"sit. feast on your life."

I have been struggling. I wanted so badly to write about nourishment because it has been the mantra of the last few months of my life: nourish yourself, nourish your spirit. I've been needing to remind myself to take care of myself not only in the way that I get enough sleep and enough food, but in the way that I am giving myself the space to grow more fully into myself. Complete and total nourishment.

So last week I sat down to write with a piece of notebook paper that said "Nourishment:" and I stared at it for a long time, but I had nothing so say, so I laid in my bed and sulked and then decided to do some yoga instead. I nourished myself physically, spiritually and mentally by doing so, but I had nothing to say about it. I am right in the midst of needing it and getting it and sorting out how to make it a part of my life without having to remind myself... how could I have anything useful to say about it?! I felt really silly and a little bit disappointed in myself.

Well, never fear, my friends, sitting on my flight back to Baltimore I opened the book that my parents had gotten me for Christmas, Saved by a Poem, and began to read. The first chapter ended with this poem that I so badly want to share:

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

I touched the page in disbelief. This poem is hanging on my bathroom wall where I taped it after a wonderful friend sent it to me in an email, saying she read it in class and thought I would enjoy it. I more than enjoy it. I cannot read the line "You will love again the stranger who was your self" without crying in a hopeful, joyful, peaceful kind of way. I realized that poetry nourishes my spirit. Words, expression, art, human beings nourish my spirit. Lucky me, I am surrounded by these things! The question, I suppose, does not lie in the concept of nourishment but in making my nourishment a priority, in taking the time to create a space for my growth as a person with so many facets. Maybe my new mantra will be a reminder to "sit. feast on your life."

--mt