“And then the day came when the risk to remain tight as a bud was more painful than the risk to bloom.”

–Anais Nin

How do I re–choose myself, my young self, loved, protected and valued; my belonging and grand promise secured in my mothers’, my fathers’, my extended families’, tender caresses and the light in their adoring eyes?  How can I forgive them enough that they failed and men of the cloth, and their wives and mistresses, betrayed me, all of us, and we, unwillingly, betrayed ourselves and each other?

Am I willing to invite that child, that me, that joy–filled–delightful–curious–trusting girl out, now that all danger has been allowed to pass, after being hidden so securely, so deeply, for so long? 

Will I invite that sweet–gleeful–innocent girl to rejoin me after six decades of hiding, waiting, questing, remembering, confronting, revealing, confessing, testifying and challenging–challenging the harm grown inward to silence and crippling?

Will I invite her to live unhidden, unrepressed, uninhibited, unafraid and unsilenced and healed around the injured places among those of us who harbor and nurture our once hidden, repressed,  inhibited,  afraid and silenced and injured selves to full delight?

Together, will we welcome me, her, us? Will we hold her in belonging? Will we sleep, wake, pray, bathe, cook, eat, drink, dance, sing, drum, love in the joys of all of our journeyings, our comings and goings, and all of our returns?

Will we celebrate that me, that we, that us for saving my life, our lives?

Andrea R.Canaan  5.2021