This question floats somewhere in the back of my mind like a little ship that’s lost at sea. Who could I have been?

Losing everything I’d known to be true and safe, changed me. It left an indelible mark-my entire understanding of love and loss, of security and freedom were dismantled. Childhood trauma does this. It changes one forevermore. Since age 7, I have carried this huge cavernous hole inside of me. It has been a place I tuck all of my insecurities, fears, and uncertainties. It’s a place I’ve covered over my boldness, my fearless unfettered strong girl self. The one who would pursue anything that meant something to her, the one who is feral and carefree, the uncaged bird. I have made so many choices because of this vacuum and not made other choices because of it. It has left a chasm deep and wide. A dark tunnel where dreams fall away and get lost like petals from a broken flower that whirl away in the wind. I’m often left wondering who could I have been without this emptiness. Who might I have been? What have I left on the table? What adventures have I turned away from. What have I held on to long past it’s expiration date? What have I been unable to face? What books would I have written? What blogs or podcasts would I have created? What parallel lives did I leave in the wake? I’ve spent much of my life wondering about this lost little ship at sea. I’m only now trying to understand who I am not inspite these happenings, but because of these happenings. How can I find a way to be made stronger, more whole, more courageous, more of who I am? All of me, in the brokenness and strength, in the pain and beauty, in the suffering and transcending, in the loss and life I’ve lived inspite of all of it.

The love, the love that I had and lost, and the love I have inside of me and outside of me. In this fissure, I choose to pour the love, the light, the beauty, the truth that I am still here standing tall, and I am still loving, loving in a way that only I know how to do because of ALL that I have endured.

The love, the love, that is what I choose to pour into the hollowness, that is what I choose.