Backwards...

Joining Gypsy Mama today for 5 minute Friday
Got five minutes? Let’s write. Let’s write in shades of real and brave and unscripted.
Let’s just write and not worry if it’s just right or not.


1. Write for 5 minutes flat for pure unedited love of the written word.
2. Link back here and invite others to join in.
3. Get a little crazy with encouragement for the five minuter who linked up before you.

Go...


Sometimes it feels like I'm moving forward only find I'm really going backwards.

Backwards.
To take the hand of the child who stared at her feet as she walked past the big kids on the swings.

Backwards. To put her hand up for the girl who never tried so that she would never be the one to fail.

Backwards. To whisper hard won secrets of a thirty something in the ear of the child with her new baby, alone, raw, terrified of a love she could not contain.

In silent moments, I sometimes find myself staring out of the window.
Seeking the road beyond. Trying to outrun my past.

Among a flock of circling birds, I see myself dance as if I were free.
 Free as if I'd been born feathered.
Out there. Just beyond grasp.
Where a fledgling takes it's tentative first flight.
There between wing beats and endless blue,
I embrace the child I once was.

Unrealized dreams float silently to the ground like pollen
Planting new seeds.
Seeds of a new life. A garden of my own.

The useless regrets that clench and cling to the ache
That mire me in the mud of memories undone
Are released as I bend down to embrace that girl.
 Wipe away her tears.

Maybe I have to take those few steps backwards.
Remind her that there was something to look forward to.
Tell her tomorrow would be a good place to get to.
Small healings. These backward steps.
That bring the balm of this day to the brokenness of the past.

Sometimes backwards might just be going forwards.

Stop.

...
I really love 5 minute Fridays! For a busy Mama it is a wonderful way to practice writing in short bursts without over thinking your words. I also love the way it forces me to write without editing or analyzing as I write. The process of "just getting it down" quick as a flash sort of opens the unconscious. I read back what I have written and it is like opening a package of thought, ideas, feelings and memories that find their voice only through this "stream of consciousness" kind of writing.