Hey you,

If you’re alone tonight and you don’t want to be —come join me in the togetherness we can always find when we stare up at the wisdom of the same bright moon. You whisper her your secrets, and I will whisper her mine, and she’ll hold them both safely and wink back at us to remind us that we’re never really alone as long as she’s watching.

If you’re in your own dark night of the soul and things seem bleak, and you’re not quite sure how you’re going to make it one more moment — come and sit here together with me in the sort of silence that knows all things. Let me light a candle as we sit in vigil for each other, because god knows we all need a little more light and a little more presence and a little more of something that feels like it should be called holy. 

If you’re grieving or heartbroken or wondering how you’re going to go on without someone in your life or in this world or in your heart or in your arms — I’ll meet you there, out in the place where hope retreats into the shadows.  I’ll tell you stories of all the times I had given up, only to find magic that I could never have seen coming. And you’ll remember stories of your own. And then we’ll throw our heads back and laugh at how easily we forget how much we’ve already survived and just how possible it is to love again and again and all over again. 

If your body is hurting, bones and muscle and joints and all the moving and beating and breathing parts not working like they should. If this robs you of independence or identity or ability or options or desperately needed rest. If the silence left in the wake of holding it in, of being stoic, of not letting on just how bad it really is becomes a roaring cacophony that fills in all the spaces. If it wears you down and down and down again, all that your one finite body must hold in a single day — give me some of your load to carry. Tell me where it hurts, let me lay my hands on the aching parts and offering healing and love and care and tenderness as if you already knew you deserved it.

If the bills are high and the tension is mounting, and you can’t see a pathway through no matter where you look. If it feels like everyone is looking to you for the answers and all you have are increasingly desperate questions. If you’re working deep into the night and waking before dawn and giving it your all only to feel like it all keeps slipping between your fingers — reach a little farther into that void.  Grab my hand and hold tight and I’ll hold tight too, and together we’ll remember just how much more you can carry and hold when you’ve got two sets of hands to do all the lifting.

If you’re so starved for connection, for contact, for the feeling of a body holding yours or to lie in the arms of another. If it’s been so long since your skin has felt the weight of another body that it tries to forget that it ever mattered and to erase the muscle memory of a time when it was here. If your skin is hungry and your body is ravenous, and your soul is desperate  — let’s just lie here, heart to heart. I’ll hold you, and you hold me, and we will stay without moving until the fierce animal of our bodies begin to relax and unwind into something that feels like breathing. 

If joy feels like a distant, far away thing. If you’ve wandered far enough off the path that you can’t quite sense yourself any longer. If questions about what you like or want or need send you into a tailspin of panic because you had forgotten you had a right to those answers.  If the sadness or the depression or the anxiety has cost so much, cut you off not only from the people you love but from the root of your own heart, come out into the earth with me, barefoot and ready. Let’s imagine we are trees, with the roots we most need growing out of our own feet and deep down into the earth, and the sun above raising our arms as branches to the sky so hungry for the light, and we are living and living and living without even knowing how, because we are. We always are. 

When all that you hold is too impossibly heavy, let’s find somewhere beautiful to lay it down together. 

When the hurt runs so deep and so high that the dam threatens to burst, let’s cut a swath through the terrain and thunder our way to the ocean. 

When you think that you’ve never felt more alone, let’s play marco polo at the top of our lungs until we can find each other in the dark. 

When it’s all just too much, let’s remind each other that we are always and forever precisely enough. 

When protection and walls and hurt have barricaded your heart, invite me over for a demolition party. 

When the demons speak loudly and try to convince you that you do not have worth, you call me up and let me remind you that you are priceless. 

When the silence fills the room, let’s turn up the music and dance. 

When it seems like there is no chance, let’s paint the walls with an endless list of just how many second chances got us to where we are right now. 

When the loss is too much to bear, let’s redistribute the weight and find a different way to carry the load. 

When the light threatens to go out, let’s light a thousand more candles until the whole world glows. 

You’re not meant to do this alone. 
You’re not meant to bear this alone.
You’re not meant to live through this alone. 
You’re not meant to have to keep all the lights lit or the demons at bay or the questions answered alone. 
You’re not meant to suffer in silence or deny your pain or hold it all inside alone.
You’re not meant to walk this alone, nor survive this alone, nor heal this alone.

We are not made to be alone. 

We are made for a complex and infinite web of love and family and community. We fit inside of it all, each a puzzle piece with a million possible placements, but not a single one that doesn’t fit somewhere and everywhere all at once. 

