L E O N I E . W I S E

i wrote a blog post a while ago about my alter ego.

since then i have actually incorporated some of those things into my everyday life; things like cowboy boots and a hat, spots with stripes and pretty frocks over jeans. i am still working on the tattoo (but i’ve been looking for something for years & still not found anything that moves me enough to have it permanently etched on my skin).

so, now i dig a little deeper and have come up with the following list (still to be incorporated – i am sure i’ll find a way!)…

1. she’s a little bit dark and angsty artist like eva green in franklyn.
2. she wears funky party frocks like this beauty from etsy
3. she dresses in vivienne westwood and drinks champagne for breakfast every morning
4. and is a little bit scary in a fever ray kinda way

she also has long hair, isn’t afraid to splash on a bit of makeup (something i rarely do) and paints her nails stormy dark blues & purples.

who have you got as a part of yourself that is daring you to let them out?

venus (after surgery). banksy installation at the bristol museum 2009

so, anyone who reads this blog (or any of the blogs of emma, jo, lisa, megg, penny, sas and susannah) will already know that last weekend we all got together in a cottage in a small village in england. i still don’t (and don’t think i ever will) have the words to adequately describe the weekend, even to those that were there with me! it was a gzillion different kinds of wonderful.

the weekend was full of such openness, sharing and love that the only way to be there was as my truest self. i come home on a high, with a heart full to bursting point, fallen in love a million times over with each of the beauties i shared my weekend away with.

and i find myself returned home to the same place, the same husband, the same job, the same clothes in my wardrobe (okay, apart from a new coat purchased after being inspired by emma) and yet not the same life.

it’s the same feeling i have had upon returning home from being held in the company of women in the past; a feeling of being accepted, fully, simply as myself, then leaving that safe space & making my way out into the world once more.

and it’s hard.
hard to come home and integrate back into the world.

because i am no longer physically cocooned in a cosy cottage, within a warm blanket of loving arms, understanding and love. all i have here is me and the world.

yes, my friends are still there and still love me. but they are not here. and i am not there with them.
yes, my husband is still here and still loves me. and i love him dearly, that hasn’t changed.

but still i feel like a piece of me is missing…
it’s like all my friends suddenly grabbed their coats and left the playground, leaving me standing there alone with just the sound of the empty merry-go-round grinding slowly to a halt.

as i said before, it’s not the first time i have come home from a weekend away feeling like this. and the realisation came to me today that this is all i really have.

me. here. by myself.

so, everytime everyone else has said their goodbyes and gone home, i better bloody well be willing to love myself; to sit down with my reflection, greeting myself with the same look of love in my eyes that i have seen in others when they look at me.

that is my love after love.

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.

Derek Walcott

…it sets one to dream to think about being called out to greater things…
…but at the end of it all when we put any book down, no matter how inspiring, we are left facing ourselves in the mirror, with the need to get up each morning walk out the door and live our own lives.
- david whyte. the three marriages: reimagining work, self and relationship

some days i really feel like this…

like i am scrabbling and scratching, clawing my way through a hard outer shell to expose the warm, softer parts of me to the light. and sometimes, i would like to stay in the egg and never come out any farther than this.

i had an image in my mind earlier today of a beautifully ornate envelope, gilded and highly decorated.

and inside this envelope was a wonderfully constructed document. it details all the most sublime parts of myself and is written in beautiful handwriting. this document contains the shimmering, golden light that i keep ‘safe’ – hidden from the outside world. in it are all my truest songs and those most delicate, sensetive, loving & soulful parts of myself that i pull out every now and again, shine for the world (and myself) to take a peek at, then carefully fold them up and tuck them away in some hidden pocket of my garments.

i wonder if this exploration into myself (or this coming out of myself) will take me forever.

some days it feels like it’s taking too long, and i can’t wait another second. other days, it feels like it is happening all too quickly – like i am too visible, too easy to identify, far too exhuberant to be overlooked.

some days i feel like i want to pull the golden thread that is my life out of the big tapestry, to quietly disappear and roll back up into a tiny ball.

other days i want to leap out into the wild foaming swell and shout “YES” at the top of my lungs, to all of it. the messy, the sweet, the connections, the despair, the togetherness, the aloneness, the joy, the pain, the giving & receiving, the telling of stories.

susannah’s unravelling course seems to have done some magic thing already and stirred up the heat of my inner cauldron. this week i’ve been looking at the ground, at my feet, considering where i’ve been, and where i now stand (both literally and metaphorically).

i can feel the wellspring within me bubbling, the sound of which is increasing, rising towards an urgent crescendo… as if there are stories that must be told, demons slain, some more pieces of me explored & unravelled, more parts of me awakened to emerge.