“Write your way through,” she said when I told her I didn’t even know how to begin to process my grief or even name it.

“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart,” I read on the front of a journal in a bookstore.

“Write again...write that memoir you’ve been afraid to touch, 
write poems just for the joy of writing them, 
let words fill your journals like they used to, 
write that book about bones…” I say to myself. And then promptly find a form of distraction.

The breathings of my heart:

This heart that has opened and closed and opens again.
This heart that longs for words that change the story because words really are that powerful.

Words that slowly open, slowly rise 
rise because they are written 
from the very inhale and exhale of the body.

“Write your way through,” her words sound in my chest and spark a new kind of breathing…

Many Blessings to You,
May you open and rise, 
and fill your life with your heart’s breathings!
Vanessa
xoxo