WORDING
by Danielle Arsenault

As i attempt to write the meaning and magic of this course,
to convey, in a page, all the healing and opening and unraveling
this work has been for me,
my house mate, downstairs, is jubilantly burning her journals.
The sight of it makes me ache, fills me with sadness, pain and grief.
I can’t move. Standing there lifeless behind the couch,
I am at a funeral, mourning something.
Something i have just discovered.

HER, i pretend,
feigning the sorrow she’ll feel when she turns,
and her stories are gone.
But she laughs and sings and erupts with joy,
revealing i haven’t searched deep enough yet.

WOMEN, i claim,
feeling the sting they’ll feel when there are no stories
like theirs, to turn to and be mirrored by.
But there will always be stories, even in silent ashes,
comforting me, urging me to dwell deeper still.
Time passes, i retreat, write, cry, and then...

ME, i know,
the debilitating loss of voice, the length of my silence.
I’m mourning what i’m finding.

My isolation, my aloneness, and the desperate fear in my heart,
that one day i’ll be locked away, shut up and closed off from the world i love
because i don’t fit in,
because there is nowhere i belong,
because i feel more than others feel
because i ache deeper than others ache
because, alone with the madness of it all
i become the madness.
Knowing all the while that what i see and feel is real, and good to be touched by,
it’s others’ silence that threatens me.
Never recognizing myself in another,
never reading another woman’s words that echo my own,
i am tempted to believe the lie,
tempted to believe i am alone, and on the edge.

So how do i speak the salvation this course, this work, has been for me?
The poetic, eloquent, heart filled, breath giving, life saving, rescuing, revealing,
blessing of women’s words?
The grace and company they offer me,
the courage and voice they nurture in me,
the safety and invitation, with which they gift me?
The craft calls me to take my place among the circle,
trusting that the longings of home and flesh lay within this embodied journey.
Finding here what has eluded me elsewhere,
while affirming that even in silence,
when words seem a hopelessly inefficient communion,
that the speaking continues through me.

I am surfacing,
being moved to write,
to recognize that i have always written.
Finding expression on the page, and purpose in my heart.
The ointment of telling mends me.
Excited, to share this discovery with children.
Inviting them to speak, to tell their worlds, to know themselves.
Healing my silence by disabling theirs.

It’s been hard, i must admit, the cracking open.
Some days i find my limbs filled with lead
other days, flying for the first time, or third, or next.
I have acquired the conviction that it must be done,
that finding, and writing and telling our stories is necessary,
for every time a story is burned, a journal locked up, a voice silenced,
the healing that is stored within, risks being lost to the world.
And when that happens,
somewhere, another woman sits quietly crying,
awaiting asylum,
as she tucks her children into bed at night,
as she kneads the bread she is baking,
still believing
she too,
is the only one.