Emerging into Creativity & Community

“Now let us issue from the darkness of solitude.”
~ Virginia Woolf

I first began this museletter several weeks ago, as the summer solstice was approaching, and there was a quickening in the air. An obvious uptick in activity and gatherings.

Wherever I went, indoors or outside, on forest trails, at the beach, in health clubs, or inside grocery stores I would see that most folks were not wearing masks. And I get it. Masks are no longer required in most places and we are all eager to shed and shun the restrictive protocols put in place more than two years ago, to contain the spread of the coronavirus.

Now, once again, we are out and about, traveling, visiting family, friends, and foreign venues.

And here in my neighborhood, and in others too, we are celebrating spectacular gardens bursting with flowers, bees, and birdsong, all of these flora and fauna singing out, “Ta da”! I’m here! I’m back. I’m alive”.

Is it any wonder then, as springtime tumbles into summer, here in the northern hemisphere, that we mammals feel an attunement with the vernal sun, moon, and stars? Our animal bodies long to emerge from our tattered cocoons into the sunlight.

I’m also feeling this instinctual impulse to issue from the darkness of solitude. And I’m wondering how to meet this deep longing, for reconnection and merriment, with a healthy dose of mindfulness…or not.

Instead of thoughtful conversations, and visionary choreography, it feels like the local and global reemergence is occurring in one great gush of restlessness.

And I understand. We’ve all been through so much trauma in the past several years. And we’re still navigating a multiplicity of traumas, on a daily basis, both personal and collective. There’s so much grim international, national, and local news. Perhaps then, this gush is predictable and inevitable.

I have to say, I’m both encouraged and also concerned by the initial stirrings I perceive. And I’m wondering if we are rushing headlong, and with gusto, into an old normal that was not optimal for all? An old shape that was skewed toward the privileged few and which excluded so many of us?

Is our reemergence spiked with resentment for all that we’ve endured and sacrificed?

Is post-pandemic scarcity consciousness causing us to act frantically? Behave like someone who’s been deprived of oxygen and then instinctually gasps, then violently grasps for air, and then ends up hyperventilating?

And maybe, maybe, after we settle down for a minute, like we sometimes do the morning after an exuberant New Year’s Eve celebration, perhaps we’ll pause, take a few centering breaths, and consider new possibilities. Consider making intentions around kindness, compassion, and inclusivity.

Emerging from a worldwide pandemic is something most of us have never experienced. And if that challenge weren’t enough, we’re still taking the full measure of climate disruption; still addressing issues of social injustice and accountability; still watching in horror as Russia brutally attacks Ukraine; and closer to home, here in the States, we are filled with sorrow by all of the recent mass shootings; and we are stunned by the most recent rulings by the Supreme Court overturning gun safety restrictions, the devastating reversal of Roe v. Wade, and the calamitous ruling curtailing the E.P.A.’s ability to regulate carbon emissions from power plants…

As I peer out from under my metaphorical covers, I ask myself, how do I show up? How might I help? How can I be of service? The world I’m inhabiting seems fraught and often overwhelming. So what then is the practice for mindfully meeting these times of reemergence?

What I do know is that I must not go numb. How do I feel, heal, and be present to what is happening in our shared world? What is the medicine for our times?

One portal where I find orientation and inspiration is through creativity. Especially when I practice creative self-expression alongside others, either in person or online.

Being creative in a safe container, where art matters, and there’s no way to do it wrong, is healing to our broken artist’s heart. And these spaces provide a safe place to both sob and laugh together, where we may fall to our knees in grief, or fall off our chairs with big belly laughs. Every emotion is welcome and that is healing medicine.

When I lift my brush and trust my intuition to choose a color, make a shape or an image that’s never been done before, I’m fed by the creative process itself.

When I sit at my laptop and quiet my inner chatter, I can hear my inner muse, and invariably, I midwife a new poem.

And when the music plays and I allow my body to sway in response, allow my toes to tap and my hands to clap in an embodied movement prayer, I know I’m standing and dancing on sacred ground. My dancing feet make it so.

