Hey you.
You who writes.

You who keeps on writing.

You who pours out your hurt and your joy and your bliss and your ways of being and existing and understanding onto page and screen.

You who hits the submit button again and again. Even though you’ve papered an entire wall in rejection letters, because you know that somewhere there is a home for your words and if you keep trying you will find it.

You who writes in private, in secret, in the darkest back corner of your closet after everyone else has gone to sleep just so you can write the whole of you.

You who writes to follow the trail, to chart the course, to make your own map through the mystery.

You who writes the path to your own redemption, because you know that clawing your way back to forgiveness of self is the only way through.

You who writes in silence, in a whisper, in invisible ink.

You who writes with the risk of being dismissed, dishonored, ignored because the risks of not writing are even greater.

You who writes because nobody else is willing to tell the truth and the truth must be told.

You who writes to bring the perpetrator to justice.

You who writes to fuel the revolution, to feed the fire, to create the necessary unrest.

You who writes to bring the people into the streets.

You who writes so that your children and their children and their children will know.

You who writes until you are bleeding and then uses the words to staunch the flow.

You who writes to lift others even when you are writing through the thick haze of your own tears.

You who writes to shine a harsh and uncompromising light on what is unjust, on the wrong doing, on the abuse occuring in the shadows.

You who writes to unbreak your own heart.

To you who writes to weave the magical stories that lull the babies to sleep at night.

You who writes to make visible the ones who do the hard and lonely and dangerous work and who risk it all just to stay alive.

You who writes in gratitude and thanks that you are able to bring worlds to life on paper.

You who writes to give voice to the things nobody else is willing to say.

You who writes so that the invisible can be seen, the marginalized brought to center, the spotlight moved away from the stars and onto the ones in the background who make the show go on.

You who writes to make a thing real, to recreate the past, to return to yourself, to mark in ink the path of a new beginnings. 

You who writes the body. The heat and salt and sex of it.  The truth of blood and vein and the secrets the bones hold. The soft and wet and want. The body that winds and dances in the shadows. The body that heals trauma by naming and claiming her own pleasure.

You who writes to claim space, to name yourself, to create a new world you can stand to live in.

You who writes to own your history or accept your present or shift your future.

You who keeps writing love letters to the one long gone or the one not yet arrived or to fall in love with the miracle of your own being.

You who writes to make peace with the ghosts, to release the steam, as a substitute for the therapy you cannot afford.

You who writes because the world inside you is so magical and so real and even if nobody else believes you it must exist somehow, represented in concrete form.

You who writes because to not write would be like a form of death, and you’ve died too many times already.

You who writes to bring us all back to life.

You who writes to set the record straight, to hold the story, to alter the dominant narrative.

You who writes to bring hope to the hopeless and give voice the the voiceless, to share the stories of the ones nobody bothers to hear.

You who writes in the face of all that would silence you.

You who writes to craft beauty in the midst of devastation.

You who writes because the force of creation is what gets you out of bed each day.

You who writes to brighten hearts and lift spirits and to make the sun rise in the sky.

You who writes like the ocean, like waves crashing and crashing and crashing again against the shore of what is real.

You who writes the dance, the movement of clouds across the sky, the way the flowers blow in the breeze.

You who writes outside of the lines. Who ignores the rules. Who has no idea about grammar or punctuation or the correct way to spell things, but who writes anyway.

You who writes in an illegible scrawl on purpose to keep the stories safe from eyes unable to see the the beauty of your truth.

You who writes words that rise like smoke and fall like ashes, still alive from the fire.

You who writes to take the swirl of chaos and confusion and, waving pen like magic wand, makes the spinning stop and the truth rise to the surface, clear and true, like a fortune teller conjuring the future from her crystal ball.

You who writes only the necessary, who casts multitudes from scarcity, who takes the story of the entire universe and reduces it to the exact few words that say everything that has ever needed to be said.

You who writes even though they told you that you could not. That should should not. Who writes over the red pen marks and bad grades from teachers who thought writing had to follow the textbook.

You who writes the things that push people up against their own limitations, their prejudice, their hard edged bias, who forces us to see the things we would rather ignore. You who are willing to endure the discomfort of pushback in order to help us all grow.

You who writes the edges and pushes the boundaries and then calls the words back into the center.

You who writes the trauma. Writes the pain. Writes the ugly words that we don’t want to read but can’t turn away from, not because you want to, necessarily, but because you know we all we need to stay present with what is real.

You who writes the worst of the hurricanes and tornadoes of reality and then keeps writing all the way into the eye of the storm where everything is peaceful and beautiful and true.

You who writes the imaginary, the fantasy, the fiction, and in the writing you conjure a world that is deeply real and alive. 

To writes who writes with irrepressible joy bubbling up through your cells, giddy with the knowledge that only you could write this particular story.

