Remembering Love

October 09 · Beyond Fear of Differences, Essays · bullying, healing, Resilience, sexuality, Summer / Fall 2018

An Informal Contemplation on Healing

by Lama Rod Owens

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You’ve got to learn to leave the table when love’s no longer being served.

—Nina Simone

Are you sure, sweetheart, that you want to be well?…Just so’s you’re sure, sweetheart, and ready to be healed, cause wholeness is no trifling matter. A lot of weight when you’re well.

—Toni Cade Bambara, “The Salt Eaters”

 

When people ask me how I’m doing, I feel a little confused and pause for a moment. In my mind I want to talk about this deep sense of heaviness and despair that feels like mourn­ing with and for the world. I want to say that a part of me doesn’t feel good enough, that this was a feeling I was born into, trained in, and encouraged to accept–that I do not remember experience before this.

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