September 24, 2024 7:41 am PST
I woke up this morning, alive and raw with acceptance. What an abstract way of saying my therapy session last night might’ve dog walked me a bit. I expressed my discontentment and frustration with all that I’ve recently experienced that I’m trying to hash out and my therapist offers me the words “It is by design that you don’t figure it all out at once, but little by little as you go. That is for your protection”. I know as a woman of faith that this is the “daily bread” we ask God for. But I struggle tremendously with the idea of not knowing. I grew up in an unpredictable and constantly shifting environment. There were a lot of sudden changes, chaos and conflicts that I didn’t and none of the people responsible for caring for me would explain to me what was going on. I was expected to stay in a child’s place and harmed while in that place. I was celebrated for what I knew and how quickly I was able to learn. I was punished with excessive physical discipline when I showed that as bright as I may seem, I was still a child. I was told in those moments that for someone as smart as me, I do dumb shit. I was placed on a pedestal and it was only on that pedestal that I had any relief from being in a consistent state of fear that whatever dumb shit I did would lead to me being hurt. So it makes sense that I have a hard time with not getting to resort to a habit of hyper vigilance. “Knowing” was how I learned to live.
I talked to her about how I’m in such a safe and love filled place now. My body is responding to safety little by little and I am detoxing from the chaos I may have normalized and maybe even built an intimate relationship with. I expressed how its newfound territory for me and it’s so different from what I’ve known. I told her I’m still learning to be still and at home in safety. I am confronted with a new wave of confusion as to why I didn’t have this in my life before. I observe how the people currently in my life nurture my need for safety, almost effortlessly. I feel like I’ve arrived somewhere where I can breathe. Yet it makes me sad, sometimes angry, sometimes bitter that the people I wanted to rely on and tried to trust, didn’t provide this for me.
Struggling with all the truth I am learning to accept, I woke up this morning and called my Uber to head to work. My phone buzzed to tell me a driver is found. I look to see a beautiful face of a Black woman and I get a sense of ease. Something about it makes me feel a better about wherever I’m going. I sometimes take those moments to reflect and revere the Black women who have always carried me when I felt too heavy in myself for any hands to hold. It was Black women who always helped to make the world make a bit more sense to me. It is always Black women who remind me that I can go to and through, and make it out alive. My driver has no idea where I’ve come from, where I’m headed, what I last cried about or prayed to God about. She has no idea what thoughts are running through my limbs. All she knows is my name is Tyanna and all I know is that her name is “Grace”.
When I look down at my phone to see that Grace is on the way in 3 minutes, I laugh a little. Because God has a real sense of humor and often softens my heart with laughter. Grace is exactly what I needed to be reminded of. I say out loud, the first words out of my mouth in the morning “Grace is on the way” and something about that feels like a little gift of sweetness. A pinch on the cheek and a little nudge from the good spirits that it’s all working together. I’m currently writing this in the backseat of her car as I head over the hill, in a thick of fog into my workday.
Just last night I talked with my friend V about how the words we say matter. I referenced a proverb “the tongue is the body’s whip”. These words have my been told to me in caution, as someone who has been given the gift of speaking and wielding words. We talked about how we speak our lives forward, we influence others to feel with the things we say, we influence our surroundings with what comes out of our mouths. I told her about how I’m only just beginning to practice (and having a hard time with) not speaking with a bitter tongue about the ways of the world I may have grown weary or filled with disdain. In this newfound sense of safety, what if we sort out time learning something new. Because when something is let go, something must fill the empty space. Nature abhors a vacuum. We pondered on the idea of immersing ourselves in learning a language called “tutnese” to speak to each other, one that many of our ancestors spoke to communicate for safety.
It was then that a breakthrough flood of thoughts came to me. The people I came from are still learning a language of their own. It is quite possible that the ways they communicated were the only ways they knew how. The harm they may have accepted and further perpetuated may have been all they knew. They may have experienced things that they never had the words for. They are still learning a language of safety too. My therapist says “someone has to break the cycle” and while that sounds like a valiant feat, it sounds easier in theory than in practice. So much of my life has been a series of living to be tired enough of what I’m experiencing that I’m willing to see to it’s end. The cycles do get broken with me.
As the cycles get broken, I become broken open to a greater love that is far wiser than me. A love only Grace can carry and mend the wounds of my longing. One that extends to even the people who carry the harsh truth of my hurt along with their own. A balm so that I not only break a cycle, but I live to tell a new story. One where I am not simply a victim turned a hazard to myself. One that leaves room for even what I’ve survived to make itself a safer thug. A story of overcoming, of getting to see a bit clearer, of living to know that trouble doesn’t last always.
If I should speak or tell a story of what I’ve seen, I can do so in a way that does not beget more harm to my own self. I can use my tongue to testify that a mountain does move and I’m living proof. I hear these words dance through my mind as I stare out the window into the fog:
Grace is our vehicle as we make it over. Grace is our reminder that we are all simply on our way. Grace gives us all a chance to try again even if we didn’t get it all the way right the last time. Grace is always on the way.
I do not know safety very well yet, but one day I will know it better. I will know myself better within it and because of it. I am working daily to see the tongue as a tool rather than a weapon. I thank God for the grace that comforts me and champions me forward. With safety as my influence, my purest intentions can be carried out by what I speak. One day, I will look like who I am and how I’m loved, instead of who I became from what I may have went through. I am excited to hear what she has to say.
Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now I’m found.
Was blind, but now I see.
There’s a shit ton of typos in this and i think it adds character.
"One day, I will look like who I am and how I’m loved, instead of who I became from what I may have went through." This is SLAMMING me in my chest right now WOW.