How to be a Phoenix
This is the lesson of the Phoenix.
This is what it does best.
It submits to the burning because it knows there is no other way through but THROUGH.
You have to burn if you want to evolve.
You HAVE to surrender to the unknown if you want to change. You don’t get to control the narrative. You don’t get to choose your particular brand of “doable flames.”
If you want to rise, you have to lay it all down.
Trauma Brain
Trauma brain is like the on ramp on the highway with the stoplight that lets only one or two cars through before it turns red again.
I can hear the blink blink of the red light, protecting me from information and emotional overload. The traffic of my thoughts has to slow down otherwise I will crash. If I think and feel ALL OF IT all at once, I will explode.
Smoke em while you got em
I want to secure my hope. Tether it to facts and action-whatever works for the day to stave off the panic. Research the shit out of it and do every single thing I can to help him live.
But the truth is, me pushing every last supplement down Phoenix's throat does not guarantee any bit of saving from pain.
It keeps him aware he is sick, and the hovering high-pitched spirit I do it in communicates that I am NOT OK and because I am NOT OK, I cannot let him be OK.
We're not all well on the same day
I do all the things that make me feel alive. I practice radical self-care. That's how I stay present.
I never stop going to church. I never stop hiking. I never stop trusting that I'm loved and I'm chosen and I'm safe, and that more will be revealed.
The gift inside a package of loss
An awareness of life’s fragility is a gift usually given inside a package of loss.
Is it worth it to begin to know at such a young age how to truly live?
Holding Space
How can the world become in an instant just entirely too much to handle?
And if it can for them, then it sure as hell can for you.
And there it is.
The awful truth of all of our lives reveals itself: the world truly is entirely too much to handle.