And when I show up for myself and others in these vulnerable courageous ways a communion is happening. I’m listening with my ears and eyes, with my hands and feet, with my heart and belly to my inner wisdom.

And here’s the thing. When I inhabit this fertile terroir, brand new possibilities blossom. I’m being sustained by something bigger and less personal than my small scared self. I feel held in an elementally safe manner. And from that place, I can bear witness. I can be present with myself and with others in a well-oriented way. That’s the healing alchemy of creativity practiced in community.

A deep bow goes to the women in my writing salon. A sincere shout out to the sisters and brothers in my Intuitive Painting circle. And a big hug to the rag tag tribe of creatives in my Improv classes and movement workshops. You lift my spirit and make me smile.

My soul gets juiced up by playful creativity. And from that alive juicy place, I simply want to share my joy and enthusiasm. I authentically feel the impulse to give to others from a place of fullness.

So as each of us finds who and what brings us alive, in whatever creative expressions we’re drawn to, we’re more likely to be joyful. And that joy is contagious. We become a light and that light is contagious. And the world needs more light.

I’m proposing that we each explore and discover what, how, and where we love to be creative… and with whom. Finding like-hearted folks with whom we can be creative is powerful medicine for the world.

And now I offer you my newest poem, a prayer for reemerging:

Emerging into Creativity and Community

“...we shall go from love to love and peace to peace, until at last all the corners of the world are covered with that peace and love for which consciously or unconsciously the whole world is hungering”.

~ Mahatma Gandhi

Perhaps we will be like honey bees coming and going from our hives.
Or maybe more like emergent butterflies, newly shape shifted from the chrysalis,
merrily and busily going from flower to flower imbibing nectar, providing pollen
to fragrant flowers far and near, our only raison d’etre, the erotic pleasure
of pollinating and being simultaneously nourished in the dance of eros.

In this sensual synchronicity of spreading pollen and being fed in the process,
we become vectors of love, infectors of peace, dancing love to love,
peace to peace, sating the world’s hunger, quenching her thirst,
offering to each other a good long drink to our parched lips and dry throats,
reminding ourselves we are not alone in our longing for belonging.

Infinite acts of generosity and reciprocity exist on this good green earth,
all are reminiscent of that primal iconic offering of a baby at her mother’s breast.
While at first glance it may appear the good mama is selflessly giving to her baby,
and so she is, there’s more to be known in this wholehearted act of devotion,
for in this precious exchange of coos and kisses, mama is utterly nurtured as well.

In all of nature there exists reciprocity everywhere we look. No scarcity. No lack.
I’m not talking transactional. No quid pro quo. Rather a simple generous abundance.
The ebb and flow of tides, the xylem and phloem within tall trees and tiny plants.
The green ones breathing out their oxygen for our mammalian lungs to inhale,
while our human exhalations offer them essential carbon dioxide in exchange.

Everything and everyone showing up as themselves in full display. In flow.
Sometimes as fluttering pollinators and often as fiery buzzing bees of simultaneity.
Just like musicians collaborating with choreographers of hula, samba, and ballet,
creating a delightful double current, drummers keeping a steady heartbeat for
dancers in flight, loving and being loved, offering peace to peace.

Let us be ambassadors of lovingkindness, let us infect each other with patience.
Let us heal divisiveness with tolerance, and vow to judge each other less.
Let us blanket the world with generosity, covering the world in a duvet of inclusivity,
offering some semblance of peace and love, resembling that which we hunger for,
reminding us of who we truly are…the best versions of ourselves.

~ Meris Specterman Walton

Roses from my garden…Ta Da!

Finding My Voice

“Words mean more than what is set down on paper.
It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning”
~ Maya Angelou

Happy Spring Everyone! I had intended to record and post this Museletter before the month of March came to its graceful close and before April began to blossom. But moving into my new home took all of my creative energy and attention, so here I am. 

