From the Marginalian this morning - if you don’t know this site, go to www.themarginalian.org. It is a wonderful website full of poetry and music and literature and musings on life. I read a wonderful poem by a poet I had never heard of - Derek Walcott.

Love After Love

The time will come

when, with elation,

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror,

and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.

I found this poem so beautiful and magical and it made me want to write about my own experience of learning to love myself. I think I spent many years not recognizing the importance of this…. too many years seeking approval or the love of others. Only when I learned to first love myself was I able to truly love and be loved.

One thing I know about writing…you have to read to write. Read a lot. Experience all kinds of styles and words and melodies and patterns. Soak it all in. And, then, and only then, are you inspired to write. When I go through periods of not reading a lot, my well is dry. When I have more time to read….the words flow.

I learned to trust my own judgement (again), I learned to embrace the me that is flawed and imperfect

Yet gorgeous

And buoyant

And brilliant

Who feels

And thinks

And stretches to reach the stars and the moon

In all their glory

Who awakens for a sunrise

Without fail

With sand between my toes and under my nails

Who weeps

And laughs

With utter abandon

Pondering the glory that is life. And love. And existence

Welcoming change

The only constant

Yet sometimes

Curling into a ball of fear

Like a roly poly

Then stretching again

And using my legs and running as fast as I can

Toward all

That is

And all

That might