While sitting on the porch this afternoon, I had a visit from the resident hummingbird and found myself pulled into the stillness of the present to bear witness to life. While it is all too easy to try to take over life in our hurry to live it, sometimes it is worthwhile to allow it to take over us. If even for just a few moments.
I had been intending to write a blog post about some recent explorations I’ve had with the chalice as a symbol when I opened Sue Vincent’s Thursday Photo Prompt this morning. There before me was a photograph of water in the shape of a chalice illuminated by the light of the sun. The title, “yearning.” I realized that perhaps I had just been provided with the image I needed to explore this ancient symbol in the way it has come to me recently…
Photo Credit: Sue Vincent
Years ago, when I first began exploring Tarot, I bought myself the Rider-Wait deck. I often shuffled the cards to find guidance for my life and writing journey. As frequently happens with Tarot, a card will repeatedly show itself. The Queen of Cups was that card for me.
The Queen of Cups in the Rider-Waite Tarot Deck
The archetype of The Queen sat before me on her throne contemplating a capped golden chalice in her hands bearing a cross at its top. The card is filled with archetypal symbolism, which is up to the individual to explore in relation to his or her own inner journey.
I’m halfway through two of my yoga for kids sessions, and I have achieved a level of comfort and ease with my preschool yoga routines. We begin our half-hour together by finding our names on pieces of construction paper cut out in the shape of our class theme. Yesterday was carrots to go with the bunny stickers that were passed out at the end of the class. A story follows, and yoga is often incorporated into the narrative. We play games and take turns teaching poses. Hardly anyone runs off the rug or talks out of turn. It’s magical at times and quite fun. Each week I try to add another element of the philosophy of yoga to our practice. Yesterday, we listened to a chime and observed how long we could follow the sound waves until they disappeared. Three times our sense was tuned to the chime in attentive stillness.
This half hour is followed by a forty-five minute elementary school class. I must gather my things into my bag, hurry downstairs, and assemble myself for the awaiting students. Kids who are restless and talkative await me. Although the class is smaller, with about half as many students as my preschool class, it is at least three times as challenging. I find I struggle to fill the minutes with yoga, and find myself turning into a recess monitor. The five or so kids are full of kinetic energy. They want to wrestle and explore their bodies in ways that feel disruptive to the natural flow of yoga I am used to. It takes me out of my comfort zone.
I have one child who farts audibly throughout the class, and there are no windows that open to clear the air. He refuses to go to the bathroom. I have another who touches everything I bring with me. When I turn my attention away for a moment, he is digging into my belongings, flipping through the pages of the storybooks, rearranging yoga cards, and banging my chime. I know he probably needs yoga more than the rest, but he tries my patience like no one else can.
Group energy feeds the individual and collectively it grows. Sometimes this can be wonderful. When a circle of people are joined in the energy of love a space can fill with the embrace of its powerful light. Alternatively, I often feel as though I am in the midst of a small gang of hoodlums whose chaotic energy reverberates off the walls in this yoga class. It feels like everything yoga should not be.
The children whine and argue with one another. They condense space so that bodies bump and push together. Unlike the preschoolers, they pay little attention to storybooks, and half of them refuse to engage in yoga postures even when I ask them to lead. Yesterday, they were particularly challenging. I discarded my attempt to do storybook yoga with them and moved onto one game and then another. Bodies continued to argue, push against each other, and ignore my instruction. I felt frustration and irritation grow its ugly form inside of me before the class was halfway over. The voice of anger began to creep its way into my throat. Someone had just handed me a ripped yoga card from a deck that had been lovingly gifted from a dear friend. I took a deep breath.
I didn’t care who ripped the card. I didn’t ask. Instead, I quietly asked for tape.
Kids like to help, in general, when asked. I felt the energy begin to shift to the small mission at hand. Soon a roll of scotch tape was retrieved from some mysterious place in the classroom and placed in my hand. I ripped off a strand and slowly began to mend the cardboard. I ripped another and reinforced the back. I gathered the deck together and placed it inside my bag, then sat on the floor.
“Sit on the rug with me,” I told my students. “Close your eyes. Place one hand on your heart and the other on your belly. Breathe. Good. Breath again. One more time,” I urged. “Open your eyes. Take your arms in front of you and place one over the other,” I demonstrated. “Hold them like this without touching.” We took another deep breath. “Can you feel the energy move through your hands?” I asked. “I can feel it swirling through mine, can you?” All attention was focused on this mudra designed to calm. It felt like magic.
