People In General Would Rather Die Than

It Was The First Time I'd Ever Said The Words To Another Person, And The Sound Of Them Broke Open My Heart.

Gazing Into The Mirror, I Saw Myself As I Was-a Black Silhouette In The Room, A Woman Whose Darkness Had Completely Leaked Through.

Journal Became A Sanctuary Where I Could Pour Out In Honesty My Pain And Joy. It Recorded My Footsteps And Helped Me Understand Where I Was Standing, Where I Had Been, And Even Where God Pointed.

Finally, I Began To Write About Becoming An Older Woman And The Trepidation It Stirred. The Small, Telling "betrayals" Of My Body. The Stalled, Eerie Stillness In My Writing, Accompanied By An Ache For Some Unlived Destiny. I Wrote About The Raw, Unsettled Feelings Coursing Through Me, The Need To Divest And Relocate, The Urge To Radically Simplify And Distill Life Into A New, Unknown Meaning.

It's Easy To Operate Under The Illusion That What We Are Doing Is So Important We Cannot Stop Doing It. ... Stopping Is A Spiritual Act. It Is The Refuge Where We Drink Life In.