You who writes in service to the cause, to the greater good.

You who writes the birth, the death, the honest everyday mundanities of our humanity. The messy and the boring and the deeply human.

You who writes to honor who has come before, to uplift the wisdom of your ancestors and the truth of those who walked the lands long before we were here.

You who writes in the stolen moments, on the grocery store receipts, who scribbles poems on the inside curve of your elbow, inking skin with novels that wash away in the shower but that mark you forever.

You who writes to create a truth that is more true than reality that you are living. 

You who writes under a name not your own in order to write the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

You who writes to understand what you already know and to learn what you need to understand and embrace the unknowing of all that exists beyond comprehension.  

You who writes to remember the details your brain will not hold.

You who writes your way into your own wide open life.

You who writes. Period.

To heal the world. To right the wrongs.  To save a life. 

Because you couldn’t stop, even if you tried.

It is a brave and beautiful thing to create stories in the face of all that would stop you.

You do that. And it is everything.

The post For the ones who write appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

The post Dear 2017. A love letter appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

I see you, turning on the shower and standing under the hot spray, hoping that waterfall of sound is enough to muffle the signs of your tears from the children outside.

I see you, holding up the weight of the world and trying so very hard and knowing, in your bones, that it just won’t be enough to keep it all from crashing down.

I see you there; arms stretched in asana, the mantra of your heart beating steady onward – Stay true. Stay true. Stay true.

I see you, loving so good and strong. And losing it all anyway.

I see you, being judged and found wanting.

I see you looking at her. I see your naked desire. I see your relentless need.

I see you, flawed and humble and road weary and proud and still in spite of the deep ache, somehow sure you’ve done all you can.

I see all you feel but cannot speak. I see the way the words grow and swell, expanding your chest and pressing against the confines in your throat until they form the most unbearable pain, and the air around you so heavy with the weight of words unsaid.

I see the way your chest caves in and your shoulders curl around and your arms hold your knees so tight that you circle in upon yourself.

I see how in spite of this you are expanding, even though others wish you small and in spite of your own efforts to keep peace. I see that you are a wild thing, not meant for containment.

I see you setting that boundary. I see you marking that line and choosing a side and I see that steely resolve that means you have found your way back to yourself.

I see how you want and want and want. I see the unceasing swell of your desire. I see how you look in those spaces, small and large, where you begin to know that desire as holy.

I see you there, in the moment that last burning ember of hope died. I see your face then, the way it went blank for a moment and the pain that flashed in your eyes. And then I see you pull it back together, because there is laundry to do and children to care for and a family that needs you – and what else is there to do but continue?

I see how you always continue. How survival is in your bones. How thriving is what you were born for. How you were meant to rise.

I see you rising, you beautiful phoenix. I see your wise heart. I see your hot tears. I see your bruised knees. I see your prayers rising like poems around you in the cold night air.

I see you in your spiraling doubt and I see you weaving in and out of the shadows and the demons and the ghosts of those gone but not forgotten. I see you dancing there, and it is beautiful.

I see your knowing and your not wanting to know and I see the way every plea you make sounds like that one name you’ll never stop calling out in your sleep.

I see you on your good days and I see you on your bad days. And I see what lives there, just beneath your skin, on the days when you know for sure that very few pay close enough attention to tell the difference.

I see you, in your fierce insistence on living as true as you can, in spite of all the breaking.

I see you, by the light of so many candles and the unmistakable glow of grief. I see you folding and refolding that handwritten note that once held the promise of all things.

I see the way you live every breath as redemption.

I see you in your grace and in your grit and in the way they meet in the very center of things.

I see you there, searching for that just sad enough song song that will release all that is bottled inside. I see you let it go and I see you go to ground with the sobs that look as if they will break you into pieces.

I see you take that breath. And inhale again. And I see your resolve settle in your bones. I see you rise again, still broken, and somehow always whole.

I see you, beneath the surface. I see your untamable wild. I see your billowing heart. I see your unshed tears and your not yet dreams and your devotion to spirit. I see you howl at the moon and call the ocean home and ground to earth and grow taller than the trees.

I see you.

You are not alone. You are not invisible.

You are seen. You are seen. You are seen.

And my god, you are beautiful.

x0,

The post You are seen. You are seen. You are seen. appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

I know you.

I know you wear your heart on your sleeve.  I know that heart is pieced together from soft driftwood and tattered suitcases and old skeleton keys and the shards of pottery you’ve tucked in your pockets from all the things you’ve seen break along your journey.

I know your soul glitters with the fragments of love affairs and fiery passion and endless nights of candlelight and whispers against bare skin.  I know you hear the echoes of long gone trains and feel the pulse of memory reminding you of things you’ve not encountered in this lifetime. I know that sometimes, the way sunlight filters through trees can bring you to your knees in breathless gratitude.