March is and was a meaningful month for me. It’s the month of my birthday and the beginning of springtime here in the northern hemisphere, with its promise of warmer weather, blooming flowers, and brighter sunnier skies. And around the world, we celebrate Women’s History Month. 

March 8th is International Women’s Day and on March 24th we honor Equal Pay Day for Women. It is deeply troubling to me that in this country, and in other places, in many instances, women are still not being paid the same wage as their male counterparts, working in the same job. How can this possibly be?

This year’s theme and vision for International Women’s Day 2021 is: “ChooseToChallenge” and the quote below is the mission statement:

“A challenged world is an alert world. Individually, we're all responsible for our own thoughts and actions - all day, every day. We can all choose to challenge and call out gender bias and inequality. We can all choose to seek out and celebrate women's achievements. Collectively, we can all help to create an inclusive world”.

There you have it. I would add that we need more than a day, a week, even a month to celebrate women’s achievements and repair inequality.

Each and every one of our voices and choices matter because there is a massive cost in not celebrating women’s achievements. There is a vast and far reaching cost to ourselves, and to others, in not choosing to call out gender bias, inequality, misogyny. There is an immeasurable cost in not choosing to challenge the old exclusive ways. And there is a profound cost, both personally and globally, in not choosing to create an inclusive world. Ultimately there is also a deep and heartfelt cost to our unique souls when we do not choose to honor our sacred creative voices. 

And in that spirit, I would like to share with you below, a poem I wrote a few years ago, when I began in earnest, to reclaim my own true creative voice. One morning, as I sat at my kitchen table, much like I am now, with my journal open in front of me, my pen began to move with intention and passion across the blank white pages. What I understood in that moment was that my soul had something significant to convey to me, and I’d best pay rapt attention. 

My Muse, a.k.a. the inner creative voice inside of me, is known to show up at seemingly random times, often unbidden, yet always welcome. And I’ve learned from experience that it is futile to resist her and that these moments are a precious gift. This inner voice is benevolent, and has my best interests at heart, so it is in my best interests to listen well. What came through that morning was a poem I entitled, My Voice. 

Well one day, a few years later, my same pesky wise Muse showed up again, this time with the bright idea of enrolling me in an 8 week class with 7 other brave souls, under the skillful mentorship of Dixie Cox and Clifford Henderson. These two creative midwives mentored the eight of us in the creation and birthing of original ten minute solo performance pieces, which we each performed in front of a live audience... I was terrified. 

But with the support of these creativity whisperers, I was able to stretch beyond my lifelong limiting stagefright, move toward what scared me, and discover a more courageous playful expression of myself. 

It was a profound experience, and since then, I’ve come to understand how essential it is to have loving support whenever and wherever we are leaning into the hard stuff in life, moving toward the unfamiliar, the places that spook us. How powerful and empowering it is, to be witnessed and held by loving eyes and arms, on our personal creative walkabouts. 

My vision for Creative Resonance ~ Painting, Poetry & Play for the Soul is to support women in their sacred creativity and sovereignty. I offer individual online sessions, and in the near future, I hope and intend to offer outdoor group workshops... so stay tuned.

Now I would like to share with you my poem, in honor of this year’s International Women’s Month, and in honor of the ongoing practice of bearing witness and supporting each other. May we each continue to “choose to challenge” the old, outmoded, oppressive ways, and may we celebrate our unique, essential, authentic voices. Here is “My Voice”:

MY VOICE

My voice covered in dust and fine silt,
deeply embedded in sandstone,
beneath broken bits of bowl,
cracked clay, shards of mineral,
animal, rock, and bone.

This voice coated in rust,
parched and flinty, dry as desert gusts,
thirsty as scorched sandstorms,
her eerie breezes blowing remnants of unbirthed poems,
unsung songs, haunting solitary horizons.

My voice lusts for good company,
longs to be undressed, just so,
unbutton brash, but bashful soliloquy,
coax cobwebbed simile and moth-bitten metaphor,
disrobe deftly my smitten tendrilled core.