This is it, I am learning. The whole fucking reason for the whole fucking thing. We are in this together. 

We have to be, or it all ends. 

We have to be, or what’s the point?

We have to be, because if not, we just keep wounding each other. 

We have to be, because that is how we were made and this is what we were made for. 

So lay it all down, just for a moment. 

The pain, the hurt, the grief, the depression, the trauma, the heartbreak, the anxiety, the strain, the loneliness, the fear. 

The all.

All is not lost. 

You belong to something greater. 

I promise you this. 

We all do. 

We belong to each other. Fumbling caretakers though we may be. We belong to each other. 

So, lay every last bit down right now. 

And come find me, out there in the vastness of this world, this lifetime, this night. 

Come find me.

The post Come Find Me {We Belong Together} appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

Okay. So it might one day happen that you’re rushing through the grocery store on a school night, somewhere on your hastily scratched list between fire-roasted tomatoes and PB&J fixins’, just rolling the cart and contemplating life and what kind of cereal to buy.

And by you, of course, I mean me. And by me, I really mean all of us. Because that’s how these things work. That’s why we tell stories, ‘cause we’re all more the same than we are not, and it helps to find a home in the words of another.

But on this particular day in this particular aisle in this particular store, a song starts playing that has only told one story for longer than you can remember. You stop, can of organic tomatoes midway between shelf and cart, heart on the floor under the wheels of the cart of that exhausted looking mom and her sticky faced toddler rolling down the aisle toward the granola bars and fruit snacks.

It happens, it does, in the achy times. The holders of memory, — the songs and spaces and snippets of moments — they seem to be chasing us, reminding us of what was and what is and the big gaping hole in between the two. They come and find us, and we end up standing where we are, grocery store or concert hall or school or office or auto mechanic, rushing to cram our hearts back into our chests before anyone notices.

Right then, it’s possible that you could crumble into a pile of blame and self-recrimination. It’s possible that the sadness could take you over, because the loss, it is real and (on a good day) you’re way past the place of blaming yourself for having really big feels.

And listen, if it comes to that there’s probably a corner over by the organic lettuce that you could go hide in to shed some tears, but there are kids to feed and work to do, and reasons enough to soldier on. And besides, you’re trying to stretch this time.

Not trying, love. You ARE stretching. Because there is nothing else to be done.

So now you get to practice. Stretch past the way it’s always been, past the myths and repetition and separation. Stretch past the lies that love looks or feels a certain way or follows a timeline or shows up when and how we want it to. Past the self-protection that wants to shut it all down. Stretch past the really small idea that you ever know what is possible or what will happen or what the universe has in store.

While you’re at it, stretch WAY past the voices that have told you that the damage is too great for you to love and be loved and have love and know love.

Because that lie is the most wicked one of all.

And you, dear, you’re not just looking for a new way, you’re working for one. Walking on purpose toward something that looks like real healing. Something inside of you that dares to show up and stay steady and sustain. Something with courage and a lionheart. So instead of letting that song take you over, you take a breath right now, and you do what you’ve gotta do.

Focus in on the wisdom instead. Ask yourself your own best question.

What do I know to be true, right now?

And then answer (yes, right there in that grocery store aisle). No time like the present and the song is still playing, after all.

You can’t hold on to what isn’t, of course, that’s true. But you can dig deep into your gut and determine what it is you believe. Not the beliefs that landed you here (those were based on some seriously self-sabotaging bullshit), but the ones that live deeper than that.

You can ask yourself what the highest manifestation of love feels like when you’re wide open and ready, and you can channel that with all you have. You can slip-slide all sneaky like past the hurt that likes to close things down and expand into the open space on the other side. You can remember that a wise man once told you that you’d be happier when you quit trying to make meaning out of everything. And that a wise woman reminded you that the hardest thing of all was to stop being at war with yourself.

So stop being at war with yourself. Just for this moment.

You can remember that you’re here to love, and the only way you ever want to fight for anything is with unclenched fists and a wide-open heart. And yeah, open hands are good at letting go. But sometimes letting go is the only thing (fuckery of a cliche that it may be) that allows for the fullness of truth and the only way to allow space for a thing to return.

And you know what else open hands are good for? Grabbing possibility and holding on tight when the time comes.

