EVEN IN THE STRUGGLE by Tara Sophia Mohr

 I went through seven years of avoiding and ignoring my creative self…

What was missing from my life during those seven years was not just writing but everything writing practice gives me: daily bliss, meaning, a sense of self-expression and of accomplishment, but most importantly, let me say it again, daily bliss.

Writing poetry gave me daily contact with something bigger than me: Daily grace.

I was willing to open up that locked box of writing only out of pain, which is why, I think, we make all the biggest hardest changes in our lives. I didn’t know I was missing writing, I only knew I felt dried out and like life was rather gray, not vivid, not alive. When I became willing to ask myself how I could move out of that pain, a simple whisper said: “Write, write.”

At the time, that sounded like the oddest thing. I had decided writing wasn’t my path, that it wasn’t a good fit. I thought I wasn’t a good writer. The whisper was persistent and I decided to follow it. And then something graced me with an insight:

 I understood that to write, I had to let go of attachment to other people’s estimation of my work.

I had to let go of the whole “love me, praise me” thing. I had to be willing to do it for the love of it, and learn to see the love everywhere: even in struggles.

Painting by Miriam Briks

Even in the Struggle

Even in the struggle, you are loved.
You are being loved not in spite of the hardship, but through it.

The thing you see as wrenching, intolerable, life’s attack on you,

is an expression of love.

There is the part of us that fears and protects and defends and expects,

and has a story of the way it’s supposed to turn out.
That part clenches in fear, feels abandoned and cursed.

There is another part, resting at the floor of the well within, that understands:
this is how I am being graced, called, refined, by fire.

The secret is, it’s all love.
It’s all doorways to truth.
It’s all opportunity to merge with what is.

Most of us don’t step through the doorframe.
We stay on the known side.
We fight the door, we fight the frame, we scream and hang on.

On the other side, you are one with the earth, like the mountain.

You hum with life, like the moss.
On the other side, you are more beautiful:
wholeness in your bones, wisdom in your gaze,

the sage-self and the surrendered heart alive.

~

Painting by Miriam Briks

Tara Sophia Mohr is a writer, coach and personal growth teacher. A regular blogger for Huffington Post’s Living section and author of the popular blog Wise Living, her writing on women’s professional and personal fulfillment has also been featured in Forbes, USA Today, MoreMagazine.com, The International Business Times and Ode Magazine. Tara received her MBA from Stanford University, her undergraduate degree from Yale, and her coaching certification from the Coaches Training Institute. She adores poetry, dance, vegetables, and living by the bay in San Francisco. Visit her website here, or connect with her on Twitter.

~If you are interested in seeing your poetry appear in this blog, or submitting a poem by a woman that has inspired you, please click here for submission guidelines. I greatly look forward to hearing from you!~