This voice flushed with a tremulous fire,
imagines igniting embers of tamped down desire,
warm my whispering voice, hushed, but never expired,
this voice gone missing such a long, long time,
blushed, but still burning, with a quiet requiem.

My voice buried, but never broken,
trussed and gusseted, prepared then postponed,
sincere as a prayer invoked and intoned, daring solitude to be alone,
brushed over, crushed over time, to a fine alchemical powder,
now medicine for my soul’s genuine clamour.

This voice, now salve for hands not clapping,
antidote for toes too long not tapping,
elixir for words so long not sassing, now gasping,
daring to fuss and to cuss and push past self-doubting,
panting and ranting into unladylike shouting!

My voice, she’s been so long simmering,
this shy “I” voice, has been sizzling and silently listening,
she’s been steaming and stewing, fermenting and brewing,
bubbling in a cauldron of cacophonous longing,
caramelizing a confection of brassy belonging!

This voice, she’s fixing to sashay her saucy self right up to life.
Why it’s high time I sidle off that dusty shelf and display my light!
Yes, it’s a decidedly fine time, to encourage my courage
to shine and to share. Well I do declare!
I’m trusting my voice enough, to finally dare.

~ Meris Specterman Walton

Imagine Stitching A New Normal

“We will not go back to normal. Normal never was. Our pre-corona existence was not normal other than we normalized greed, inequity, exhaustion, depletion, extraction, disconnection, confusion, rage, hoarding, hate and lack. We should not long to return, my friends. We are being given the opportunity to stitch a new garment. One that fits all of humanity and nature.”

~ Sonya Renee Taylor

I heard this powerful quote for the first time a few months ago, and it has stayed with me as I’ve begun to consider what my life, and our interconnected collective lives, might look like in the post-pandemic world.

Of course, we are still very much in the pandemic and we need to remain cautious. Regardless of the recent vaccines being rolled out and distributed, we do not know when this “corona existence” will be over, or what “over'' will even look like. Will it mean living with Covid in a form resembling seasonal flu? Or might it resemble the pandemic of 1918, where the worldwide scourge stretched on for years, killing so many, and then receded into a non-virulent form, at long last? Or will this coronavirus continue to express itself and resolve itself in an entirely original way?

We likely have many more months, and possibly much longer, to navigate through this pandemic and its repercussions. And like many other writers and speakers that I’ve had the pleasure of reading and hearing recently, I agree that it is necessary and worthwhile, to begin to have conversations envisioning a new normal.

I have written a new poem about this visioning and I share it with you below:

Stitching A New Normal

I am still inside my personal winter. In this stillness, my bodymind slows way down,
like a dormant bulb tucked underground, in quiet abeyance, I furl embryonically,
my cocooned curled self nestled beneath the loam of everyday ordinary reality,
where I gestate within a creative womb, during this unprecedented hibernal time.
A glistening vernix caseosa coats my still too soft skin, encasing and caressing me,
awaiting a vernal spring to beckon and bid me sprout tendrils of new possibility.

Imagine for one wholly moment, that Covid-19 is a global invitation for transformation.
Consider the possibility that this sacred planetary pandemic pause,
is a harsh and harrowing, unappealing but profound opportunity for global healing,
a brutal collective prescription for dreaming and re-imagination,
an unexpected portal and pathway to cocreate a new inclusive normal,
a gateway to kindness, where we do not go back to a normal that never was.

We must not nostalgically yearn to return to pre-corona times,
a time which normalized greed, inequity, and exhaustion,
a time when we abided in a sentimental tonal of confusion, delusion, and exclusivity.
A time when racism, misogyny, and fundamentalism artificially divided us
into fractious tribes and terrified camps of distracted depleted consumers.
A time when misguided homilies, on TV and in chat rooms, preached scarcity and lack.

