bloom + flow

Category: mindful moments

  • the power of storytelling: from pain into purpose

    the power of storytelling: from pain into purpose

    For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to have a story to tell. I’m not the most outgoing person, so I’m not sure who I wanted to tell, exactly, but I wanted to have a story worth sharing. I didn’t want to be like the characters in the books I escaped into—I didn’t want a life that inspired escape for someone else. I wanted a life that showed someone else what was possible. What hope could do. What love could do. What struggle could birth. I wanted to tell a story that would inspire someone to keep going, to keep pushing.

    I started this blog as a scab collection, of sorts. The plan was to impart reflections and lessons from yesterday’s scars. That’s where the inspiration sourced its power. The power of yet. Wounds still open and gaping and raw weren’t to go here. They were to be felt, not seen. Quiet stillness pooling the saltwater of tears in peace. They were supposed to fester until sutured. It was supposed to be my way of having a means for catharsis without the show of pain. But that’s never been how I write. It’s never been why I write. I’m not sure why I thought the tide would turn this time around.

    I used to write to capture moments. Feelings. It was how I processed the world around me. It was how I dealt with the multitude of feelings coursing through me. It helped me stay leveled and sane with all that my mind and life had going on. It helped me stayed connected to the Spirit too. 

    When I hurt, I wrote. When frustration threatened to overwhelm me, I wrote. When others hurt, I wrote for them for me. When life happened, I wrote. I wrote for the good and I wrote for the bad. I wrote in the good and I wrote in the bad. And throughout it all, I prayed for change. I prayed for hope and peace and resilience. I was my whole self when I wrote. I was a reflection of hope and love and peace, and I loved that. But what about now? 

    If I’m honest, I’ve been too scared or nervous or insecure to publish my work. Sometimes more ‘and’ than ‘or.’ It’s mostly tucked away in notes and files that get buried in yesterday’s pockets of truth. Today’s truths must fend for themselves. If I’m honest, there are few lessons to easily pull out and share. The reflections in mirror pools of old tears are plentiful, though. Introspections that lead to holes from rabbits delayed from going on their way are innumerable, too. I am capable. I think. I am able. I know. I am better than I give myself credit for. And but so why don’t I give myself credit?

    I have to release this idea that I’m so far from perfect that my voice and my view don’t matter no matter how beautifully written. Even if it’s not my definition of perfection, it’s beautiful because I’m beautiful because The Creator said so. Even if it’s not a Nikki or a Zora or a Toni or an Alice original, it’s a Kamala Starr original. That’s enough. That’s more than enough. It’s got to be. 

    This isn’t about me. It’s about my gift. It’s about my ability to impact people with words. Just words. My words. The Creator’s grace. My harmony. The Creator’s amp. My heart. The Creator’s love. My war. The Creator’s peace. Beyond understanding. It is beyond understanding. It is incomprehensible that I’d wake up in the peak of morning with nothing on my mind but The Creator’s light and these words floating, phrases and participles like anti-gravity particles, waiting to spark connection. Consciousness. Compassion. Community. Comprehension. This, too, is love. Overdue. 

  • from dislike to delight: embracing the beach experience

    from dislike to delight: embracing the beach experience

    i grew up close to the coast; while the area and its people are known for being beach-centric, i was not. in fact, there was a time i hated the beach. my earliest source of dislike was beach sand itself. the sand would get in places it just shouldn’t be. specifically, i hated the granules for finding a home in the space between the skin of my toes and the straps of my sandals. they worked hard to create comfort in that home, sanding down and smoothing my skin in the most painful of ways. each step from the sand dunes to the strip–that little strip of road that ran parallel to the beach itself–would grow to feel like its own brand of sandblasting right there in my shoes.

    the strip was the place to be. i hated it most. in peak season, there were the throngs of people. it became a coming-of-age art to weave in and out to find your path. it was discomforting and overstimulating. the strip was also the place people went to be free. catcalls and corner prayers echoed off the store awnings. bikinis and board shorts as far as the eye could see. girls weren’t supposed to get mad if someone grabbed us or slaps our behinds as we walked past them. there was often too much going on and too many going by to pinpoint one bold dumbass in a sea of them.

    one time in high school, i was down on the strip with a few friends. we were cruising in my friend’s pathfinder, just being teenagers. you know, the kind of very responsible teenagers that forget to lock the doors when we got in. because this was in the before-times when automatic locks only engaged when you left a vehicle. we were stopped at a light when a random guy walked over and climbed in next to me. the mixed aromas of a freshly-snuffed tobacco, cologne, bergamot hair grease, brand new sneakers, and mint gum created a curious blend. his cornrows were fresh and his gold fronts gleamed. he didn’t scare me. his presence–his actions–did.

