Where I'm From...

Where I'm from is dark and death stained.   The memory's scent is copper pennies and sulphur, burned out candles and sweat.   I was born to be nothing, to stay nothing and go back to nothing.    And yet, here I am, still living and learning to thrive rather than simply survive.    I used to wonder if what was born from darkness into darkness could ever be anything but that same black void but now I know the answer.  I know the answer because I am standing in my own light and I shed light on those around me and out into the world.

I know the answer because I am that light, that light that I dove into.... deep inside myself when things were not safe.   The deep well of love that I found at my center, the hours I spent there in hiding from the dark world into which I was born, those hours saved me.  I learned to not be the dark thing I was being groomed to be, I learned that just there, in that safe inner space where love and light lived no one and nothing could touch me, not really.

Where I'm from is rage filled and pain drenched, it was beyond comprehension, though I've spent many hours trying to understand... I know now it is beyond understanding.  I know now that what matters is where I am now and where I'm going.  I understand now that the people who rained such darkness over me are dead and gone and I'm still breathing,  still here and able to see light now, able to see and feel and express love.   I know now it doesn't really matter where I'm from, what matters is where I'm going and what I do with my life in the Now.

Today I know that I have not only survived, but that I have moved through that blackness and transcended it, I am beyond the reach of those that brought me into this world and those that wished to take me from the world.    I take each new breath with a sense of ease, with the knowledge that I can make it through anything, that I'm stronger than any mountain and braver than any warrior.   

It's a new day and a new life and I am grateful to be alive, grateful to be healing, even grateful to the memories as they arise and I accept them, hold them with tenderness and honor them.  I am grateful, to be in the light now and to know that the light is where I'm from now.