We are better than that. We must not go back to normalizing rage, nor engage in
behaviors that commodify earth, her elemental gifts, our fellow species, or each other.
We must stay attentive in our capacity for empathy and compassion, passionately
vigilant in order to abolish old habits of extraction, hoarding, and hatred. Let us be
accountable, and cultivate loving connections, in order to snuff out disconnection.
Let us embody empathy, creativity, and love throughout our interconnected community.

We have been preparing for this. Now is the moment. We are at the threshold.
We are being given the opportunity and invitation to stitch a new tapestry of inclusivity.
Let us take up our threads of inspiration and scraps of good will,
and find the grace and humility to squeeze through the eyes of our own needles.
May we listen well, and co-create a resilient flexible fabric of courage and vulnerability,
together stitching a new garment of normalcy, honoring all of humanity and nature.

Meris Specterman Walton

And I am really stretching beyond my comfort zone today by including an audio version of me reading this blog and poem. This is a first for me. Here it goes:

Thin Moments, Thin Places, Grace, and Vulnerability

“You can have the other words ~ chance, luck, coincidence, serendipity. I'll take grace.
I don't know what it is exactly, but I'll take it.”

~ Mary Oliver

Recently I read one of my new poems out loud to a friend and she responded that she liked it a lot. I told her that my Muse had shown up as I was writing it, that I’d gotten out of my own way, and how it felt like I was simply taking dictation. My friend then replied, “Yeah, but you also had something to do with it”. 

I realized afterwards that I may have confused my friend because I don’t think of my Muse as outside of me or other than me. When I speak about my Muse showing up as I write or paint, I am really talking about the intuitive part of me, the non-linear right brain part of me, the place of greatest aliveness within me, rather than the logical, linear, left brain part of me.

This intimate relationship is a type of “thin place” or “thin moment” where I experience my Muse as my own inner authentic voice. When I am in connection with the vulnerable, courageous, unconventional, and often sassier voice within me. The one who encourages me to be curious and brave, to move toward the scary edges of my creative comfort zone. When I heed the call, I find myself in an unencumbered space, a place of conscious listening, creative witnessing, presence, vulnerability, and grace.

In Gaelic folklore, in places like Scotland or Ireland, there are specific geographical locations revered and known as “thin places” and these are often places of pilgrimage. But thin places and thin moments are not limited to these locations. The quote below from Paul MacCormack speaks to this:

“Although this terminology can be used to refer to places of pilgrimage, it can also be used to refer to those times in our lives when the demarcation between the concrete realities we hold fast to and the possibilities of a greater truth converge. Thin moments are essentially those experiences when we feel in our bones that we are part of something much larger than what our everyday thought processes dictate. Our notions of self disappear briefly, and we become present to the moment as it unfolds before us; an expanded form of conscious awareness. ~ Paul MacCormack · 

A poetic quote from contemporary poet Sharlande Sledge gives this description:

“Thin places, the Celts call this space,
Both seen and unseen,
Where the door between the world
And the next is cracked open for a moment
And the light is not all on the other side.”

When I am in the flow of writing a poem, or when I am trusting the brush to paint what is being asked to be painted, I get out of my own way, and take direction from my Muse.  

I have a full body experience of being present to the “space, both seen and unseen, where the door between the world and the next is cracked open for a moment, and the light is not all on the other side”. That space is a special kind of grace.

On this side of the pond, several years ago, New York Times travel writer, Eric Weiner riffed on this topic of thin places. He wrote about what they are and what they are not:

 “So what exactly makes a place thin? It’s easier to say what a thin place is not. A thin place is not necessarily a tranquil place, or a fun one, or even a beautiful one, though it may be all of those things too. Disney World is not a thin place. Nor is Cancún. Thin places relax us, yes, but they also transform us - or, more accurately, unmask us. In thin places, we become our more essential selves.