Fluid magic.
I didn’t pause to doubt or question what I felt and observed, allowing myself instead to slip past constriction into the fluid space of the intuition. We had transformed our collective energy of chaos to that of calm. “Reach your hands to the sky and breathe. Exhale and twist.” We were doing yoga. Together. Arms followed my voice and bodies turned and stretched in their own space. For the last ten minutes of class we moved in a rhythmic wave, our bodies peaceful, our minds settled into our practice. The miracle that can be yoga had been discovered together, and I think we each left the room transformed from when we had entered it.
Since my recent visit to Italy, I have been thinking about the trap of hedonism. From a yogic perspective, hedonism is a concentration of energy in the sacral and solar plexus chakras, or areas of the body. Here is where individual lust, when it is allowed to, takes over the bloom of ever-lasting life. The mind-body forgets that life is not individual, but a collective and infinite rebirthing.
Ercolano sits unearthed in the middle of a crowded Naples
I keep thinking about Vesuvius covering civilizations at their peak of hedonism in layers of ashes and dirt. Over and over again. We unearth the remains. Stare at the walls still painted in lust, and forget.
Hedonism on the walls of Pompeii
We forget that we are still here. Captured in our lust. We are not doomed to repeat history, we simply choose to do so.
This photo was taken in Rome, near the Vatican. If you look closely you will see a bride being photographed in her white gown near underpass where the tents of the homeless are huddled.
Today, Naples sits piled in apartments filled with crowded life whose waste litters the streets. Plastic discarded after a single use blows amongst piles of dog poop and cigarette butts. In the cracks of pavement, green life stretches to find air and water before it is snuffed out by passersby who are thinking of yesterdays and tomorrows filled with want.
Live blooming in the cracks of Pompeii
Three hours away by car, Rome’s streets pave over more lost civilizations. What is left reminds us of the individual ego’s striving for power. Huge monuments raised to its mighty hand stand erect, guarded by machine guns slung over shoulders. Reminders of wars waged, battles for life lost and “won,” and the many, many spoils of victory.
What was once Egypt’s is now Rome’s
A vast city inside a city houses the spoils of wealth stolen in the name of God.
Vatican City crowded with visitors
Gold halls lined with painted angels watch over a vast fortune robbed from distant and not so distant lands. Lesser gods trapped in a fortress that has room for only one ruler. Yet, we walk the halls in awe. We cannot help it. The splendor overwhelms and consumes us.
A feast for the eyes, even the ceilings of the Vatican are lined in gold opulence.
Below, the echo of the goddess can only be heard when the feet are still and the many voices clamoring to be heard, mute. The want for air is nearly unbearable. Yet we hold onto our crowds, striving, always striving, to get ahead.
Crowds outside the Colosseum
I keep thinking we are one fiery breath away from annihilation. Again. We have thinned the air with our crowds and choked it with the pollution of our breath. We have chosen to guard the pillars of our mighty past and erect more as we overlook the goddess who sustains us.
Mother Earth birthing and supporting life
Instead of honoring the Mother who brings forth new life, feeds, and provides for all our many wants, we trample her to near death in our quest to strive ever higher in dominion.
A memorial to war in Rome is carefully guarded by men with guns.
It is difficult not to be cynical in this world so focused on the outer it has largely forgotten what sustains it. A world that fears so much what unites it, it would rather destroy itself, over and over again, for want of division. For want of lust to feed the false self. A temporary pleasure of the body that has forgotten the soul housed in light who choose not to see.
The imposing remains of the Roman Colosseum
And so I find myself sitting in my comfortable home in America, looking around at all that I have and all that I am in danger of losing. I find myself thinking about my individual choices and if they serve only me, or something greater than my individual self. I live in a town that has recently decided that recycling is not worth the monetary expense, and has chosen to override the planetary expense of not doing so. I live in a nation ruled by a man whose lust for power strives to over-ride all that is of the common good. It is easy to be consumed by the ugliness and despair of what feels like an impending doom. I would not blame our Mother if she decided it was time, again, to swallow us up.
Vesuvius in stasis
But, there is little good to come of wallowing in despair, and much to be gained when one reaches beyond the darkness to grow the light. There is an empowerment of the inner that can be awakened when one looks beyond the myopic lens of the individual wants and sees that choices can be made to grow this light that we all share and that feeds all life.
