burning ember roses

It's funny.  The way that things swing.  They way that people camouflage their judgement of you in a cloak of "concern"...the choices you make define you, but you define every single choice you make.  And you make new ones every moment of every day.  The crazy thing is how unprepared we all are for the depth of everything we are handed.  If we are guided by fear instead of love, we do so much more damage than necessary.  But everyone is so afraid that if they open to love, then they are weak, vulnerable.  I guess I feel that, too.  I don't know.

My littlest one won't go to sleep because every twenty minutes or so, he comes down and asks for a hug.  I can't say no.  I try to.  I do, for periods.  I doesn't matter.  I need the touch and so does he...and I think about how it will hurt him and I can't come up with anything.  So I hug him.

Does being in a dark place for a while, after the loss of your best friend, your partner, the love of your life, define you?  I know that I was told that being in the classroom could be a good thing for me...I never denied that.  My problem has always been that I hate having that feeling that I should leave EVERYTHING at the door.  I feel afraid too often.  I updated our team blog.  I put on my into page that I am a widow with three lovely children of my own...I spent a good, solid 5 minutes or so looking at that word: "widow".  I don't dislike the word...I liken it to the word window...when we lose so much of our heart, when we feel so much pain, it is like sand heated to glass, so we can see our soul, our deepest parts, the depths of our heart and soul...but others...I don't know what they see or feel or think.  I have a lovely necklace charm, glass blown with the ashes of my love.  Telling my students, if they ask, that it contains his ashes is considered unsafe, unwise.  I think it is lovely, beautiful...it is quite close to my religious beliefs...his body was burned to ash so that he could become part of our world, be spread in the breeze and make the land where we spend time more lovely, more fertile.  That is seen more as a nightmare for the system:  if you tell them his ashes are in that, they might become afraid, worry about his body being burned...so I could not tell the students what the charm was.  Is it odd that this hurt?  This started, or continued, what seemed to be the secrets of who I am, what I believe, what I love...I'm not the majority, so I may not share.  I don't know what to do with that.  I'm not going to change because the things I love and believe make them afraid.

I will still enter dark places on this journey.  It is a long one.  But their lack of belief in me shows me that I must enter these places with my head held high.  I am PROUD  to feel this pain. I am PROUD that I loved so deep and strong and real that my heart breaks over and over.  That does not make me a thing to fear.  I'm sorry if you think it does.  It makes me a thing real.  I am like a glowing ember.  Perhaps you do not have the gloves to hold me.  I am fire without a flame.  I burn things around me to make the world a more rich and fertile place.  I destroy, but not with impunity...I feel the pain, I embrace it, I burn with it, I am made more whole because of it.  And I am feared because of all of this.

Go ahead.  Fear me.  Judge me.  I will be strong and I will NOT let go of love, or my belief that love is for the best, that love is the thing to cling to...perhaps, though, I will learn that sometimes, love does not mean trust.  Maybe that is the heart of the mantra I will need to form.  I will love without boundaries, and I will remember that just because I love, does not necessarily mean I trust.  You do not need to earn my love.  You are alive, and so I love you.  You do, however, need to earn my trust.  And that, my dear, is not an easy thing.  It gets even harder as I grow older.