For women in relationships, who hold onto resentment like a damn in the river - Written by Shannon Clarke.
If love was a river
Left to its own devices,
the river of love flows effortlessly where it is mean to go.
But life and time are not easy companions,
tossing debris of loss and conflict and pain like sticks and rocks,
holding hostage the power of the river to sweep away the subtleties.
If you saw the river in such angst,
fighting to carry onwards,
angrily flooding the banks with chaotic splashes…
If you could with your own two hands and a heart full of compassion,
remove the tangled jam from the river,
would you?
Or would you wait,
expecting the river to heal itself?
Or perhaps expecting
someone else on the other side of the bank to do something,
for fuck’s sakes?
Or would you remember that you, too, love the river and
yearn for it to run its gentle, wet fingers along the pebbles,
sliding itself between and around and under
on top, everywhere at once
in a current of sensual movement?
You step in, as if hypnotized,
remembering that you are the river and the rocks and the pebbles,
and you can move and free yourself from the dam of resentment.
You reach in and pull, stick by stick, slimy leaves,
slopping them on the bank to be dealt with separately.
and you breathe, covered in mud,
filthy with the realization that you could have
freed yourself and the river years ago.
You breathe that one out, let it drop like one small leaf,
knowing again that when the river is free to move,
those small things – they get washed away –
becoming one with the journey the river
always intended to take anyway.
Written by the one and only, Shannon Clarke. Transformational Coach and Support Coach for School of Love™.
In her words, “I wrote this for women in relationships, who hold onto resentment like a damn in the river. We CAN move and free ourselves and the river so that the flow of love can become effortless again, like it was always meant to be.”
Take this in. Let it move you, shake and shift you.
With so much love.