How to write this part of the book?
I went to the Mikveh today, my recommitting to this writing project before beginning this last phase. So many things floated through my head as I drove there. Topics to cover. Trigger words. Questions. Intense emotions, especially lately, anger.
But I put all that aside for this afternoon and just went, knowing “something” would come clear. An answer of some kind would present itself.
Whether anyone else understands this kind of thing doesn’t matter. I am a person of ritual, and for me, just the act of “honoring and centering” somehow resets my psyche and my heart. For another, it might be incense and candles, music, whatever. Today, for me, it was the Mikveh pool.
As I sank below the water’s surface, I spoke the one-word prayer I carried there: Hineini...Here I am, Lord. I was opening myself up to the power of something beyond me, even as that is a scary thing. It’s that whole “Be-careful-what-you-ask-for” thing, because you just might get it. If you give God an invitation for an inch, would He or She want a mile?
But I also had “thank yous” in abundance. The writing these past months was heavy, and it just hurt so many times. Yet somehow, I’d been sustained.
Just “shut up”
As I surfaced, my eyes landed on the prayer cards on the side of the pool. I read them all, letting the words sink into my brain and soul, and waited to see what “inspiration” would hit me. Nothing in particular came up. So I said other prayers that I knew by heart.
It was then that a message flashed across my brain, “Stop talking! Just be quiet and…listen.“
I can just see God in heaven smacking his forehead and thinking, “She makes my head hurt!” But for me, it makes sense. I am always feeling like if something needs doing, I have to do it or it won’t happen. Whether it’s something task now, or escaping that house decades ago…I’ve always felt it was up to me. Years of abuse with no one there left me hypervigilant and tense. It’s hard for me to trust, even today, that someone will be there…or that some needed “something” WILL actually come. I live with the dread of “it will never change.”
However…recognizing my obsessive tendencies, I obeyed the voice and just shut up. I purged my overactive brain by breathing deeply, closing my eyes, and just “feeling the water” against my skin as I floated quietly. My pounding heart started to slow.
When I finally opened my eyes, they landed on the card to the left of all the others. So I re-read those words out loud:
“…Source of all Life who has kept us alive and sustained us and enabled us to reach this day.”
Especially…enabled us to reach THIS DAY.
The words broke through my logical, left-brain wall and grabbed my heart. At first I thought, Well, of course. God has helped me through some tough writing these last months, so I could make it to this point. That’s nice.
Looking back, I can just see the Universe rolling its Divine Eyes at me and thinking, Is she really that dense?
That’s when the Universe, instead, smacked me upside the head with a jarring reality. *I am still alive. All these years later…in spite of everything. I REACHED THIS DAY.
My therapist’s words rang in my head, words she’d said so many times – “For what you lived through, you shouldn’t have made it. But you are still here, standing…and psychically intact.”
Even in the warm water, a chill ran through me. Those words screamed at me off the card: Who had kept us alive….sustained us…enabled us to reach this day…
My still being here was not a given. This moment in the Mikveh pool was about so much more than a writing milestone. It was about the scary realization of my whole life…how many close calls…how many times I fell…gave up…and yet…right now…I…am…still…here.
If anything humbles, it was that realization. And it brought me intense gratitude.
I am STILL HERE. Despite decades of being hit, gaslit, and mentally bludgeoned. Despite thousands of sexual assaults over 28 years. Despite so many times that I almost ended it. I am still here. AND I have a job to do, yet.
In that moment, I realized that was the message to take in today. Don’t worry about what words will come next. Don’t worry about how to frame it. Just take it one breath, one moment, one “dunking under the water” at a time. And know that, just like I was sustained to this day, the words, the framework, the insights that need to be shared…they all will come.
So, I think that is enough for one day. Tomorrow I can stress over where to start, what to say, or what structure to use. But I sense it’s already been figured out, somewhere. I just need to listen, then put the words on paper day after day. The rest will come.
Soul Mosaic 
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