You can remind yourself that you’ve written your own instruction manual many a time before, finding almost decade-old words in the deepest recesses of your brain, floating toward you as if delivered. Back then you thought you were writing to another, rather than freezing in time for yourself to breadcrumb your way back to one day in the canned goods aisle, but no matter. They are here now for a reason.

“Find your way to living in that sweet spot – between grief and acceptance – welcoming the ache but not nurturing it, holding the angst but not feeding it – and you’ll come to a different place.“

So when this happens, because in high likelihood it will, you’re going to have to put down that can of fire roasted tomatoes and you’re gonna have to reach deeper and deeper into the place where the love lives. The place that is the foundation and bedrock of you. The one that trusts and believes and hopes and knows. Sink down into that, because I promise it is here.

What do you believe? What do you know to be true? What does your heart tell you is still possible? Just how big can you love?

Whatever the answer to the last question, I guarantee is exponentially bigger than you can imagine. It always is.

You are here to love, and to heal (you’ve written all those words to yourself under the guise of writing for others too). The world knows it and mirrors it back to you every damn day. Give yourself grace for not always remembering, but deep down, I know you know it too.

The outcome of love (this or any other)? Not yours to know, nor control, nor wrangle into submission. Love is a slippery thing, and also when it’s time to stop sliding, all you can do is root down and hold your ground.

So find your roots. You’re gonna need ‘em.

So, what is yours? That can of organic fire roasted tomatoes and the cart full of nourishment. The eyes able to see the truth, the wisdom that knows it is time to seek healing.

And yes, the heart. YOUR heart. Fumbling and messy and wise. The heart that finally knows fully what it wants. And if you get steady enough with that, there’s not a sad song in the world that can shake you.

So pay for your groceries. Load up the car. Return to your home and sit down to type. Because moments of wisdom, they come and they go.

But a story written lasts forever.

The post A Story Written Lasts Forever (a self-talk story for the heartachy times) appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

This is me raw. No makeup, no attempt to pretty up. Just me, bare and real in the morning light. 

Sometimes I need to show up like this, to remember that I can. 

And today I’m not going to carefully craft a post, any more than I wanted to put on my game face, because that’s not where the energy lies. 

Today my heart is pounding truth, and I want to say every cliche thing I can think of to shake us all the fuck awake. Today I want to remind you of what we’ve all written or known or spoken at one time or another and what we all too easily forget. 

It’s all too short, my love, too brief, too rare, too delicate, too transient, too impossible to hold. The whole of this life, our loves, our spirits, and souls and bodies and beings. 

Here and then gone. Just like that.

We get to have what we have, and then we don’t anymore, and sometimes there is warning, and we can prepare, and sometimes there is not, and one tsunami of a wave knocks us over and tumbles us up and spits us out on the sand. 

But no matter how it goes down, love, none of this lasts forever. 

We don’t know how long we get to be here. We don’t know how long we get to love, or laugh or dance or sing or write or cry or show up for those who need us. And while we are here, we’re almost guaranteed to fuck up every last one of those things, just by virtue of being so impossibly, frustratingly human, fragile assholes that we are. 

So my god, dive into the cliche with me, right now. Sit for a second and remember how slippery our hold on all of this is. Remember how fucking blessed you are to love and be loved, in every second of every day. 

Remember that nothing is promised to you, but everything is possible. 

Don’t act out of fear or scarcity. Not out of anxiety or grasping. Just act because it’s all too precious and all too delicate and all too important not to give our all and our everything. 

If you love someone, good fucking god, say it and say it and say it again. 

If you need to leave to save yourself, then leave and do not look back. 

If your heart and soul are forever connected to someone, and you know it in your bones, for the love of all that is holy, fight for them with all you have. 

If there is a place or a person or a dream or a love calling to your soul – move mountains to get to where you need to be. 

If you’ve lost yourself along the way, claw your way back to your own beating heart with the last bit of strength in your body. 

If you have work you need to do in the world, or a story you need to tell, or a truth that needs to be spoken. Do it or tell it or speak it like it matters more than anything else. 

Right now, I can’t think of anything more holy than this. No larger imperative, nor deeper truth. 

Show up. Like you never have before. Fuck the protection and old wounds. To hell with saving energy for another day, or letting our doubts or scars win the round.

There’s no time for that.

To hell with it. Just go out and love, as hard as you can. Be brave. Reach out and hold on tightly to what matters. Do it like you might not ever get a chance again. 

Because you might not. Do you hear me? You might not.

The post be brave. love hard. dive into the cliche. (this life is too short) appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

I could feel her, out there in the universe. The blame and the flagellation and the tender heart. I know this space, intimately.