I know the path has taken you to unexpected worlds and that you’ve seen beauty beyond measure and experienced the sort of kindness that cracks you wide open.  I know it has also been hard and your edges have been made rough and sharp and then worn down, again and again.  I know that you’ve been told that you feel too much and that you can’t quite shake the fear that you’ll never truly be enough.

And I know you are tired, love. I know the ache lodged in your bones. I know it has been a long road and you yearn for rest and comfort and home. But I’ve also seen you twirling, barefoot in the grass by moonlight. And that moon? She is dancing with the sun and this wild spinning earth, coaxing the ocean to crash on the shore, over and over again, just for you. And I know there are stars traveling unfathomable distances and burning to dust when they enter our atmosphere so that you can breathe a little bit of light into your soul when you need it the most.

And then there is you. Throwing open the doors, ushering the spirit inside and keeping your rebel heart pulsing strong. You. Keeper of wonder. The child of every revolution this world has ever seen. What power you hold. What tremendous mystery and magic live in your center. How blessed this world is to know the mystical, untamable brilliance that is you.

Just look around you. At the beauty and the bliss. At the terror and the teardown. At the utter certainty and every last unknown. It is all a part of your story. Part of how you were made. Embers of grace and grit. Ashes of breakdown and breakthrough.   Born of fire.  Made of light.  Badass with a side of sacred wisdom.  Exploding like fireworks across the night sky.

You. Thank you for sharing this earth with me.

Blessed be.

Jeanette

The post embers of grace and grit {a love letter for driftwood hearts} appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

The time of grasping tight and trying hard and still, in the end, being forced to let go. Of fingers locked tight and pried stiff from that which you’d hoped to hold for so very long.

It’s been the falling down time. The confused and lost and broken time. The ill-fitting skin that begs to be shed time. The kneecaps bruised from prayer time. The time of keening howl that rises from the center of the earth and pleads, no more. Not now. Please.

The endings, they came to you slowly. Pulling away inch by imperceptible inch. Till suddenly you realized the hand you’d held for years had slipped from yours and you were now reaching across a chasm of relentless empty.

And they came sudden. Hard and fast, so that there you were, without warning, curled in a fetal position on the rough carpet of an unfamiliar hotel room floor, black eyeliner smeared across your face and a lifetime ocean of tears being pulled like the tides from your obliterated heart.

You knew it was coming. You collected the red flags and tucked them back in the corner  – hidden behind stacks of books scrawled with all the stories you told yourself so that you could continue to believe what you desperately needed to believe. Every now and then you took out those flags and counted them, didn’t you? As if by will you could force their numbers to decrease.  You couldn’t.  We never can.

And you. You had no idea. Blinders and rose-colored glasses have been your specialty for years. You’ve got a closet full. They kept you so safe. But on that last day there were no storm clouds, no early warning system to get you to shelter. Just a tornado that swept in from the east and flattened every last thing it touched. Until in the aftermath there was just you, standing in the midst of the rubble of a entire life.

You’ve been left. You walked into strong open arms and found a home that you imagined would be shelter and protection into a beautiful future. You had so much hope and faith, cloaked in all that tender cynicism. And such a hard layer of hurt hiding just beneath your fearlessly optimistic heart. And still, you gave yourself over to the sheer bliss of believing. You didn’t know you still had it in you to be that happy.

And you’ve done the leaving. You’ve walked away from the deepest of loves because you had to break before you were broken again. Because your wrecked runs so deep that there wasn’t enough love in all this world to hold your ache. Because in the end, you had to save yourself. Because, in the end, that’s all any of us can ever do. And nobody knows as well as you, just how much it costs to leave.

But here you are, love. Here WE are.

Still standing. Fierce with the reality of love and loss. Wearing the truth of our hearts on our tattered sleeves. And yes, this one very nearly took us out. And yes, there were days when the darkness was heavy and the climb out of that rabbit hole required us to mine our depths for strength we didn’t even know we had.

And here we are.

Broken open by hope. Cracked wide by loss. Full of longing and grief and the burn of that phoenix fire.   Warrior painted with ashes. Embers from the blaze still clinging to our newborn skin, leaving us forever marked with scars of rebirth.

And just look at you. Heart broken but still beating. Arms empty but still open. Face raised to the sky and giving thanks for the light, even when it hurts your eyes.

My god, you are beautiful.

And this love. This loss. The one you have pulled around you like a blanket that still keeps you warm at night. Even though it is tattered and worn and full of holes and has no shelter to offer. It is a conduit. A bridge that you have unwillingly crossed. On one side who you were, and on the other who you will be. It was a long, lonely walk.