    but women of my lineage don’t show things like that so it turned to an angry brand of madness and i. went. off. i cussed and fussed and kicked and hollered. i didn’t scare him. my presence didn’t scare him; my actions did.

    the alternative was the boardwalk. that’s the place active people go to be active. i never had any disdain for it, really, but there wasn’t any standout reason to love it unless i went to ride bikes or rollerblade or run — something like that. i tried to find solace there but it’s so busy it seems like if you’re going to stroll leisurely, as i would, you’re out of place. it’s the middle. like the purgatory—the strip is an obvious choice for hell and the beach. ahhh. heaven.

    there was that one time, though. this guy kissed me so good on a bench on the boardwalk that i thought he may have been the second coming of the savior. close to enough to heaven, i thought. but then i listened when he spoke and that killed all the noise. good thing, too. as i look back, he was just a doorman for purgatory—the conductor between heaven and hell.

    but then, after that, the beach itself invited me to shift my paradigm. to try one more time to find favor there. to forget about the restraint and structure of shoes and the need to stay on guard for the journey. it beckoned me into a moment to let myself get lost. that’s where i found love. i found heaven on the same beach i thought i hated.

    we strolled leisurely across the sand, in search of favorites. with open minds. holding fast to social graces. he saved me from too much of everything and nothing, with just a walk and a talk. matching. the reciprocity it required of me energized and revived me. i loved it. and that walk—the longest, loveliest walk of my existence—changed my life for the better. and it balanced out all that ugh-blahness from before. i began to love the beach for the favor i found. it became my favorite, most populated location to be alone with love.

    the waves crashing made me remember how good and pure persistence can be. he was. but not in a tsunami kind of way or like the man on the strip that time. no. he was the like the ebb and flow of the tide. you know how it gently, steadily reshapes the shore line and erases the footprints of those who came before? you know how the tide makes things look and feel brand new? that’s how he was. like the beach. and the salt of the water made the cut on my leg from shaving sting a little. but then the next day it was almost healed. it was like magic. or a miracle. or a gentle reminder that this, too, shall pass.

    you know how calming the ocean can be? and the sound of the water rushing might startle you a bit but not exactly scare you? how sometimes, many times, the sound excites you in a giddy kind of way? makes you feel youthful and exuberant? makes you want to jump into the next tide sweeping in? makes you want to get carried away? he’s just like that. and you know how the ocean seems to dare you to be open and willing? like it needs you to try something new. there’s a newness unmatched down there on the beach. sometimes it looks and smells a lot like reckless abandon because you know there’s danger in there—especially at night when you can’t see it all, because that’s when the current is most surprising, but it’s okay.

    because it’s heaven, it won’t be predictable. and there might be tears. saltwater can burn your eyes. but you wouldn’t know heaven if it weren’t for hell. and there might be discomfort, but that’s because change and transition and newness throw us humans off sometimes. yea, you might get lost on the beach but someone will always find you. someone will walk with you. and you may find a brand of madness somewhere, either within or without you, but hell, every experience should be an experience,

    right?

  • unveiling truths: living beyond our shadows

    unveiling truths: living beyond our shadows

    only sometimes, i wonder what it’d feel like to live on the other side of fear. on the other side of restraint. on the other side of caution. what would it feel like to not think about the mess to be cleaned up or the tasks to get caught up or the screams to explain or the shape and folds of my body and the faces or the ways my heart makes visible the emotions that rise and fall and rise and grow and rise and expand til there’s no space or air left to do anything else but explode. what happens and who am i after boom goes the dynamite?

    what’s life like after i give more than i thought i had? after i show more than i meant to? after i expose truths i didn’t know i had lied about? after i open the door to rooms i have yet to look at or inside myself? after light is shed on shadows i called monsters and left for dead? after i show what i was scared to see? what is left of treasures untold?

    sometimes i wonder if i jumped in feet first just because you asked or if it was because I didn’t know how to breathe the air up there with you. i wonder if fear or faith kept me from drowning. did i even go deep enough? or did you stay with me, where i felt safe, because you were fine wading even if it wasn’t fair? sometimes i wonder if i let lil ol me get in the way of a big new us.