“What would someone who loves you deeply choose for you right now?”, I asked her.

“Hold everything I share completely safely and in non-judgment.” She replied

“My friend” I answered, thumbs typing truth and bearing witness via instant messager, “As far as I can tell from here you are doing exactly that. You are loving yourself so very well.”

“Today I’m just feeling like shit for all of the choices I’ve made,” came her response, pain and self-judgment arising like magic from the little text bubble on my screen.

And my response came tumbling out of me, faster almost than I could keep up with it.

Love, sometimes this life is about horrible choices.

There is a quote that stays with me, I first heard it in a song, but it comes from Jean-Paul Sartre.

“Freedom is what you with what has been done to you”

I”m sure you’d agree that often the worst of all damages are those we perpetrate against ourselves, and so I would add to that line, even what’s been done TO you BY you.

It’s hard to imagine that anything like freedom could live at the root of all our bad decisions, but I believe it is so.

So, we should do a thing sometimes, you and I.

Let’s fucking cover the goddamn walls with craft paper, the floors too.

Let’s write all our fucking horrible choices with a rainbow of sharpies.

Let’s write them big.

Bigger.

Larger than life (the way they live in our minds).

Let’s speak them all out loud. No excuses, no apologies, no hiding in a dark corner covered in a blanket of shame.

Let’s sing them and rage them and cry them free.

Just the real, no bullshit deal.

Let’s tell each other all the stories of how we have been the finest instigators of our own undoing.

Don’t forget the asshole moments. The selfishness. The sin without redemption. The broken promises and all the times we have been reckless with the most precious hearts. Get them all out too.

Remembering, of course, that memory is finite and false and a shitty recorder of actual history. So that’s really all they are, you know. Just stories. No more powerful and no more or less accurate than any of the others.

This might take a while, we’ve got some years of living to get through.

Day might turn to night, and we might still be at it.

There are so many bad stories to tell.

I get it, I’ve lived a life too.

And when we’re done. When we’ve covered the walls and the floors and maybe our own skin and laid bare our hearts, and we are emptied and it is complete. Then let’s take in all that proof of disaster and say:

“Okay, universe, look at the holy brilliant fuckups we are. Get a good look at us, standing here in the middle of this mess of our own making. See how human and how divine and how utterly unextraordinary we are”.

Let’s stand there in the aftermath and look at each other dead in the eyes until we cry and then let’s keep looking until we start laughing and then let’s laugh until we are dancing.

Let’s try to see if we can come up with anyone we know who couldn’t cover just as much paper as we have, or more. I’m guessing we can’t, so I say let’s throw our bad decisions one hell of a party. Let’s invite the neighbors and celebrate the holy wonder of this wreckage and invite them to add whatever shit they’ve been carrying around with them too.

We’re all walking around this earth way too heavy for our own bones.

So let’s throw off the weight. Tear down the paper. Rip it all to shreds. Paint over the worst of it. Dance on top of the whole damn thing. Trash the room with all of our bad decisions, until we are sweaty and breathing hard and the confetti of our miserable life choices tangles in our hair, proof of the way we carry them with us everywhere.

Let’s stand there in the aftermath, in the totality of what we have made, in the middle of a room, in the middle of a life built on shitty ass decisions, terrible choices, horrible lapses of judgement, moments built on anger and fear and loathing and trauma and the massive self-sabotage fuckery of the life we have built.

A life
Built.
Two people.
Standing.
In spite of all the reasons maybe we shouldn’t be.
All the moments that could have taken us off this earth.
Still here.

You and I, love. We are still here.

Finding freedom from what has been done.

Making beauty from the wreckage.
Creating life from the unliveable.
Cause that’s what we do, babe, me and you and everyone like us
We make beauty out of the worst possible things.
And if we were not here to do that.
To live in truth.
To call it out.
To bare our skin.
To show others what is possible.
Well, so many of them wouldn’t live quite as much, or risk quite as much or live quite as wide open as they could.

And that’s not nothing my friend.
Far from it.
That, my dearest, is everything.

The post Creating Beauty From the Wreckage appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

It’s a beautiful gift to self to come to the earth gradually and with breath and sunlight, rather than by the blare of an alarm clock. To move slowly through that period of transition. To stretch and unfurl.

And so today I decided to do something I have not done in a while, to roll out my yoga mat and give myself the gift of a short ten-minute practice.

