The Return

The Return

This piece and the poem that follows is about the feelings and growth that come from no longer searching for meaning, love and acceptance outside ourselves and instead realizing that all the answers and things we are looking for are already within us. 

It's about letting go of the quest for something out there and returning to ourselves, unburying the parts we’ve hidden from the world and even from ourselves and welcoming them home.

It’s about ripping up the hundreds of maps and how-to's and promises of deliverance, braving stripping away the masks we’ve hidden behind, and gently and tenderly finding forgiveness and compassion as we heal our own hearts with the wellspring of love that is our birthright.

Healing is not about finding, searching, or discovering….healing is about remembering, uncovering, forgiving, and loving.

 

 

The Return

 

Searching, striving, pleading

Desperately reaching

For someone, something, outside myself

To remedy my heart.

 

A desire to be seen and known

And pronounced enough

Was clouded by the belief

That I was nothing

Imperfect on my own,

Prone to wander,

To disappoint.

 

The painting on the wall showed a man

Hand outstretched from under the water

Hoping for deliverance

Even as he drowned.

 

It seemed beautiful,

His humble desperateness,

His sole hope for deliverance

In a power and source

Standing above him on the waves.

 

I thought it was beautiful

Until I myself ran out of breath

And realized at the peak of pain

That I could stand.

 

Flooded with new awareness,

Touched to my core with truth,

I felt in my very bones a course correction

Bringing eagerness, purpose,

And freedom to my soul.

 

What I thought was a quest

Was actually a return.

There was nothing to prove, to find, to figure out

That wasn’t already within me.

 

Strength, freedom, abundance, peace

These were my birthright.

Not something I had to search for,

Reach for, or even become.

 

Rather, they were simply beneath the surface,

Waiting for me to uncover, reclaim, and restore.

Calling me with a voice so tender,

To return to who I was all along.

 

Like a drop of water falling from the sky,

I had cried over my separation from the river,

The ocean, the source from which I came

Only to joyfully wake up with the comprehension

That in every form–rain, fog, ice, a cloud–

I had always been water,

The separation was only an illusion.

 

I’ve thrown away the map,

Torn off the masks,

And though disorienting at times,

This path of waking up to who I am has felt familiar,

Like remembering your childhood bedroom

Or reconnecting with a favorite song.

 

There is so much to return to within me,

A wellspring of love and light to receive.

The path is no longer dim or desperate,

But paved with safety, warmth, and a feeling of home.

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