year since my soul-wailing warrioress made her entrance into the world. i didn't know such a small being could so drastically change my perspective on life. i didn't know i could be this brave for someone else, not just for myself.

in a way, she brought about my gushing. this tiny one brought me intense volume and the most incredible hush, all once. she's a mystery, my Marian.

she held my hand

walked me into my soul

and said

this is where i want you

to write from.

Soul/mate |Tapiwa Mugabe

the poem above made its way into my inbox this morning, so early, on this day, a gift from a soul-sister far away.  and i wept like rainwater with each word. because a year ago, i would have read those words so differently. i would have found something romantic, something sensational in those words. i would have imagined something far away. 

but now it's personal. 

because the she is now both of us :: this tiny little blue-eyed dove daughter that whispers the most luminescent nonsense into my heart. it's been a year of this whispering, and i look back now with impossible awe that i have survived, and what i have done, and what she has pushed me to create with those tiny fingers. 

i didn't understand this feminine roaring, this brave standing, until i held something made of Light in my two hands and trembled, i don't know what i'm doing. 

sometimes she cries. and sometimes i cry. and sometimes, i sit and weep while this tender-souled love touches my cheek and hums some strange infant-turned-toddler song while we rock. sometimes she soothes me. she's radiant and intense and such a jumble. 

in the darkness, while she sleeps with lashes on my cheek and mouth drooping open like it did the night she entered this world, He whispers, she needs you. and you need Me. 

dearheart, it's okay. 

He gave me her in a time when i didn't know who i was, let alone how to mother something so small and innocent. i'm still thrashing {oh, that word. prepare to see more of it around here}, and i'm still growing. but He knew i needed her like she needs me :: a picture, born of blood and love. 

so we'll keep walking. her and i and Him. 

happy birthday, Marian Abigail. 

your momma loves you. 

art is for you

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i remember the first time i saw the ocean. i was a little girl, landlocked from birth, with a swimsuit that matched the ocean and short hair hacked by even younger hands. and my soul inhaled the salty air and murmured,

:: i am home. 

it takes diving into a pool and sinking down to rise up into the place He sang into Life. it takes cresting the ocean's wave to even catch a glimpse of His eternal country. there's something powerful about this idea, that it takes deep immersion until all you can see is the Light hovering on the surface of the water from down below.

we are all soul-creatures, made to be seen, 

created to be tenderly cradled and adored, 

yet we tremble at the thought of it.

love like water :: wild rain

so often i wish i had a mermaid tail tucked away in the closet, shimmering and waiting for me to slip inside and dive into the sea :: to return home, in a way, to a place that i never truly held but always flowed through my fingers.

i think it's part of why i've gone back to being an artist in recent days. it was something i had given up after comparing myself to others who were "better" even though all we were was different. i was seventeen when i put down the brush. all it took was an art teacher's slightly raised eyebrow and the words, maybe art isn't for you. 

all i can do is reflect back on words i've written before :: it's those moments in the dark where we wrap our arms around our knees and kneel within ourselves to the waves of crashing Love that threaten to overwhelm us. it's a tremble, not a cringe. it's a breathing, not a hyperventilation. 

{sketch by alexandria for dramaticelegance}

this is for me. and my mermaid soul is seen by the One who wove kelp into my hair and called my soul to love of depths.

there is a seacove of my own, tucked gently beneath the waves at the edge of Aslan's Country, that place that hums a familiar melody and whispers of one day, forever. there in that place is a set of paintbrushes made from the mane of the Lion who gave it up for me to Live freely. 

it's a metamorphosis of sorts, a shedding of the ugly and the embracing of the mantle of glory.  it's stepping away from the shadows that confines my feminine soul into certain boxes that aren't allowed to stand here because it might not be right. 

it's being brave and letting down my hair. He promised to come to us like rain, and like water does He fill my soul to overflowing. 

and this is where i am :: tucked in my cove surrounded by sisters of soul and ocean, the crash of the ocean and the roar of the Lion harmonizing tender. 

because He promised
art is for you,
My mermaid daughter. 

// releasing all over again

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i used to blog every single day.

before the season of my life when i was pregnant with our daughter, i was hitting publish every single day. and it was less because i was prolific, and more because i had a simple selfish goal in mind: i wanted to be famous.

at the time, i was barely out of my teens {which, if you want to be technical, i'm still barely out of my teens} and was shuffling my way around the youth blogging world. and let's be honest, there are some amazing young bloggers out there who are really putting their voices out there.

and of course, i wanted to be just like them. i've wanted to be a famous writer my entire life, and i suppose i thought, if i can't get a book published, i'll put my blog in the limelight instead.

but i lost myself somewhere in that process. i can remember staring at the laptop nearly sobbing with fear :: i don't know what to say. i'm out of words. but i have to write. 

my pregnancy which started out my 2012 spun me for a much needed loop. and down i came from my self-constructed pedestal , striking a lot of rocks on the way down that rocked me to the very core. my husband calls it the demolition. i call it the dark night of the soul. my wrestling with the Most High.