As I do every single time I return, feeling the stretch of muscles that have been begging for release and the way breath settles deeper somehow, and the way my feet root into the earth just a little more solidly, I wonder:

Why on earth do I ever allow myself to move away from this, when there is nothing about this that does not feel needed and good?

And then it came to me, as I bent and twisted, reaching and breathing and feeling the tightness and constriction name itself, and maybe even release, just a tiny bit.

This is what it is to be human, to be walking around in these bodies of blood and bone and breath. This is the journey, to return to ourselves again and again, just as I – no matter how long away – will always return to the mat.

I’m never the star in yoga class. I don’t have the natural flexibility, nor do I usually stick to it for long enough to unlock what holds me on a more deep level. I have bent knees when others are straight. My spine curves when it ought to be lengthened. I can never quite manage to balance in crow. And so it is that I often feel the same in life. Moving slower than I would like through whatever muck I find myself in. Turning right when the rest of the room is turning left. Never quite finding the balance to master the more challenging balances with finesse and grace.

And I lose myself. Again and Again. Despite how damn good it feels when I return to wholeness and embodiment. I abandon the practice. I leave, or perhaps it is more honest to say that I forget to stay.

We all do.

I walk off the mat of my own knowing. I roll it up in the corner and I forget, moving through life without attention or intention. Becoming more constricted, more tight, more folded.

Less true.

Less alive.

Less me.

And I blame myself for that. Just as I disparage myself for not having the willpower to stick with a practice that is never anything short of a gift. I speak to myself unkindly and ask how I could be so fickle. How I could have wandered off again, leaving myself behind, betraying what I know to be true. Folding inward, tightening around my own idea of what I should be – like sails tied tightly around the mast of a docked ship that wants nothing more than to ride the open waves of the ocean she calls home.

And then it happens, as it always does. That there is a quiet night. And instead of sitting mindlessly on my phone or computer, I stop to light the candles on my coffee table. Three blood red, sitting on an Atlantic ocean stone, and one white. And I choose the music that speaks to me right then. I move a little, sliding hands over skin and remembering what it is to be here, alive. I pour the smallest amount of whiskey into a mason jar, and hold it up to the light of those candles, amber glowing in cut glass. And then I take a sip – not for the alcohol, but because there is some kind of alchemy there, in that first sip. Some sort of unfolding. A glimpse. A memory. A thread.

If I follow it, if the space is right – I can speak or write or dream or dance my way into truths I don’t fully understand yet. I can live inside of the questions and let them be sacred and fertile. I can allow the wanting of what is wanted, in that sliver of space and to name it and know it as good.

And those nights – I realize that I can return, again and again, to the spaces that are wholly me. Just like I can return to the mat. And that it isn’t the leaving that is worth all the attention, nor even the time away. That one moment of choice. It is that simple step. The stepping back. To the mat. To the music and the muse and the glow of candle light into the darkening night.

To the self.

Perhaps we don’t need to worry so much about the spaces in between. The vastness of the desert we wander through, searching for the way home. Perhaps that

time is vital in ways we will never understand. And perhaps we can find space to accept that the journey toward and away from is a part of the dance. Part of what makes the return so deep and so sweet and so whole and so holy.

This morning, on the mat, instead of blaming myself for all the days I had lived in constriction – I gave myself ten minutes to unfurl. To feel the newness of my body – different every single time I come home. To be fully in that moment of return. To fill my own sails with the air I’ve been carrying in any own lungs, all this time.

Get Lost. Breathe. Return.

This is how we live. And fuck if it isn’t beautiful.

The post Return To Yourself – Again and Again appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

tadasana, urdhva hastasana, uttanasana,
anjaneyasana, plank, chaturanga dandasana,
urdhva mukha svanasana, adho mukha svanasana.

over and over again.

tadasana, urdhva hastasana, uttanasana,
anjaneyasana, plank, chaturanga dandasana,
urdhva mukha svanasana, adho mukha svanasana.

over and over again.

tadasana, urdhva hastasana, uttanasana,
anjaneyasana, plank, chaturanga dandasana,
urdhva mukha svanasana, adho mukha svanasana.

over and over again.

tadasana, urdhva hastasana, uttanasana,
anjaneyasana, plank, chaturanga dandasana,
urdhva mukha svanasana, adho mukha svanasana.

over and over again.

The post Over and over and over again appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

“If I needed you. Would you come to me? Would you come to me for to ease my pain?
If you needed me, I would come to you. I would swim the sea for to ease your pain.”
~If I needed You – Emmylou Harris

Dear sweet strong one,

We see you.