The ache is a ferocious kind of alchemy, the catalyst for transformation. The unanswered call? It creates the space and the silence you needed to learn to once again hear your own voice. The unmet hope gifts a crystalized understanding of your holy need. The longing that still curls in stubbornly hopeful tendrils from your open wounds? These will be your roots, seeking through hard earth to find you exactly what you need to thrive. The grief that took you the ground? It will help form the bedrock of your eventual rise.

So here we are, you and I. Grief is both relentless isolation and a common language that all hearts speak. Look into my sea glass eyes. Let me see your angel face. We come together in our sorrow because loss knows loss and needs no translation. And we come together in our joy, and our hope and our begin again – because always, it is together that we rise.

So yes love, I know this has been a losing time. And I know there were moments you imagined you might not survive. But here you still are, just like me. Here we still stand. Here our hearts still beat. Here we still love.

And in the end, you are here, broken and whole and still alive. Made even more tenderly beautiful in the depths of the shatter. Finding your way back to the truth of your soul and listening to the song of your stubbornly beating heart. And in the end, there is no greater testament to the power of love than this.

 I tell stories with music as well as words.  Listen with me on spotify.
A playlist for the ache || A playlist for the dream ||  A playlist for a hopeful heart

The post broken || open {a love letter for the broken-hearted} appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

It’s true.  Not everything will be okay. This is not okay. It’s the deepest ache. It’s a solid core of loss layered on top of loss. I know it is.

But there you are in that small, quiet room, and although it – all of it – may not be okay – you will.

You will.

I feel this deep and true and right in the marrow of my bones. You will be okay and more than okay and so much more than you could possibly know.

There will be love. The kind of love that changes everything. And maybe more heartache. And so much laughter and breathless kisses and the hard fall of tears.

There is so much more ahead.  And it is so very good.  I promise.  I know this.

I hope that I get to see you love what you are. To know yourself as gift and worth and truth.

That you see what a huge thing it is to have the courage to break your own heart.  That you have chosen wholeness – even when it has shattered you. And that you will one day see that you can be whole and broken in the exact same spaces, that they nestle side by side – and that this is the way of things.  Not your punishment for wrongdoing, or for not trying hard enough – but just the way of things.

That you can stand and look at yourself in a mirror and see your goodness right there, see the worth of what you bring on the surface of your skin, just like I do.  That you trust there is brilliance to come.

That you own what is yours to own, both the bad AND the good.  That you do not insist on owning it all.  It was never all yours to hold.  Release to the wind, love.  Let it be carried away on the breeze.

It does not serve you now.

I know you, and your darkness and your shadow and all the things for which you practice self-flagellation.  And I still see you as good, and true and strong and powerful and exquisitely present in this world.

You have not chosen the easy way. Life has not granted you a gentle path. Not even close. But you have followed your own trail, again and again and again. You have done what you needed to move forward. You have placed one foot in front of the other and kept on going – even when that was the most difficult thing to do.

You have defined your space and your territory.  You have said  ‘This is mine.  You may not enter now’.  And you meant it. And you stood by it, even when it was impossibly hard.

And all of this, my friend, is no small thing. 

In fact, these are all very large things.  Infinite and powerful and true.

The voices in your head that say otherwise? These are born not from truth but from the stories others have created for you. These stories do not have to be yours. Even if they once were, you need not accept them any longer.

Give them back. Every last one.

You’ll write a new story now, on a blank page, with a new pen and in your own incomparable voice.

I wish for you so very much. Seaside wishes and spin the bottle daydreams. Lucky pennies and shooting stars. A safe place to fall and a high place to leap from into the deepest pool of the clearest water.

I hope that you shed the shackles of past and grief and loss and betrayal.  That you are possessiveness of your own wilderness.  That you stake your claim and encircle your space with charm and enchantment and only grant entrance to those who bring you fully alive.

I wish for you space to cultivate a relationship with your own divinity. No external god, but the divine that lives within your own stubbornly pulsing heart. I wish you the energy and emotion of the greatest love affair, given as a gift to yourself.

That you come home to the woman you are and the woman you are becoming. And then I hope you find what it is to love another in your mother tongue, a love that requires no translation and only delivers the ease of being fully known and fully seen.

A love that brings you alive and that carries you home.

No mistake, this is the phoenix fire part.

The burning down to ashes part.

The preparing to rise again.

This is a space without anchor, without moorings. Even the north star may be obscured by clouds.

But your compass lies within.

Your soul knows your truth north.

Can find it without map or directions.

You need only trust yourself enough to listen to the whispers of your valiant soul.

Lay your head in my lap, love. Tell me your stories.  The ones that have formed you into the gift that you are.

Now take a breath and let it go. Let it all go. Let the sea breeze carry it away. Let your tears fall.

You will be held now.  You will be carried. You can stop running. You can cease the endless motion and constant struggle.

You are home. You can rest now. You are safe.

And maybe, just maybe, now you can be still.

The post the solid core of loss upon loss. appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.