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Who have you forgiven this year and what was the journey like that brought you to forgive them?
I forgive you. Not because you asked, but because I looked in you and saw the little kid whose heart was broken too, so many years ago.
Prompt via Geekin' Hard. Blog Badge via @SpiritMovesMeg. You can find it here. :)
Take us back to a moment this year when you experienced pure, unadulterated joy.
Joy touches down at 7:15 p.m. on Friday nights when Leah, a slight little muscular ball of electricity balances her weight on top of my upturned heels.
Her steadiness travels up the length of my legs. They become anchors. I feel the floor beneath them. I feel it push against my hip bones, millions of tiny hands providing the traction I need to unfurl my bent spine and send it upward, a taught string that could almost break free from the confines my body.
I find joy in defying gravity.
I find joy in bending in ways I am not supposed to.
Ok, so the pose above (half-bow) is not technically the pose I'm describing, but I wanted an abstract representation of what it feels like, and this seemed the closest. The post I'm actually talking about is cobra pose.
PS Today's prompt is via Geekin' Hard.
Where did you feel safest this year? Describe the person, place or thing that made you feel safe in 2011.
My Mom hand-stitched this quilt when she was pregnant with me. I like to think of her small, strong hands darting and hovering above each section like tiny hummingbirds as she worked, while underneath the endless blue folds that rested on her belly I floated, spun, and listened from deep inside.
When the weather turned cold this year she gave the quilt to me. And I, bone-weary, my blood already slowing as it began to thicken into its syrupy winter state, pressed that soft blue side to my cheek. At night my mind traces over each stitch, and I imagine that she wove her wishes for me, all of her strength and determination and love, into the cascading flowers, the frolicking deer, the tiny forest cottage at the center. It is the most peaceful sleep, to sleep under a constellation of dreams.
Today’s prompt is via @dailyangst; you can find the prompt and a list of others here. The photo is via me!
What made you laugh this year?
(Author: @amanda_hirsch )
You could tell by his clothes that he was probably homeless, or at least someone who was struggling to hang on to the underbelly.
He wandered up and down the platform, stopping to speak to each person as they waited for the trains to arrive. From down at my end I couldn’t hear what they were saying.
When he worked his way down to me, he stopped and said:
“How are you today?”
And I said:
“Fine, thank you. How are you?”
And he said:
“Partly cloudy, but there's a 60% chance of sunshine.”
So right on, Sir.
Today's prompt via Geekin' Hard and today's pic via Inky Twig.
Where did your intuition guide you to go this year? Did you follow that feeling or did you fight against it because it didn’t seem to make sense in terms of the real world?
My intuition and I have been wrestling this year, dancing with each other like wary playmates. She winds her way up my spine like a snake and then in a flash she’s gone, slipping through my fingers when I try to grasp her tail.
But I have been learning to sit still in the thicket, to be quiet when she approaches. And only then will she rest her head in my hand, and I can place my fingers softly at her jawline and extract the antidote from her fangs.
I got today's prompt from Paula's blog. Thanks, lady! :)
Addition through subtraction - What have you let go of this year and how has it affected you?
Many, many years ago I came across a pack of howling demons in my travels. The road was treacherous back then, so I set about putting them in my employment as bodyguards. I stationed each one at a door leading down into the cellars of my heart and instructed them to let nothing pass.
And nothing did. Nothing got in. And nothing got out.
So much time passed that I sort of forgot about them, except for the occassional indignant rumble or scratching at the door. I even forgot what it was that was so important, so precious, that I had locked it away from this dangerous world for safekeeping.
This year an earthquake shook the foundations of my house, split the floorboards open, and woke those demons up. They had forgotten I had been the one who put them there in the first place, so when I descended down to dismiss them from their posts, they put up quite a fight.
I had forgotten how terrifying their faces could be. But I wanted what was behind those locked doors. So this year I learned to make them kneel.
Today's prompt is via Geekin' Hard's site and I got today's blog badge by M.A. Brotherton here. Thanks, y'all!
Tell us about one moment that you lived in 2011 that you will never forget.
(*Sigh.* This is one of those prompts I don't want to answer, because I don't want to flip back through the snapshots of this year.)
So instead I will remember the dark day in November, when it rained so hard I hard nowhere to go and nothing to do except turn to my neglected journal and write it all down.
Today I got my prompt here and the awesome blog badge by Emma Lloyd here. Thanks, all! :)
We had thundersnow last February. Bolts of lightening that flickered and deep, rumbling thunderclaps, barely muted by the padding of falling snowflakes. I grew up in Winter country, where frost can touch down in September and pipes explode from the pressure of frozen water, but I had never seen anything like it. I had never seen ice and flame pierce the sky simultaneously.
Still, I think I felt it coming. I think I smelled the sharp, metallic scent of cold on January 1. That day I paced and circled at the window; like a dog sensing a coming storm, I whined and scratched at the doorstep to be let out. To run from it or towards it I wasn’t sure.
Today I followed a prompt from Kaileen Elise, one of the original #Reverb founders. You can read it, and others, here. And the beautiful blog badge is courtesy of Inky Twig.
Day 1 - One Word. Encapsulate the year 2011 in one word. Explain why you’re choosing that word. Now, imagine it’s one year from today, what would you like the word to be that captures 2012 for you? If you did Reverb10 then bonus points for also re-posting your 2011 word from last year along with how you feel about that in retrospect.
2011: Endurance.
This year was breathless, like a marathon with a sprint tethered to the end, like a constant search for the home stretch. It felt like Life, God, the Universe, The Great Mother, whatever you want to call it climbed up on my back like a jockey and we ran for it.
The farther and faster we went, the more I was sure my legs would give out. But they didn't. My breathing became rhythmic. The burning in my muscles faded off. The scenery and the things I passed on my way evaporated. Someone else was holding the reins, sending signals to ease off or speed up. All I had to do was run.
Now I just hear the pouding of my heart in my ears and the whistling of the wind as I go by.
Also, my word for 2011, the word that I hoped I'd be chanting like a mantra right about now, was fulfillment. That's not exactly what I got ... but maybe I got something better. Which is why I want to wait and see what word 2012 has in store for me. I feel it will be better than anything I could ever imagine. And I've always been a fan of surprises.
PS I got today's post and blog badge from Geekin' Hard's #Reverb11 site. You can find tons of prompts over there, so check it out! Happy Reverbing!