You can hold up entire worlds with the force of your love. You nurture and you hold and you knit together and you dry tears and you heal the wounds of this world. And it’s true – you can do it all by yourself, without even a bit of help.

Don’t think we don’t see your strength. Don’t for a second don’t think we don’t honor your ferocity and tenacity and all that blessed grit.

After all, that grit is what has kept you here.

We’ve seen you do battle and we know exactly how strong you had to be to surrender and walk away. 

It’s the hardest and most beautiful thing – the courage it takes to choose yourself.

“All the girls in the Paris light. All the girls in the pale moonlight. All the girls with the shopping bags. All the girls with the washing rags. All the girls on the telephone. All the girls standing all alone. All the girls sitting on the wire. One by one fly into the fire. Be careful how you bend me. Be careful where you send me. Be careful how you end me.  Be careful, with me.”
Be Careful – Patty Griffin

Yes, you are so strong. So strong that sometimes they forget to be careful.

So strong that sometimes they do not see just how thin the wind has worn your skin. So strong that nobody sees when your shoulders start to curve forward and your head drops and the weariness and grief hits hard as a freight train. So strong they don’t notice when you sneak away and hide in the back of the closet so that your body can finally shake with the force of the silent tears that can no longer be held. 

And so strong that you wipe those tears and stand up and take enough shaky breaths to steady yourself and go back out there to do it again.

Strong enough to keep working the magic that you do to keep making things good and tidy and safe. To keep them loved and fed and sheltered and whole. To keep holding up the whole wide world – just the way you’ve always done.

So strong, in fact, that they forget just how deep you feel and just how impossibly hard it is to hold it all.

As if that was all you were here for – to carry it all alone.

As if you weren’t brought to this earth for so much more.

As if you weren’t here for poetry and the kind of joy that cracks worlds wide open and the heat of sex and the fullness of desire and the baptism of the cold and crashing sea and a love so big it changes everything. As if you weren’t here for all of that and so much more.

Do you know that, love? Do you a remember a time before that was all buried beneath the weight of all that has been and must be?

We do.

“If you can’t remember a better time you can have mine, little one. In days to come when your heart feels undone may you always find an open hand and take comfort wherever you can.”
~Comfort – Deb Talan

This life, you know  – it’s all bittersweet paradox and hot blood and skinned-knee redemption. 

Sometimes it slip-slide-tumbles from bliss to the hard edge of loss so fast you’d swear the ground disappeared beneath your feet, and nothing seems sturdy enough to hold your weight.

This life, sometimes it’s just too much – even for you.

Even for me.

And if this is true of you today, or it was true last night or last year or you think it might be true soon  – then listen to me now.

You’re not in this alone.

“But if you break down, I’ll drive out and find you. If you forget my love, I’ll try to remind you. And stay by you when it don’t come easy.”
~If It Don’t Come Easy – Patty Griffin

You’re not in this alone. Even if it feels like it.

Even if you could swear that there is nobody to hear you cry.

Even if you carry it all on your own.

Even if you’ve howled your grief at the dark side of too many full moons to count.

Even if you are bone weary.

Even if you are in the deep ache of alone and convinced of your unworthiness.

Even if the night is dark and deep and the air is heavy and you sure that you’ve cried enough rivers to fill all the oceans by now.

Even if you’ve given up searching for the savior that you’re pretty sure isn’t ever going to come.

Even if the sliver of hope that remains hurts more than everything else combined.

Even if these few words are slim comfort in the midst of your reality and you’re reading with more skepticism than faith.

Even then.

Be still now. Close your eyes. Breathe.  No matter what – it is your breath that will guide you home.

You are not alone.

“But you are not alone in this. And you are not alone in this. As brothers we will stand and we’ll hold your hand.”
~Timshel, Mumford and Sons

Do you hear me?  You’re not alone.

We’re all around you. Even when you can’t feel us or hear us or sense the presence of a single soul.

We are here. We are always here.

We’re here. Your tribe. Your pack. Your people.  Your angels. A family chosen and claimed, faceless and nameless though we may be to you right now.

We are here.

We are the burn down stubborn risers. The bruised but not broken. The weary travelers through the land of spirit and soul. The too much lovers. The tender dreamers. The wild hearts that won’t stop beating. We are the pack of wolves that circle around you and keep you safe while you heal.