Yet...if God (however defined) is everywhere and “everywhen,” as the Australian aboriginals put it so wonderfully, then why are some places thin and others not? Why isn’t the whole world thin? Maybe it is but we’re too thick to recognize it. Maybe thin places offer glimpses not of heaven but of earth as it really is, unencumbered. Unmasked”. ~Eric Weiner NYT travel writer

When I am in a thin moment, I feel unencumbered and unmasked, deeply connected with life in all of her terrible beauty. Her raw unapologetic “be here now-ness”. I feel vulnerable, undefended, and more fully alive. 

A few weeks ago, I experienced a particularly personal thin moment. I had a bit of a headache and a mild sore throat. In these times of global pandemic, it is recommended that one get tested for Covid-19 if symptoms of a cold or flu appear. In that raw moment of realization that I might be infected, I felt a sharp pang of fear and a profound gut wrenching vulnerability. 

 If I tested positive, I worried that I might have inadvertently exposed others to the virus, most concerning of all, my pregnant daughter-in-law. And if I had the virus, what might happen if I got really sick. Would I be able to take care of myself in isolation? As a health care practitioner, I am more comfortable in the role of caregiver, and not so much with needing or asking for help. 

 I spent five days in isolation, as I scheduled and received a Covid test, and then another 36 hours awaiting the welcome negative test results. During that week, even as my headache and sore throat receded and disappeared within a day of their initial onset, what appeared in predictable succession were fear, despair, shame, prayer, gratitude, relief, joy, and more gratitude. During my time of self-quarantine, my family and friends checked in with me regularly. I never felt completely alone but I did feel vulnerable.

 This was definitely a thin moment for me. In my seclusion, contemplating the scary possibility of being ill with Covid, and the terrifying possibility that I might have been a vector of contagion, I also experienced a fair bit of shame. I imagined and empathized with all the people in the past who lived with leprosy as outcasts on a secluded island. And I remembered vividly, as if it was just yesterday and not thirty-five years ago, when my best friend Howard in San Francisco tested positive for HIV. And how sad it was the first time we saw each other after he tested positive, how he pulled back from me when I went to hug him. How I wholeheartedly embraced him, both of us feeling scared and vulnerable...

 Thin moments unmask us and transform us. I think of these moments as portals when “the door is cracked open and the light is not all on the other side”. An invitation to let go or loosen the grip of my logical strategic judgy left brain. A time of profound vulnerability. In those thin moments, when I trust the pen to write, trust the brush to paint, trust my Muse to lead me in the flow of creativity, I am in a thin place of grace.

 Not surprisingly, during those thin moments and for sometime afterwards, I have more energy and enthusiasm for my life. I feel more deeply connected to my essential self. I am more generous and empathic with others. I feel enlivened and inspired to write, paint, dance, play, cook, and even clean. In this place of greater aliveness, I listen well to my own small voice within, as well as to the needs and wants of others. In this thin place, there is a lot more energy and generosity of spirit.

 What I’m discovering as I experience thin places and thin moments more and more, is that scarcity is a cultural concept reinforced by the left brain. While generosity is the natural benevolent expression of spirit celebrated by the intuitive right brain. Thin moments and thin places are experiences of beauty that may not be neat and pretty. They can be fierce, messy, gritty, astonishing, inspiring, and transformative affairs. And like most things in life, it is a matter of perception and a moment of choice. To choose the orientation of deep attention and self-forgetting. Choosing vulnerability and courage over comfort is a thin place of grace. 

And on that note, I offer you my new poem below:

Beauty Is Not Always Pretty: Thin Moments,Thin Places, Grace...

“Beauty is an achieved state of both deep attention and self-forgetting”.

~ David Whyte

Beauty is not always pretty, she is often untamed and furious,
she defies conventional definitions of loveliness, and compels us to lean in, be curious, 
when our shy mind’s eye would prefer to glance away she persuades us to stay, 
to wade into the waves slapping the sharp coral reef, to not swim off out of fear,
but to draw near, revere this thin place, play deftly and reverently,
tread water in this tropical clear rip curl of color, shape, and image,
dare to frolic and splash inside the tremulous swell that sways us, 
asking us to imagine and remember we can breathe underwater, 
explore our original primordial breath and discover our greatest aliveness.