A male hummingbird in my garden drinking nectar from peach blossoms
I know that the old ways are not enough. That for me living in my small town in New Hampshire, it is not enough to simply rinse cans and separate paper and food waste anymore. That I must search for ways that are more sustainable, such as growing vegetables and joining a local CSA. I know that I can move beyond not just buying nontoxic and organic products, to making more of my own as I search for those that I must buy in biodegradable and reduced packaging. And, I know that I can search for more innovative ways to reduce and reuse and share ideas that I find with others. There is that realization that “more” can always be done to nurture the good of all, and not just the one. And, that in doing so, one can find not only hope, but joy.
Image Credit: Pixabay. The frog that became a sticker.
I spent the bulk of the past five days in a worried funk. Pretty much all I could think about was yoga with kids. Although I only wrote about experiences with the younger preschool and kindergarten classes in my last post, the next day brought two new classes. One filled with middle schoolers. Let me first say the high school class that followed it was simply lovely. I had three polite and eager young ladies who were attentive and respectful. It was a huge and welcome breath of fresh air.
The middle school class, on the other hand, proved to be just as challenging as my classes with the younger kids. It consisted of a large group of girls who all knew each other, and a trio of boys who didn’t know the girls, but knew one another. The girls gathered in a crowded group in the back of the classroom, while the boys queued up in front of me. The giggling intermixed with bold commentary began from the group in the back of the room as soon as I introduced the “Cat & Cow” warm up poses. “Downward Dog” proved to be even worse.
“I’m not doing that.” “I don’t want anyone to see my butt.”
The wall-to-wall mirror behind me became an unavoidable source of distraction, and our hour together felt much longer than it should have.
Seasoned yoga teachers will know that teaching yoga to kids is nothing like teaching yoga to adults. It’s an entirely different game. Actually it’s a series of entirely different games. Each age group has its separate rules and obstacles.
I’m still learning the games.
By the end of the week I was more than doubtful that I would grow to love teaching yoga to kids, and whether I would discover a magical formula to do so well.
The next class I had ahead of me was another preschool class. A fresh opportunity with ten new and eager faces who had never met me.
I just needed to convince myself that I could have a different experience than I had with my first two classes.
I did some more research and started to listen to that inner voice that rarely leads us astray.
I asked for help, and got some really good advice. Especially the tip about using sitting circles or mats, which serve as a magical anchor to keep restless bodies in place.
I ordered the mats knowing they would not arrive in time. I worried, but I need not have. The inner voice spoke louder, offering me alternatives my logical brain refused to find.
One day, I went to the library and found myself drawn to books about frogs and toads, even though I was there to find any and all books on yoga with kids they had available. I took both sets of books home.
Another evening, I found myself walking the dogs at dusk, so enthralled by the chorus of frogs at our favorite pond, I impulsively took my phone out to record nature’s symphony.
A theme was developing for me.
Another day, still in my fog of stress, I went to the dollar store and mulled over the arrays of cheap toys. I thought maybe I should get some stickers, so I bought a sheet of colored stars and a blow-up globe.
After I took my purchases home, I began obsessing about how I would use them. I thought about giving stars for good behavior, but it didn’t feel yoga-ish. The globe, well, I thought maybe I could use it in some sort-of game, but visions of kids throwing the nearly weightless ball at each other caused me to leave it on the kitchen counter as I readied my bag.
Instead, I begin to realize I have all I might need. I have my frog, well actually toad, book in verse, and I’ve found that the first page has a wonderful poem about them singing in spring. I’ve got my live recording of an amphibian chorus from the pond ready to go on my phone. Instead of obsessing about my lack of sitting circles, I realize I can might be able to make lily pads to go along with my theme. In fact, I know I have at least a few pieces of study green paper. Ten minutes later, I have ten lily pads bearing the names of my new students. I also have ten new stickers. Not the stars, but frogs, which I’ve made myself thanks to Pixabay and a stack of printable labels in the same drawer that held the green paper. Frogs on lily pads. Perfect.
I pack all of these up, along with my chime, portable speaker, water, roster, animal yoga pose cards, and my pink rose quartz frog that sits near the water fountain in my home yoga studio.
Still, I think I may need more props. I don’t want to be under-prepared. I eye the bin of Beanie Babies. Nope. Not going there again. Instead, I open it and pull out one dog to use as a mascot, just in case. I eye the globe one more time and put my magic chakra ball in the bag instead. It slings easily on my shoulder. Light and manageable.