We know you. We’ve been there. And when you can’t find the strength to take one more step – we’ll be there to carry you through.

All you need to do is call us in.

“Walk me through this one, don’t leave me alone. Calling all angels, calling all angels. We’re trying, we’re hoping, we’re hurting, we’re loving. We’re crying, we’re calling ’cause we’re not sure how this goes.”
~Calling All Angels, KD Lang and Jane Sibbery

Lay it all down with us. Right here. We’ve got arms outstretched and room enough to hold it all.

I know. You can do it by yourself. Of course you can. You always do and you always have. But you don’t have to. Not now. Not anymore.

There is a source of comfort. A place of rest. An energetic connection of souls that will step forward.

All you need to do is call us in and open your hands to receive.

“Don’t push so hard against the world. you can’t do it all alone & if you could, would you really want to? Even though you’re a big strong girl, come on, come on, lay it down. The best made plans are your open hands.”
~Big Strong Girl – Deb Talan

Because we see you.

We see your tender grace, your indestructible spirit, your wide-open heart. We see your fire and your fury and fierce resolve. We see your fractured desire and your unspoken want.

We see your doubt and your trauma and your shame. We see the landmine of triggers and the threats from all corners and the way you still refuse to carry the gun. We see the horrible words absorbed like fists into that holy body. And we’ve seen those blows land, the literal ones that broke skin and broke bones and broke your heart and figurative blows that fractured sprit and soul and faith in your own divinity.

Yes, We have seen the way those blows have knocked you down, over and over and over again.

And you know what else?

We’ve seen you get back up.

We’ve seen you rise and we’ve seen you pull yourself up to your full power and take up all the space meant for you.  And we’ve seen you dance.

Oh holy you, have we seen you dance.

And we were mesmerized. Every single time.

And we know right now you don’t feel like dancing.

We know that right now – you’re just working on breathing.  And that’s okay too.

“But all that I know is I’m breathing. All I can do is keep breathing. All we can do is keep breathing. Now.”
~Keep Breathing – Ingrid Michelson.

If breath is all you can manage right now, that is so much more than okay.

Because it is that air in your lungs that is keeping you here. That is keeping you alive.

So stop now and breathe.

Once. Twice. Three times.

Deeper and deeper still.

All the way down to your belly. All the way down to your toes. All the way down to the earth beneath you.

Till your chest expands and you expand and there is even just a tiny spark of something that feels a little more alive.

Now let it go. Release. Exhale. Surrender. Lay down your weapons. There is time for rest for even warriors like you. Release until you are empty. Until you can feel the space inside you that has been so long filled by things that do not serve. 

Now breathe in again.

With intention this time. Breathe in a breath that feels like the beginning of something more than tears and running.

“No more running, no more hiding, no more hurting, no more crying. No more trouble, no more sighing. No more falling, no more striving. No more heartache, no more fighting. No more fears, only flying.”
~Lifehouse – Flight.

Because you don’t have to run anymore. Now you can stay. There is a space past flight and fight and freeze and we’ve cleared it for you. Wide open and protected on all sides.

Picture yourself here, in the clearing. We’ve linked arms around the permitter and filled it with all that comforts and fills and sustains you. The sun is warm and the air holds the promise of grace and healing. The light is golden and you are free.

From here you can rise. And dance. And you can fly.

And when you are ready, you can lay down. And you can be still. And you can rest.

Fully. Deeply. Here you can sleep the sleep that heals.

“When darkness comes upon you. And covers you with fear and shame. Be still and know that I’m with you. And I will say your name If terror falls upon your bed. And sleep no longer comes. Remember all the words I said. Be still, be still, and know.”
~Be Still – The Fray

When you wake the darkness will blanket you and the moon will shine down into the clearing. You will be by yourself but never alone.

Do you see the millions of tiny lights we are holding for you, to remind you of our presence. We are here. We have always been here. We always will be here.

Now call in the ghosts and call in the wolves and call in the lover you’ve always dreamed of. Call in your peace and your fire and your wisdom.

And light your own candle. Hold it high – and howl and love and carry yourself home.

“Look around you, into the darkness. Searching, longing deeply to be known. May you find a light. May you find a light. May you find a light to guide you home. May you find a light.”
~May You Find A Light – The Brilliance

xo.