This terrible beauty is edgy and messy, 
she disarms us with her unabashed eros, 
her unprecedented layers of uncertainty and liminal cosmos,
in her presence, we are at a loss for logos, 
logic wholly abandons us at this frontier, 
and in its place, lo and behold we uncover our holy courage, 
and the unbearable lightness of our own being dares to sing off key without apology,
prepares to fling paint and glitter delightedly across the vortex of a vast sea, 
and from the sandy banks of blank white pages, intuition beckons, and poetry arises.

This fetching fierce beauty is unapologetic, she is our muse, our truth sayer.
She decries the concept of “nice” and champions grit and authenticity, 
rejects recapitulation of the polite, pedestrian, and provincial,
instead she abides by the precepts of what brings us more fully alive.
She dignifies and ennobles us with permission to paint and write from our soul,
and challenges us to recover our heart and our humanity, 
exalting our spirit and senses with humor and humility. 
At long last the gloves are off, she throws down the gauntlet, 
encouraging and revering true beauty through deep attention and self-forgetting.

~ Meris Specterman Walton

Prayer for the New Year: True Belonging

“You are only free when you realize you belong no place - you belong every place - no place at all.
The price is high. The reward is great.”
~ Maya Angelou

In today’s Museletter, and my first poem for 2021, I begin by quoting the beloved poet and storyteller Maya Angelou about the nature of belonging. To start us off, I offer a few tantalizing lines from her 1973 interview with Bill Moyers. And then, as if that wasn’t evocative enough, I add in a dollop of insight from renowned researcher Brene Brown. And then I season my musings with a dash of provocative poetry from David Whyte.

In this process, I’ve steeped myself in their collective savory wisdom and allowed their words to simmer within me. Soon enough, my own new year poem bubbled up, and I am offering you a warm draft, a deep drink. Because in this potent moment, in this turn of the wheel, my New Year’s Poem is about invoking the northstar of true belonging. And I suspect I’m not alone in this heartfelt longing.

Almost half a century ago, Dr. Maya Angelou was interviewed on television by journalist Bill Moyers. From their engaging repartee, we are gifted these mighty words from Maya:

Maya Angelou: You are only free when you realize you belong no place - you belong every place - no place at all. The price is high. The reward is great.

Bill Moyers: Do you belong anywhere?

Maya Angelou: I haven’t yet.

Bill Moyers: Do you belong to anyone?

Maya Angelou: More and more...I belong to myself. I’m very proud of that. I am very concerned how I look at Maya. I like Maya very much.

For me, that last line rocked me as much as her first line. Stunningly, at the golden age of 75 years old, Dr. Angelou said that more and more...she was belonging to herself.

Many years later, renowned author and speaker Dr. Brene Brown, known for her research on vulnerability, shame, and courage wrote the following, as she riffed off Maya Angelou’s quote above. Her research speaks to the paradox of true belonging:

“We confuse belonging with fitting in, but the truth is that belonging is just in our heart, and when we belong to ourselves and believe in ourselves above all else, we belong everywhere and nowhere.” ~ Brene Brown

For as long as I can remember, I’ve felt a profound existential homesickness, a deep longing to belong, searching for my place in the world, my true hearth of belonging.

Like a contemporary version of Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, albeit with modern clothes and a far less schmaltzy sound track in the background, I’ve been traveling on my own metaphorical yellow brick road, searching for home and for true belonging.

And I hear a similar song of longing from so many others. So if we are to believe Brene Brown and Maya Angelou, the antidote for this existential homesickness, the deep healing medicine for what ails us, begins paradoxically with belonging to ourselves first and unequivocally. To stand in the center of our own lives.

This invitation and gauntlet is a provocative paradox. True belonging requires us to hold the simultaneity of, “Yes, and…” This is the dynamic tension inherent in both good improvisation and authentic belonging.