  • unfolding authenticity: discoveries from divorce

    unfolding authenticity: discoveries from divorce

    a long time ago, a supervisor told me that people are the most unpredictable product. but humans are creatures of habit, i’d proudly retorted. he ignored me, and explained why data on patterns and trends matters so much. because, while the behavior might look different person to person or maybe even over time in the same person, it can be traced back to pretty reliable motivations. the triggers are there, if we know where to look and for what we’re looking. people are who and how they are, he’d said, even when they don’t want to be. especially, he’d emphasized, when they don’t want to be. i didn’t revisit that until after my divorce. after realizing i had focused on all the ways i could repair what was never actually broken. 

    i first met my ex-husband in middle school at church. a friend brought him after our youth pastor taught us what evangelism could look like at our age. we crushed on each other a bit, but nothing really happened. he seemed too particular for my liking, and i may have been a bit too flitty for his. a couple years later, it didn’t much matter. the youth ministry sort of lost its luster. we all grew up; high school changed what life required of us, and many of us got jobs that required us to work sunday service and wednesday night bible study hours. so, when we crossed paths at an ice cream social at the university we both ended up going to, it seemed kismet. i thought the creator was orchestrating a grand symphony for us. 

    i didn’t rush it. i dated. liked. loved. even got heartbroken. i wanted to get it all out of my system before settling into forever with my fated. when we finally got together, it sort of felt more like completing an item on a checklist than the kismet moment in time people lauded it as. where they saw a good catch, i felt trapped. with him, i couldn’t be the version of myself i loved most, but i also had never seen any woman be that version in marriage, so i thought it was par for the course. i thought our married selves were meant to be different. more reserved. not knowing how to be married, we just did what we saw other married people do. as i consider it, we never really cleaved unto one another. we didn’t know how. so, we folded. we even folded the red flags in and called them tests. and i think we thought that, at some point, folding was enough. that, one day, it’d be easier to just stay that way. 

    you know how, if you don’t have scissors, but you need to only use a piece of a piece of paper, you fold it back and forth and sharpen the crease where you plan to separate the pieces? and how, after all those folds, and maybe a little moisture, the paper just sort of gives way? that’s how our divorce happened. we folded. and folded again. and again. back and forth. and by the time the first little bit of rain came, the fold wasn’t a fold anymore. 

    i was returning from a field trip with my students when i received the curious text that changed my life: i don’t want to do this anymore. at the time, i’d thought he was referring to his job. i had just recently resigned from my sales job to pursue my master’s degree and go into education. i thought he wanted to sit down and plan his own escape. when i later realized his truth, i tried desperately to save our marriage. it wasn’t so much that i thought it worth saving, but that i didn’t want to fail publicly. i didn’t want to admit that we’d made a mistake. i didn’t want to add to the statistic. and all i could think of were all the divorced women i’d known who never even found self-love let alone that of another person. i was scared of what was on the other side. i didn’t know if the grass could be greener.

    i later realized that he didn’t want a divorce. he was content with not wanting me as his wife and not allowing anyone else to have me, either. we were to remain married on paper. split the bills. share the house. and “do our own thing.” he knew me enough to know that i couldn’t, in good conscience, do ‘my own thing’ and still be married. i didn’t take my vows lightly. so, if we divorced, it’d be solely my decision. my financial burden. my public admission of failure. it took me awhile, and then just a moment.

    in the thick of that season, i could only think of how surprising his actions were. he suddenly seemed so callous. combative. manipulative. so unlike the boy i’d met in church all those years ago. i could not understand how someone who called themselves my friend first could ever treat me roughly as their partner. the pursuit of happiness, for me, is intrinsically linked to my ability to flow where the streams take me and to allow others that same pursuit. even if it doesn’t suit or serve me. for him, it was to control the flow—to dam or divert the streams at will, especially to suit or serve him. that’s what made me seem flitty—what made him too particular to me, respectively, way back when. i just didn’t think he’d be that way with me. but, it was never about me, and i won’t fault him for being his authentic self. it just served as a reminder: when people show you who they are, believe them. the first time. the best people, places, and things in life don’t often require you to fold. and even schisms as cataclysmic as divorce have their merits. 

  • the power of resilience: from seed to bloom

    the power of resilience: from seed to bloom

    let down your rain and release the lightning. may the winds blow til the trees bend toward their beginning. heap it all on the ground below.

    i am there: the seed forgotten deep inside earth. the one who contorted to find comfort in spaces built for me not to fit. but to limit. to stunt. to bind and control. i am, too, the one who grew. beyond the darkness. despite the weight of burden.

    i got what I needed from what they didn’t want. and even when i tried to stay small because they said that was best, strength gave way. a lil stretch broke the mold.

    they said i was not good seed. i became so. 

    they said it was not good ground. it became so. 

    they said the conditions were not favorable to growth. they became so.

    now that the impossible has been made so, they want to find a way to prove themselves prophetic. 

    no mowing, pruning, or razing can undo what has been done.

    i’ve found bloom. this is the overflow.