About a year and a half ago, I found myself in La Campa, Lempira, Honduras, a tiny little town that is a little bit touristy, but mainly just silent—a startling peace after the nonstop noise of the city with its rushing traffic, honking horns, street vendors, catcalls, loud music, and deep bass notes. It was cool and a little bit cloudy, and I was laying on a couch out on the patio, looking at a foreground of deep green foliage framing a towering gray cliff. For the past several weeks, I had been writing religiously—it was my only solace in an environment where I felt utterly out of control. But it was there that I felt compelled to pick up my purple pen and lose myself in the simple yet intricate majesty of those rocks and plants.
It was poetry that spilled from the tips of my fingers and the well of my heart. I love beautiful words, but I more often collect poetic verses than create them myself.
What emerged was my Mama God lighting a candle in the cold, damp cave I was inhabiting and oh-so-gently taking my hand, lifting me from the fetal position until I was sitting upright.
She offered me a warm cup of tea to penetrate my chilled insides, and I found my fingers clutching one of those beautiful handmade mugs whose shape perfectly fits the curve of my hands. She put a blanket around my shoulders, an old patchwork quilt that had been repaired time and time again. She had added some of those stitches just now, covering the rips and tears with new patches of growth and faith. Then she knelt down, took the little candle’s flame, and fanned it into a campfire that crackled with sparks of life and warmth.
“I am here with you,” she said softly. “And when you’re ready, you can venture outside the cave into the bright newness. You don’t have to stay here.”
This is why I write—to dwell within this moment, to feel, to ache, to breathe again, to taste the sweetness of joy, to learn, to commune with the Divine.
I write to get warm again, to allow Mama God to wrap me back up in that patchwork quilt. I write to feel understood when the words my lips form are a foreign tongue to those around me. I write to understand—for there is much I don’t understand—like the significance of each little tiny moment and how they fit into the broader life story. Or what it would be like to never get to tell the person I love that I am in love with them, to suppress such a core part of my identity. Or why pain and grief are such an essential part of living.
I write to release some of my own self-centered aching in order to create space to ponder the pain of others. I write to learn, to summon the courage necessary to care deeply for those around me.
I write to expand my small way of thinking, so that I may receive the gentle invitation to exit that cave and inhale the freshness of what lies beyond myself.