While trying to “fit in” is about conforming to an idealized image of what we think others want us to be and do. At its best, fitting in begets a false sense of belonging. Like a pretend guest crashing a wedding party, conformity is a well dressed impostor. When we try to fit in, we often work so hard at it, and that effort emits a subtle perfume of fear. Fitting in is not true belonging, it is performing.

Belonging requires vulnerability, authenticity, and courage. And like everything else that truly matters, it is a matter of the heart. It is ultimately and intimately about belonging to ourselves.

So here’s the thing about poets, we are besotted with paradox. It is the capacious currency of poetry. The sassy perspicacity that makes us sizzle. Paradox invites us to belong every place and no place. Paradox rocks us out of our comfort zones, carries us aloft on its syncopated offbeat. Asks us to be everywhere and nowhere, simultaneously both in and out. To belong to our own good hearts. To belong to one’s self, in order to belong to others, in freedom. The price is high. The reward is great.

These days, during the global pandemic, my version of the archetypal hero/heroine’s journey, my iteration of Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, is a quiet internal depths journey, an inner yellow brick road to find my true place of belonging. And just like Dorothy, and Maya, and Brene I am beginning to discover that the heart of belonging resides inside my own aliveness, inside my creative joy, inside my own wild heart.

Which brings me now to one of my favorite poems by David Whyte, from his book, House of Belonging. This poem has been a touchstone for me throughout the years and now I gratefully share it with you below. Like all of my mentors, David Whyte points to the paradox of true belonging. How belonging requires and imbues freedom:

“You must learn one thing:
the world was made to be free in.
Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.” ~ David Whyte, The House of Belonging

My Response to the Call of David, Dorothy, Brene, and Maya ~
A New Year’s Prayer for Freedom and Belonging

These days, I am swaddling myself in great swathes of solitude,
not only because we are in an ongoing global pandemic,
with so many of us sheltering in place, in order to keep the virus at bay,
I am also consciously choosing this hibernal time for going inward,
I am holding the simultaneity of apparent opposites, of being in and out,
tucked inside the darkness and sweet confinement of my aloneness.

Cuddling myself under the covers of an ongoing oppressive isolation,
I occasionally peer outside the duvet and nibble upon delicious morsels
of everyday miracles, viewed on zoom or relayed to me by text or phone,
from under my ethereal quilted blanket, inside a sacred tapestry woven metaphorically
for millennia by my ancestors, those who made me possible, stitched me together,
inside the darkness and sweet confinement of their aloneness.

In the stillness and silence of my own good company, I feel their longing,
I hear the whispers of those who came before me and live on within me,
the lineage and longing of those kinfolk, those souls who longed to belong,
who longed to be free, to go beyond fitting in, to belong to themselves,
to abide in a place among kin who celebrate the aliveness within each other,
and who harvest the darkness and sweet confinement of sacred aloneness.

This inherited longing to belong is etched indelibly in my own DNA,
and like a pregnant mama on the verge of giving birth, in that liminal space,
I perceive the stirrings of new life in my belly and a swelling of my heart,
budding resilient limbs of new beginnings pressing out from within,
tentative expressions of embodied wholehearted authentic belonging,
as I abide in the darkness and sweet confinement of my aloneness.

What I notice most in my quiet quest for belonging are micromovements,
paying loving attention as I track and tend my piquant appetites,
as I cultivate a gentle generosity of self blessing, appreciating a thirst for music,
acknowledging a hunger for silence, celebrating my craving for naps,
or the delicious longing for sour, bitter, sweet, or savory bursts upon my tongue,
savoring myself inside, the darkness and sweet confinement of aloneness.

And just as Ms. Angelou declared in that interview almost 50 years ago,
I too am concerned with how I look at myself, how I talk to myself,
how I hold myself in my own heart. I like myself very much.
And as I nourish myself one brush stroke at a time, one poem at a time,
one breath and footstep at a time, I discover I belong every place, I belong no place.
I belong to myself in the darkness and sweet confinement of my aloneness.
I belong and I am free...

Meris Specterman Walton 1/08/2021