I am the sorrow and the morning light I am happiness and darkest nights I am never only one I am here and I am gone you cannot put a pin in me I’m what I was and what will be, I’m chaos and I’m symmetry. I’m something beyond binaries, the flower and the swarm of bees.
All posts by anna maughan
in the water
in the water I feel beautiful again: weightless, mercurial, free. for a moment I am not my body but a solution, in flux, dissolving. the february sun shines across the blue and I cut through: a blade in motion – for a moment I am not my sadness but movement, strength and sinew swift and sleek. in the water I am released from the gravity of all the dragging days on land.
Taraloka
today we breathed together, meditated on lovingkindness, talked and walked in friendly silence, concentrating on growing our hearts. we mindfully went through our day, trying to learn self-compassion, and to unlearn the malice with which we’ve talked to ourselves for years. today our hearts grew, just a little, and we got to know ourselves a little more.
metta retreat, daybreak
dawn came with a rush and sibilance of air as geese flew overhead, a solitary crow on a telegraph wire, watching. the sky steaked with brilliant pink fading to soft antique rose, lavender clouds with luminous edges. bumblebees already bumblebeing, busy on the sunshine yellow bird’s foot trefoil and the sun itself, slowly emerging from the clouds, golden and brilliant.
compassion
Posted on Author anna maughanPosted in anxiety, bpd, c/ptsd, chronic pain, depression, mental health, poem, self imageLeave a Reply
my psychologist encouraged me to write another version of ‘shame’, from a compassionate perspective. so I did my best to do so…. perhaps you could write about the damage done, the bruises on your soul, your heart that walks with a limp, your voice that only sings when no one’s there? or perhaps it hurts too much, or frightens you, to show those parts that no one knows, the wounded and scarred fragility of the self you’re afraid never will be whole? what if they knew that you feel like a thousand torn and tiny pieces moving as one? what if you were able to say that there are things you don’t even know about yourself? what if you don’t remember, because you don’t want to remember, though you were there and carried the shame home, heavy on your back? why do you think you’d be judged as harshly as you judge yourself? what if they knew that something chewed your heart that night and left a bloody mess inside your chest? why do you think they’d see you differently, just because you’ve been too ashamed to speak of something that was not your fault, that has left you feeling as though you are all blanks and fractures, missing pieces, and the aching, endless, misplaced weight of shame.
campfire haiku
1. pale grey rainy day, drops glisten on a cobweb – tree wreathed in diamonds. 2. I’ve nowhere to be on this sleepy afternoon so I build a fire. 3. barely drizzling this rain doesn’t bother me, the fire shrugs it off. 4. I watch the flames dance, my mind drifts as it pleases I’m almost at peace.
forest fragments – a journal.
1. going to the woods to lose and find myself. 2. up with the dawn who came dancing in a pink dress bathed in light. 3. … and all the tree trunks turn to gold. 4. morning meditation: scents of leafmould and charcoal murmur of impermanence. 5. a forest morning, in this moment I’m serene – the trees breathe with me. 6. doing less and thinking more. 7. the trees alchemy: turning sunlight into leaves. 8. a robin came to visit, such a tiny creature to carry so many smiles. 9. by the still lake, calming my mind. a fish rises like a thought – the lake returns to stillness, unperturbed. 10. heart full of brilliant sunshine: lighting up the haunted shadows, driving out the deathly dark. 11. caught a bit of happiness, a butterfly for a moment in my hands. 12. I’m so full of hope I am a bubble: floating, fragile, scared that I might pop. 13. I would share my hope with you. 14 wishes and wonder keep us afloat. 15. let me dream a little longer, let me dream a little more. 16. been talking to trees and touching the earth. 17. the trees know. 18. don’t try to be better than anything or anyone, just try to be. 19. hide me in the dark, under moss, where the earth smells rich with decay and the promise of rebirth, of growing new, strong, bright, into the sunlight. 20. open your heart – nothing thrives in a cage. 21. the sound of a pigeon’s wings like angels overhead and a crow, laughing. 22. lilac and rose-pink candyfloss clouds strewn in a baby-blue sky. 23. the world is spinning through space and I am sitting, small, quiet, by a campfire watching the leaves play in the breeze as the sun drains slowly from the sky. 24. let’s fill our pockets with happy moments to feast on when we’re sad. 25. smell of moss and woodsmoke moths dancing over flames. 26. I’m dreaming of past lives, past hurts, disappearing like smoke into the sky. 27. I don’t have to be sad always, anymore. 28. I’m very busy unlearning. 29. noticing the tiny things. 30. I am made of multitudes, all the tiny pieces, lost by everyone I ever knew. 31. this fire, burning like a poet’s heart. 32. the fire slowly dying, a universe in miniature. galaxies flare and disappear in the embers: just moments in time. 33. and when the fire is done sift through the ashes, love… you’ll find me curled up tiny-small – just a fledgling phoenix, but a phoenix nonetheless. 34. I want to be remembered as a kindness. 35. I’m slowly becoming possible. 36. I have all I need in these empty hands.
little boxes
Posted on Author anna maughanPosted in anxiety, bpd, c/ptsd, chronic pain, depression, mental healthLeave a Reply
the truth is, I was desperate, or I never would have joined a peer support group for mental health, online: a zoom meeting with strangers that might be as mad as me. I clicked a link and there I was, looking terrified in my little box on the screen, among the other faces in their little boxes, all with their own histories, all unknown to me. I can’t do this, I thought. this is just another place I don’t belong – they each took a turn to share a slice of life, how they had spent their week, their day: shopping, writing, crying, raging. everything was equally welcome and treated with care: “I took a shower.” “I left the house.” “I cried for hours.” “I did a big thing.” “I did nothing.” all were valid as they came, peppered with unnecessary sorrys, salted with choked-back tears. my turn came round. awkwardly I raised my hand, (and watched the me in the box awkwardly raise my hand,) I tried to smile as all my piled-up words spilled out and spilled out in a messy tangled heap then I waited to be judged but I was not judged nor was I treated like a stranger. instead, I found empathy, encouragement and kindness. someone told me I was brave – this was not what I expected. now week after week you’ll find me here in my little box, with all the other little boxes, amongst friends.
anicca
I’m thinking on impermanence as I watch the river flow: how every state and circumstance with time will surely go the flowers wilt and bloom again, they’re dying as they grow. and if you don’t believe me ask a river, it will know.
purely formed
there is poetry that wakes me before dawn, purely formed: trembling on my lips, ready for flight but I do not need to write. instead, I turn towards your warmth and breathe the words softly onto your sleeping skin and, half-waking, you reach for me. newborn words kiss your face, tangle in my hair. so, the poem is. never written, nor quite heard, but there. because you, you are the poem, here is, we are: the scent of our sheets, the places where skin touches skin. this is art, this is alchemy, this is now, this is us. and the piece is endless, stretching over all our nights: the biggest, the most beautiful poem (n)ever written. for R, with all my love, 6th January 2019