Tag: rebirth

Soften this Sadness

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Nobody told me how to use my voice. Nobody told me how to write my poetry although they most certainly tried to.

I guess what I’m trying to say here is that it’s difficult to emerge sometimes from challenging situations with a heart full of gratitude and softer eyes for having undergone such tribulations.

But that’s what I strive to do every day — to emerge sweet despite the contrast, which has informed my pathway and candid resolution.

I think that every word I share on this blog and in my life has been marked by the promise to soften to these words and moments in this liminal space.

Because the more I live, the more I’m beginning to realize that those who’ve hurt me didn’t realize they could have realized better in their lives. The way I see it, every emotion at one point existed as suppressed sadness. When I sit with that cardinal fact, I’m left speechless in all honesty.

So, I present you with this oath, this sentimental promise: I will continue writing candidly in this space because every emotion, which has passed before me was once repressed by him and her and all those who did not believe in me because they could not realize better for themselves.

Magic in The Secret Garden

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Front Cover of The Secret Garden, 1911 US Edition

I’ve been thinking about a statement Mary Lennox declares in The Secret Garden. She says to Colin that if he “make[s] them open the door and take [him] in like that it will never be a secret garden again” (Burnett 130).

In the very beginning of The Secret Garden, Mary keeps the abandoned garden she has recovered a secret primarily because she wants to revive it and she witnesses and recalls herself in this piece of earth.

By tending to the garden, she inadvertently tends to herself and becomes less sullen, gloomy, and alone. Mary finds solace in the bit of earth she cares for as she finds solace and a kind of love in herself.

But, I keep returning to this point of the magic in a secret garden or any secret really. I believe Mary didn’t want to share the secret of the garden because she was afraid she would lose herself in being tender and revealing an undisclosed aspect of herself to another — a familiar, a stranger: her first cousin.

When I think of my own life, I often think of the secret smiles I’ve kept to myself — those memories I’ve shared with only another — a memory no one else will be able to recover.

I think that’s what Mary spoke about at the end of the day.

There’s magic in a secret garden. There’s magic in the parts of ourselves we thought were abandoned but then tended to and watched bloom.

And there’s magic in this ancestry and me and you.

Unexpected Leaves at TSA

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This morning, as I made my way to the airport, I was in a rush, surrounded by metallic drab grays and blues with insincere faces and the imminent will of the clock speeding me up.

I reached for my great grandmother’s gold necklace and fixed it onto my neck, combatting a headache and a sleepy daze, which I hadn’t been able to shake since last night.

I’m going home, I kept thinking.

As I rifled through my pockets at the TSA station, I discovered this memento I stowed away days ago from Yosemite Park. Instantly, it brought a smile to my face and made me remember, just like that, the divinity of this moment.

I’ll close off this note by wishing you well on your journey. Make sure you pack spare leaves and mementos as you traverse the darkest corners and emerge brilliant and golden with everything to show for it.

-Ilyssa

Charting Passings of 100 Years

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Lasted through the weight of the pandemic, succumbed to a flash flood in 2021.

A week ago, the saguaro cactus near where I live fell down. In my neighborhood park, this cactus occupied a strange, archaic in-between when I first discovered it.

I attached a myriad of meanings to this relic. This cactus became a marker of my journey — an artifact still standing in its place, despite the passing of one-hundred years. I found beauty in this relic. I found solace in its present orientation in the world, even as it leaned forward, rather like the picture of the Tower of Pisa. In its rather mechanical nature, it stood exposed, skin peeled back to reveal nature’s bones. I admired its pursuit to remain through August, September, October and until the end of July of 2021 when it was displaced in a flash flood.

I couldn’t help wonder why the elemental force of the flash floods brought an end to this cacti’s journey of one-hundred years (potentially more), but I think that’s beside the point.

I’ve realized the power of foundations within nature and as evident within my own life. Sooner or later, this artifact of nature was meant to fall, to decompose — all in the name of eventually being reborn.

So, today, as I walked past this ancient composition of nature, I couldn’t help but smile, all in the name of remembering what Walt Whitman once said, “Has anyone supposed it lucky to be born? / I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it” (Leaves of Grass, Norton Critical Edition, p. 666).

I plant myself for a new arrival as I honor the one-hundred years, which came before me. I give gratitude to the lives of my ancestors and for the foundations, which once served them. Lastly, I pray the cactus I spied months and months ago is given a proper burial where she belongs, finally at home to be reborn once again.