:: it was here that i started to find my voice.


the poet-king wailed his psalms, his poetic voice. and like David, wrapped in a cave in the side of a mountain, i started to strum my soul's strings and things started to come out. scary things, things that intimated me, things that made me want to shut down and give up.

but something told me not to do it, that maybe there was a purpose in this little internet corner that was about more than being famous, that was about reaching out and smearing warpaint on the cheeks of those who needed to know there was more, that they were more....and that they were seen. 

there is a gush of sacred, an embracing of selah, and the screaming wailing war-cry akin to giving birth. because it's a hard process, and it takes incredible strength. and it's okay to reach out, to take the hand of a soul-doula and press your forehead to hers and let it pour.

maybe it's not about the amount of words i can pound out in the space of a week. because i've started to find my groove, less posting but more writing. my word for 2013 was release, a word that i did not fully understand until these past couple months. a word that has been gripping me by the heart and speaking in the voice of the Lion that i adore

:: let. the eff. go. 
release to Me, you lioness.  
because I promise, I have not failed you yet.

and i've started to exhale, feeling all of me unclench and the surrender coming like a broken dam that brings a lot of tears and a lot of clinging to the One who is counting every single drop. the One who is seeing my awakening and is stroking my hair while i let it all go.

the King of Kings is holding back my hair.

and i'm not done yet, not by a long shot. i'm still working on my book, a dream that i have never given up. i have a brand-new jar of warpaint and a beautiful tribe with their hands on my shoulders.

and i'm ready.

tribe :: being seen

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i think i have found the most beautiful word :: tribe. 

and honestly, it's a word i used to hate. there was this movie we watched when i was younger. i don't even remember the name. but this woman called her children "the Lacey tribe" and never told people all their names because "life is short and time is precious."

and it made me feel strange, unsettled, even when i was eight. because why wouldn't time be precious enough to list off your own children's names? why lump them into this vile thing...this tribe?

and then i realized something for the very first time, just yesterday, at almost twenty-three years old :: being part of a tribe is about being known.  to take the idea and make it about being identity-forgotten, to strip away the you-light from this candelabra of tribehood, is to destroy the very essence of what it is to be.

because the Lion sang tribes into existence from the soul of the man who wrapped himself in fur and lied, who worked fourteen years for love, who dared to wrestle in the hour of his unknown. and from him there came twelve, and from one came the One. and there is something so precious, so unique about each tribal voice that led to the breathing of the Most High.

being in a tribe, finding your circle and your family of exhale :: it's about being see. it's about gazing and locking eyes with another, the brush of fingers over your cheek to leave a soft painted blessing on your skin.

{via pinterest}

// because you're seen. 

it's not about being smooshed into some sort of grey-hued mass where you blend in, where you simply are. it's about the circling of arms around you as sisters braid your hair and wind your neck with colour. and there in the caves with the soft lap of the water against the stones, the light flicking and the Light flowing from He-Who-Sees gathered in their midst. 

we see you, unique one. 

we know your name. 

and i know theirs. because i'm their family, and they are mine. and we take the time to see their lives and call each soul by name. just as the Lion who sang the stars, one burning flicker of light at a time, and whispered their names in the darkness. 

dearest daughter, 

I have known you long. 

:: gentle, gentle

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 we are not gentle people. we have very heavy feet, and so often, they find their way to treading heedlessly on the dreams of others.

dreams are gentle things. they are big things, even if their keepers have no idea just how wide their wings might spread. they are delicate things, easily broken if they are not given care. it doesn't take much for careless fiddling to pluck each feather from its place and leave them a pile. and then the dreamer must rebuild, if they ever dare again.

there is sweetness deep inside, a kind of fruit worth savouring but so easy to bruise and destroy if we press too hard. and we are not gentle people.

:: but i want to be. 

i've started to focus on my mouth recently. the way my lips form words, the way they open when i inhale. what comes out with the breath, i wonder?

is it Light, radiant and luminescent, whispering Life into each soul that i encounter. or is it too late because my fingers caught the flame and pinched it dark?

because the seekers are met with sideways glances and the wrestling ones are given a wider berth, and the lonely hearts echo like windchimes in a wasteland, an empty beauty that everyone else is missing. and the whispers come, how dare they? they should know better. 

what you held in your hand, 

{photo property of dramaticelegance}

what you counted and carefully saved, 

all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be

between the regions of kindness. 

{Naomi Shihab Nye}

and i can't help but look at them and quietly weep because i've been there, just where they are. and maybe i still am, a little bit, because my footing is learning these mountain heights, where the other does leap like grace and i'm still white-knuckled. but i look to my left and to my right and see others there. beautiful ones with half-plucked wings wrapped in linen and eyes so full of soul that it takes my breath away.

this is my tribe, my Love-sisters. and we've made a circle of shoes on the ground where we all sit together, this holy sacred place that hums with hints of Lion's song still so alive in the earth. and we plant our seeds, one beside the other, and watch them lift their boughs to the sky and murmur, He-Who-Sees is here. 

and we hold hands and hum familiar notes that shimmer in the new-breathed air from a Lion's mouth, the place where we have all found ourselves. there is water there, for we are deep-living mermaids with transforming souls. there is fire there, soft and warm to comfort shivering souls. and softly, together, we seek His face.

and we are holding hands and whispering together

gentle, gentle 
:: we are brave