I arrive early. There’s amble time to set up. I’m greeted by the director, a friend of mine, who shows me around and allows me to select a space that feels right. I tell her about the sitting circles I’ve ordered but have not arrived, and she shows me a stack of quilted mats. Perfect.
I select five and arrange them around the square rug. The lily pads are placed atop, alternating as best as I can guess, boy, then girl, around the rug. Next, I take the yoga pose cards out I’ve prearranged, and set them in back of the sit mats. Finally, I sit at the front of the rug with my phone, roster, quartz frog and homemade stickers set beside me.
Small voices begin to mingle from the front of the room, and I know my students have returned from their outdoor recess. I am lucky today the rain has held off and these young bodies have had a chance to run outside and play.
“Can you find your name on the mats?” I ask them as they line up before me. They are all so darn cute, but I know better than to let down my guard. Instead, I smile and welcome them with the warmth of a teacher. Hey, I think, maybe, just maybe I can do this.
And, I do. Ten little bottoms find their lily pads and look at me with anticipation. No one gets up until I ask them to, and barely a voice talks out of turn. We have fun together. We learn and we play. When one child unexpectedly cries during our game of musical mats, she finds her way to my side, nestles in for a hug, and clutches the magical pink frog I place into her hands until all is well. Soon she is smiling again. We all are.
Even though it’s not a perfect class, to me it’s a near-glorious half-hour, which is over too soon. Stickers are left for the end ,and find their way on faces, lily pads, and clothes. Tiny frogs thank me as they dance out the door. I can hardly wait for the week to pass.
I thought I would be writing another post about my recent travels to Italy, but instead my mind is filled with yoga. In particular, yoga with kids. Two Februarys ago, I felt a calling to move from my long comfortable role as a yoga student, to that of a teacher. Although I could sometimes see myself standing in front of a classroom of students teaching yoga, I had never really given teaching serious thought. That is until the relentless inner voice called without ceasing…
And so here I am, more than two years later. A certified yoga teacher, who, as of last week, has taught (or has attempted to teach) yoga to students from the ages of 3 to 80+. Just when teaching yoga was beginning to feel as comforting and familiar as preparing and drinking a warm cup of tea each morning, I have now leapt, once again, off the cliff of The Fool into the rocky terrain of the unfamiliar.
And, it’s okay. It’s what I signed up for. But, oh how much I have to learn as I stumble my way along. My week of full immersion into the spectrum of younger ages has left me feeling tired, hoarse, and a bit bewildered. What do I do know? I keep asking myself.
Let me see if I can attempt to explain why.
I’ll begin with my first non-adult class of the week.
It’s Thursday. Another rainy day in a long string of rainy days. The school day is just finishing at the Montessori nearby where I live, and I am lugging my bucket filled with Beanie Babies, animal yoga cards, a Bluetooth speaker, roster sheets and a chime that would prove to be woefully useless. Eleven preschoolers await me.
They’re adorable, as all children are at that age. Almost irresistibly cute. A near equal mix of boys and girls with glowing faces perched atop restless bodies. Wholly mine for 30 minutes. Thirty minutes that I have tasked myself to teach them yoga, in some form. My mind swirls with ideas. Over the past few months I have watched videos and read books. I have dug out my notes from teacher training and know games and props are essentials for this age group. What I can’t recall learning, as I spin through the whirlwind thirty minutes, is that a loud, assertive voice is also important, or that the power to choose should not be an option…Or maybe I just forgot, because it’s not in my nature to place restrictions and to shout.
Nor is it in my nature to sing in tune, which is also a great gift to have for kids’ yoga, but I thought playing the voice of the lovely Kira Willey would be an adequate compensation.
I soon discover no one really cares about the music coming from my speaker. They care more about the props I have brought.
I’m pretty sure I read to only bring one…
We begin in a circle that defies all definition of a circle, but it’s good enough. All eyes are turned to me as I introduce myself, then roll my magical color ball to the child next to me and ask him his name and if he’d like to tell me one thing that makes him happy. We move smoothly along, at first, passing the ball down the line until our circle is 2/3 complete. A girl with vast blue eyes stares at me and tells me her name and then goes silent. She cannot come up with something that makes her happy, even though I can tell by her outer appearance that she is likely well-loved and cared for. Instead, she appears to be caught off-guard and stumped. Rendered mute in a way that makes us both feel uncomfortable and searching for reprieve.
I give her space to think. Distracting chatter begins to erupt within the circle, and the blue eyes continue to stare back at me. “Would you like to think about it some more? It’s okay if you don’t want to answer.”
