Reshaping

Here we are in a new year and I'm finding myself filled with the need to write. It doesn't matter what I write, I just need to write. I have a lot to say...  lots of thoughts on queer and community and feminism and gender and sobriety and so on.

2011 was a hell of a year. In her song "Eye of the Storm" Jennifer Berezan sings "You'll need nerves of steel, and a heart that's broken wide." 2011 was the year my heart was broken wide. Personally, locally, and globally. I learned how to feel again, how to be in the moment again, and wow does the moment ever make me angry. I shed tears of rage and impotence over people I loved, over shale gas, over Occupy, over the Tar Sands and governments and assaults on trans people and so many more. And somehow, while shedding those tears, a miracle happened. This heart of mine, the heart that had just been broken wide, melted. Like clay that has been warmed, it lost it's shape. It ceased to be formed, dry and cracked and falling apart, and became instead something soft and malleable, something the Goddess could work with. Something the Goddess could shape. Then I laughed. Because until my heart broke to be softened by my tears, I'd thought it was open. I'd thought I knew how to love. I'd even thought I knew how to love unconditionally. And maybe I did a little bit. But not enough.

Like the snake shedding it's skin, I've let the energy of Yule, the energy that is with the turning of the wheel, take that old skin and tear it away. Take the old me, the old protective coverings I wore, and return them to that great compost we call her cauldron. She can do something useful with them. I can no longer wear them. I suspect they no longer even fit since she's started reshaping me.

So here's to change. The deep slow changes that we sometimes don't even see until they erupt all over us, turning our lives upside down and gifting us with those fresh perspectives.

Here's also to nurturing those changes, tending the new, and learning from the old.