On Loss and Leaving

I’ve been thinking about those of you who have lost through leaving.

Maybe you have lost your family, community, sense of safety, belonging, friends, church, or work. Maybe you feel this loss in ways you can’t share with others. Maybe you have lost everything, or what used to be your everything.

Maybe you feel like you’ve lost yourself.

Leaving can mean different things: leaving behind something or someone you care about, leaving a faith, leaving your past self in an effort to grow into who you are becoming. For me, leaving Christian patriarchy meant losing some family relationships, losing the scattered kind of community I grew up in, losing my sense of certainty, my support network.

When I left, I felt like I was losing pieces of myself, only to find that leaving was the only way to healing, to becoming more whole. . . .

Shelter

This isn’t the first time I’ve had to shelter in place.

The world seems off-balance this year, but the deep part of me has found the old tracks through the forest, hidden due to years of absence, but still there.

During the work week I can muffle the echoes of the past, stay busy in my virtual office, stay connected with the present.

But on my days off, I’m reliving something I haven’t experienced in the seven years since I left my life as a stay-at-home daughter. . . .

MemoirCait WestOctober 14, 2020stay at home, stay at home daughter, shelter in place, covid-19, pandemic, learning, hope, remembering, memory, changeComment

I Remember

Remember the scrawl of initials on aspens, bark thin and scarred. The flutter of heart-shaped leaves, butter yellow, glowing in the sun.

Remember the shuffle of damp pine needles underfoot, the sifting of thoughts that fall on forest silence.

Remember the want of solitude, threaded to the want of freedom. . . .