I can tell she is torn. That she wants to find an answer for me, but somehow she can’t retrieve it. Perhaps it’s contagious, because the next child is also unable to come up with one thing that makes her happy.
And so I begin to question my choice of a mindfulness introduction. I thought perhaps some children would struggle a bit, but with gentle suggestions and listening to the words of their peers, they might easily slip into that space of joy.
And, I realize how desperately, perhaps, that I want to bring them all to that state of joy. To make them realize how fun yoga can be in its myriad forms. That it can be both individual and shared. But not something that takes striving and competition…
So we begin to play our games. Soon tiny bodies are hoping about and vying for my attention in their efforts to show me how much yoga they already know. When the illustrated pose cards come out, there is a scramble to have just the right one.
There is even some arguing.
“I don’t want this one.”
“That’s not how you do flower. That’s butterfly.”
Oh my, I have much to learn.
Follow the leader with the chime goes smoothly until someone decides to skip the line.
Then the chime is rendered useless. The noise of voices too high. My own is already growing hoarse and unheard, and I am at least grateful I have brought along my water. I have another class waiting for me after. And, it’s 45 minutes long…
When I open the tub filled with stuffed animals, five million hands reach inside. Suddenly I’m feeling the weight of my 45 years of life and I count the minutes left.
Do not leave room for choice. Of any kind. I file the lesson inside my tired brain.
I think perhaps I should have brought along a gong. You know, one of those enormous ones that you can’t hold and need a mallet to bang?
And a miracle.
I’m not Kira Willey. Not even close. Nor am I the beloved and talented Jamie of Cosmic Kids who knows how to keep the overstimulated minds of young kids engaged while practicing yoga through her wonderful videos.
I am also not a drill sergeant. Nor do I want to be.
I’m simply Alethea, searching for her own magic cards to bring to the circle of young eager faces.
And I think, perhaps, I need to stop looking in the bags of others, and dig inside my own…
A modern centaur sculpture evokes the powerful Roman presence layered into Pompeii
I didn’t know what to expect, except for what I had heard. Vast cities unearthed after centuries of stasis preserving the moment where life bowed down to death. A death of searing heat and suffocating ashes poured forth from the might mountain god Vesuvius.
The casts of the dead are preserved behind glass and bars in Pompeii
I had thought I would see more bodies preserved in the moment of futility. A sensationalized warning for all to see in the middle of cobbled and broken streets. It’s funny how the mind works. What I found instead were the many textures of life woven into a timeless tapestry.
Much of the lasting art of the lost cities depict hedonistic scenes
In these ancient cities, which began to form in the years before Christ, the endless tale of time is told. The struggle for the basic elements of life are encased within the mortared rock walls of crowded settlements only footsteps removed from vast halls revealing pillared windows to outer glories of wealth.
The themes of life remain unaltered; the patterns only woven with different threads.
There is a pathos that pervades these spaces, which extends beyond the death of the body. One cannot help but feel the struggle of man with the god-self.
It is nothing short of exhausting to walk the ruined roads of Pompeii. It’s a feat impossible to do in its entirety in one day. After awhile the step feels monotonous and insignificant, despite the many who tread with you. There is a feeling of isolation. Voids that will never be filled. Wonders only partially discovered and mysteries that will never be fully unveiled.
The five of us walked without a map or guide, yet it I was not surprised to find our path leading us to the Villa of Mysteries. Here the the gods overlap through time, and Roman influence is layered with Greek and Egyptian. Although I took just a few photos, many more can be found online. Instead, I found myself wrapped in the arms of the familiar for the short time we explored the villa, which sits quite removed from the central city of Pompeii. It is where I would have lingered, had I been alone. Instead, hunger called to all of us and we sought out a late lunch before we continued on.
The Roman Amphitheater of Pompeii predates the Colosseum in Rome by 100 years
“There are so many hills,” my husband remarked as he drove our jet-legged bodies down the highway from Rome towards Sorrento. There was the face turned outward, as though in warning. Harshly cut with chiseled lines furrowing brows guarding a pyramidal peak. The impulse to leap through the veil tangibly irresistible. We all saw them, even my mother-in-law, which surprised me a bit. Perhaps it should not have. We are not so crazy as we may seem, even to ourselves. We have just forgotten.
A view from the car. This mountain face looks tranquil lifted to the sky.
Everywhere I looked the earth rose in sometimes sharp, and sometimes gentle undulations, leading a pathway to the magnificent turquoise sea.