The post I would swim the sea for to ease your pain {a love letter for the weariest souls} appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

so be soft.
you have nothing to
prove.
nothing to
gain
from a forced
toughening of
your wild soul.

be soft 
because you
can
because you
are
because you
know

that it is
life that has 
softened
you
that has taught
you
that hard is
for brick
and wood
and cement
not for heart
and soul
not for you

you bend
and sway
you welcome
you enclose
you buoy
you float
you adapt

and you do it soft
watercolour edges
blending with the earth
and sky and sea

so be soft
sometimes
it’s the very best
way
to survive.

The post The Core Of Your Strength appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

you get picked last for the team
left out of the plans
excluded from the circle.
the rejection letter arrives in the mail
she picks the other girl
the door you were about to walk through
gets slammed hard in your face
and you are left outside in the cold
stunned and alone.

yes
sometimes this is how it is.

you will stand in the harsh glare of the spotlight
looking out into a sea of faces and know
this performance will not be greeted by applause
you will want more than you get
and loved less than you deserve.

at the end of the day you will sit wearily
having done your best
your very best
and realize that nobody has noticed
or worse, everybody noticed all the wrong things.

and you will know what they are saying about you
because you have heard it before
from those voices that live in the very back corner of your brain.
the ones that say
that you are too much
or not enough
or far more difficult
not near as easy as expected
bigger or smaller or louder or more silent than what
they
wanted-needed-expected you to be

and exiled from your desire
and chastised for your wanting
and ridiculed for your being
you ache
your shoulders droop
and you feel vulnerably visible
or maybe as a ghostly apparition,
ignored by those whose witness you most crave
naked before impossible judgment

this is when demons that stalk
roar out of shadows
perch on your right shoulder
breath fire into your ear
flamed whispers searing a brand into
the sacred flesh covering your collarbone

-inadequate
not good enough
stupid
worthless un-liked
less-than
too much
slut
boring
attention whore
waste of space-

and you will hear them loud and clear
every fiber of every muscle absorbing
every last word
drowning out quiet voices that speak other, highly suspect, truths
– you are loved, you are beautiful, you are enough-
because those words make bile rise in throat
skepticism entrenched deep fighting against
flowery words that yearn for a home
that cannot be found.

but right now?
this is not the giving up time
no matter how many times you’ve given up before
that would be a predictable end to a predictable story
and you are anything but a predictable woman
with a predictable life

this time the searing breath wakes you up
this time the numbing is excluded from the party
and your head lifts
and your shoulders square
and you breathe deep into the exact
center
of your goddess power.

this time
you do not apologize
or sulk into shadows
or back off the stage in shame.
you do not accept their rejection
conform to their definition
you do not dim your colors
or fade into oblivion

No.

this time
you will start your own team
widen your circle
cast your net
change all the plans
rip up that letter filled with no
and paint the word
acceptance in rainbow colors across your skin
under the glow of the welcoming moon.

you will do what you damn well please
refuse to define yourself as
part of any half-conceived partnership
decline the invitation to stay
when your soul only whispers, go.
and choose to exchange vows with
your own wild divinity instead
you will take steps to get what you want
give yourself every last ounce of love you have always deserved
discovering along the way the multitudes within you
so that alone is never lonely

you will buy enough paint
to create your own marquee
emblazoned with every last bit of your glory
you will step back into the spotlight
and magnify the beat of your heart
until it fills the room
and the sound of your own electric heart
becomes a standing ovation loud enough to power
twenty more women toward their destiny.

and you will take notice
off all the right things
and all things they took pleasure in labeling wrong
until your too-much-not-enough becomes just exactly right
and you wrap it all up in bliss
celebrate it as front page news
bold headline blazed right across the top of the wise night sky

and you will hear what they say about you
they will always say things about women like you
but the truth of your song
is now playing so loud
that their words will be drowned out by
the sound of your own singing
and by the festival of spirit that has been gathering in
celebration.

when the demons come
and they will come
you will usher them close
coax them near
seducing with piercing eyes and parted lips
you will perch on their right shoulder
and whisper
with quiet insistence
go. now is my time.
filling up your chest and your lungs and your mighty spirit
with visible proof of your inherent divinity.
your roaring sensuality
your selfless selfishness
and you will sear their skin with your brazen reclamation
of self.

and you will throw your arms wide
and lift your head back
and feel love radiating at you from all directions
especially from your white-hot core
fierce with reality
righteous with conviction
certain of self

and you will breathe
it in deep and think

YES.
So THIS is how it is.

_____

Photo by Fabrice Villard on Unsplash

The post So This Is How It Is (A Poem To Remind You Of Your Divinity) appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.