Coda
In the early morning of my first book's publication, the rain roared as I sipped my tea. It was the kind of rain that sounds alive, that sounds like the land moving.
There has been such a terrible fear in the build-up to all this. I have had to be so vulnerable in telling my story. I have worried that by writing about my life, aspects of my most flawed self or my past would rise up like rocks and crush me. I have had nights of gasping terror as if they were already all around me, pushing me under, down, down where there is only darkness and suffocation and determined, punishing hands. I have sat, braced, waiting for the fall. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I have said. A pleading prayer, as if sorrow and shrinking might keep me safe.
But when the day came, the dawn didn't come soft or appeasing, it arrived fierce, roaring, and I did too. Like turning towards a mirror, I saw myself doubled. I saw that this quaking, apologetic creature might merely be an echo: just the ghost of a past self. Not who I am, here and now. My fear is an old script, and not one I have need of anymore.
New words have landed clear and certain in the days since: this woman, this day, knows who she is and knows how she wants to live. She isn't a cowering mouse. She is strong. I am strong. Something has changed and it is love, I think. I feel so powerfully in love, with my life, my people. I stand firm and certain in what love can do.
It is a strange synchronicity that this is happening at the same time that everyone else has begun to talk about the lifting of restrictions, of reclaiming lives. Some seem terrified, some gung ho, but when I search inside myself, what I find is resolve. Whatever happens, what I want is a chance to stretch more into myself and how I want to live. A book release, a lifted lockdown: it's all as good a time as any to commit to that.
I feel feet-flat, back straight rooted. It is a strange and sudden emancipation. People have gathered around me, but not to protect a dependent, vulnerable creature, hidden in their arms, or to scaffold or patch-up wounds inside me. Love can be more than a shield: it can be a joining of strength, love and courage. We make a whole mountain together, my world, my people and I.
Maybe forgiveness, acceptance, maybe moving on, is about seeing clearly who you are now: letting yourself be something new and holding your past in those fresh, skilled hands. Maybe it takes more courage than we realise to let go of old stories and routines and all their pain and comfort. But now I know, if things need to be faced, I can face them with this adult, skilled, loving self. I do not need to regress. I do not need to be dragged back into submission. I can stand strong and love the whole span of my life bravely, honestly from this place. Deciding that instead of cowering, you will only use fear, use pain, to love and care all the harder... it changes your life, that.
I ask myself: what would it feel like to accept a new self, a new story? What if the mouse climbed the mountain?
The book is not born, I am. The new days pass and in each one, I get to take a step closer towards what I believe is true, vital, loving. I get to start again.
Thank you, thank you for that.