The roads of man wrap the body of the rocky Amalfi coast, but the breath-taking beauty belongs to the land and the sea.
In my sleep-deprived state, I found myself slipping beyond the familiar and into the hazy space of that magical realm too rarely ventured my our modern day minds. The hills called to me, and I followed their faces as our vehicle wizzed along. History records itself in these beings of slow time. And, more than anything else I read power. I was, after all, in the land of the Romans.
The magnificent remains of the Colosseum standing for nearly 2,000 years.
The mountains, though, hold a power that belongs not to man, but to Earth. We have been here long before you and will be long after…
The volcanic mountain, Vesuvius, watches over the crowded city of Naples which is built over cities buried by its fiery blood.
In the year 79 AD, more than 1,000 people, and countless animals, died from the eruption of Vesuvius, yet it is believe that the serpentine mountain whose mouth spouts forth deadly fire a few times each century, was greatly revered by those that fell to its mighty flames. A god of protection, perhaps, not so much of the people, but of the land. Now, below its summit, which last erupted in 1944, 2 million people live in its shadow as though they have forgotten the thousands of lives that it has taken during its reign of power.
The ghosts of Pompeii haunt the remains of their lost city. “We tried to hide here among the already dead” they whispered to me. The futility of their hold pulled my limbs through their layered graveyards.
I was surprised later in our trip, when we climbed its sides by car, then walked out to take in its vast energy, by how tranquil I felt. Almost as though I was being held in the arms of a lover.
Birds hover in the foreground of Vesuvius. Below, spring’s growth waves with the wind.
Yet eyes watched my trespassing footsteps, and those of the hundreds who joined us that day on the body of the mountain. Eyes belonging to inhuman forms beyond the grasp of our naive minds. Reminding me that I walked the body of a god, or perhaps more aptly put, goddess…
Baby serpents, spawn from Vesuvius’s last eruption, watch its many visitors.
The little girl peered up at me with teddy bear eyes as she asked her question. She was just a few years older than my daughter was when see used to boldly inquire, “Who are you?” while gazing her deep blue eyes into mine.
The question from the little girl this morning made me smile. Wide and free. “I’m the yoga teacher,” I told her.
“Am I taking yoga? I hope I am.”
“I want to take yoga,” the boy beside her chimed in.
“What’s your name?” Another child joined in the conversation.
I resisted the impulse to gather the group of preschoolers ready to go outside for their recess, turn on some Kira Willey, and lead their eager bodies in an impromptu yoga class. Their faces were irresistibly sunny as though they had no idea it was raining just outside the windows. Instead, I gathered the registration forms together out of the envelope I had hung on the bulletin board just last week, and smiled my way home.
It was my third errand of the morning. Before collecting the registration forms from the two Montessori schools, I had dropped off a bag at the high school. A post-it labeled it for the writing teacher, but it was for one of her students. A girl very different from those three exuberant young children in the preschool classroom. What a difference a dozen years can make in a life.
She had never said a word, not even in introduction. Perhaps the teacher had overlooked her on purpose because she was shy. But I had seen the shrug of her shoulders and the head bowed a little further towards the table. The head that never looked up in participation for the hour-and-half I was there.
“I see you,” I wanted to whisper in her ear. Not in the tone of a creepy stalker, but with the words of understanding. “I’ve sat in that seat too. Many a time,” I wanted to tell her, but didn’t.
I didn’t because it was not my classroom, and I did not know her story. Sensitive to the fragility of the teenage mind, I kept quiet, like her. But I couldn’t forget about her. Although she was the only one in the classroom that never said a word, to me she was just as important the eager participants who sat around her. Even though she looked like a forgotten island. Or, an island that wanted to be forgotten.
She reminded me of me, but also someone who wasn’t me. I may never know her story. Why she chooses to wrap into herself. But, I ache for what she has lost, already. Perhaps she was once like that little girl with the happy brown eyes who thought nothing of asking a stranger who she was. I’d like to think so, but this also makes me sad.
I don’t know if she’ll read the book I offered her in return for not acknowledging her presence, and for not knowing how to bridge her island for fear of further harm. She may not read even the first word, and that’s okay. I hope she reads the card, though. I think she will. I hope she realizes that someone saw her when she thought she wasn’t seen. Not by the eyes of judgement, but the eyes of understanding. And, I hope that one day she’ll realize she has a beautiful light inside of her that is waiting to be seen.
The Light Behind the Story 