Shadow Self

One of a poet’s greatest treasures is a well penned journal.

I have been keeping a journal for years.  Throughout my teen years, it was a ways of channeling an endless stream of angst. That proverbial sense of not feeling good enough. The endless reaching – mostly for happiness.  Something social media taps into all too readily.

A journal  is a kind of private confessional.  To say in secret what cannot be shared in public.  To wrestle demons.  To fight endless battles, winning more than losing.  To grapple with obstacles and and to prevail. To face the weight of burdens.  To wonder and dream without apology.

A journal is the ideal means of facing the darker aspects of the self.  Not to purge, but to embrace.  It allowed me to forgive my parents over the years, and to become grateful for their best efforts.  It allowed me to forgive and thank my late husband, and to reconcile missed opportunities.  It allowed me to forgive and thank my daughter for spoken and unspoken words.  Until we grew enough to see and hear each other without restraint.  It allowed me to forgive and thank myself for embracing what it means to be fully in the world.

A journal opens the mind and heart equally.  Making sense of so many competing feelings, largely in retrospect.  Very much like a shadow that dogs our steps, benign yet daunting.  Carl Jung wrote “….the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being.”

A journal allows poems to germinate.

                                                                           Counting Coup

 

                                                                           Shadows shield me

                                                                           mostly from myself

                                                                           saved from the need

                                                                           to stand up and stand out

                                                                           to be noticed as someone

                                                                           who is unafraid

                                                                           to make a difference

                                                                           silence betrays nothing

                                                                           as I wait and watch

                                                                           biding my time

                                                                          defining moments

                                                                          come once only

                                                                          changing everything

                                                                          shedding pointless fear

                                                                          I step out of the shadows.

                                                                          cbienko

                                                                          Time Enough