I wake up earlier than normal on Tuesday, back in Nashville. I get a glass of water and take a breath that seems to shake all the way in and all the way out. I decide to go through the exercise in my bedroom and sit down cross-legged on top of the covers. I let my eyes fall shut and try to connect with the Divine, the earth, and the sky.
“Show me where it hurts,” I say with my eyes closed.
I take out my black Walgreens notebook and create three lists like she taught me. The first is titled “Childhood.” I write down anything painful I can remember from when I was a little girl. It feels like nonsense.
Playground
Mom
Can’t read/not smart
Bathtub
White dance at Jackson Hall
The next list is called “Present Day,” and contains anything that comes up from ages eighteen until today. It doesn’t matter if the things seem small—if I remember, Nicole says, they’re important. I breathe in and continue:
Headaches
College. Binge eating.
I’m surprised when I think of it. For years, I convinced myself that college was a happy time, but the words arrive on the page and I remember. I was numbing my pain with food, overconsuming, then dieting. I was isolating and then showed up with a smile on my face.
I keep going, and one by one, painful memories I thought had disappeared return to me.
Jack and Allie
The church
US politics
Infertility
Daddy’s death
And on and on. I feel myself wanting to drift away. My mouth is dry and my heart is beating too fast. I take another sip of water and continue. The third list is “Personality,” all the masks I feel I must wear to feel safe in the world, to be loved and accepted:
Needs affirmation
Smiles when in pain
Tries to be good and accepted
Codependent
The lists can go on and on, but this is where I stop. The messy little scrawls look harmless on the paper, yet they hold so much weight for me, weight I’ve always felt but never really understood. I stare at the little crooked blue words knowing that they’re the gateway to pain, to darkness, anger, shame, ugliness—things I’ve never, ever allowed myself to feel, let alone express.
Next, I grab my computer. I’m supposed to write about the things from the list for twenty minutes every day, say the things I’ve never given myself permission to say or release, things that weren’t “good” that I’ve always felt but repressed. I’m nervous. I set the timer for twenty minutes, open my computer, and go.
Something comes over me. I place my fingers on the keys and they move. I don’t even have to think. The words on the list that are screaming the loudest open massive, gaping wounds I forgot that I even had:
I’m nine years old next to my beautiful mom, feeling like I’m not pretty enough.
I’m watching Jack’s eyes, a shade of brown I’ll never forget, glow wildly for Allie.
I’m watching myself talking from a stage to a large group of people and wanting to feel their love, craving it like a drug.
I hear myself moan and cry; I hear the keys hammering and hammering and hammering away. The timer goes off. I don’t look at what made it from my brain to the screen. Nicole told me not to. I just select it all and delete it. I continue the practice every morning.
Little by little, I feel released. Some days when I write I scream. Others, I’m so overcome with grief that I can barely breathe. I call people horrible, vile names and I weep, unearthing the profound ache of living in a world without my daddy, without a partner, without my own children. I give myself permission to feel freely and deeply, to look into my own shadows without fear or shame and also to bask in my light without feeling undeserving of warmth. After I go off on somebody or something and let go of the pain that connects me to them, I perform a love meditation, constructing a beautiful new bridge from my soul to theirs. I get still again, cover myself in love and grace, and then I send it on to whomever it was I was angry with. I imagine a chain of little heart bubbles. As the weeks go on, I begin to feel a peacefulness in my body.
After two months, I can look back at Jack with love. He stuck by me and supported me when I was in agony. I’m grateful to him and I’m grateful for us. We were just babies. We did our best, and we were dealing with so much. I can look back at the church with love too. I see the way it tried to protect me, love me, and shelter me from what it believed were evils and hold me close. The Christian church gave me order, and as my life circumstances pushed me through disorder, once I was able to confront the hurt I felt during those years, it led me to examine what it was I really did believe.
I recognize that I suffered a major spinal cord injury. I know my neck has more in common with a toaster oven than it does with a regular neck, but as I release emotional trauma, I begin to feel physical pain lift away. I can walk in my neighborhood. I can hold my friends’ children. I can travel. I talk about healing because I’m finally beginning to believe in it. I still feel pain, but I also feel peace and release and I’m in awe. The pursuit of a beautiful life once drove me to move and see and do, but it begins to call me toward quiet and stillness.
For the first time in my life I start meditating daily. I was always afraid to be still; the pain screamed too loud in the quiet and I never thought I could handle it, but as I trust in myself and stay present, I realize the divinity in me speaks even louder. I start seeing the divinity in all of us, in everything that Mother Nature touches, from the dirt to the mountaintops. I try to go to her church daily, grounding my feet in the earth and feeling a sense of oneness and harmony with the world. I stop trying just to serve others and instead try to learn from them. I try as gracefully as I can to learn about racism, human rights, my own privilege, and inclusivity. I want to use my voice and my platform to advocate for voices that aren’t being listened to. I have so much to learn.
* * *
I think about the oneness of us all, of everything. I want to explore it deeper. It’s Holy Week and I’m at a monastery in rural Kentucky surrounded by a thick evergreen wood. The birds are loud here, cackling crows with shiny blue-black wings and yellow finches that can’t sing very well at all but try anyway, just like I do. I don’t say anything back to them as they whistle at me, because I came here for complete silence. The idea of a silent retreat is scary to me at first. I love to speak, I do it for a living, but now I know the truth that can be found when you just stop and listen.
My room is small and simple: a single bed with a thin blue blanket, a desk made of buttery blond wood, and an unadorned cross stuck to the wall. In the mornings, I meditate, I do my JournalSpeak as quietly as I can, and I stretch my body. I’m surprised by how open it feels, how gracefully I move when shame and fear aren’t tugging at my muscles. At noon, I have my soup and bread and then I play in nature. Mother Earth has been one of my greatest teachers. I missed her when I was living in my bed; we have so much lost time to make up for.
I walk outside into a drizzle on my third day of silence. The woods are out back. I’m not sure how far they go, but there are a lifetime’s worth of journeys to take in them, dozens of trails, each with its own ever-changing secrets: a network of skinny brooks, a tree as wide around as the house I grew up in, a family of anxious brown rabbits trying to disappear against the dirt. Today, I take a new path and though I don’t know where I’m going, I feel safe, held close by the Divine, at home and connected to my body. Occasionally, another silent seeker passes by me on the trail. We nod and continue our respective soul searches, steps sinking into the mulch and grounding us to the earth.