Poet Healer
Why I am here. What to expect.
When I learned that newly appointed US Poet Laureate Ada Limon calls herself a Poet Healer I felt not only resonance but alignment. A simple yes, like when you step into the arms of a beloved, your body whispering “this is where I belong.” I felt what makes poetry itself so healing, that mirroring sight, when the words of another touch the depths within, exposing the once hidden to light.
I continue to savor the words poet healer on my tongue and notice their effect glide through me. I feel the pairing of words not just as statement of identity but more so as belief or claiming truth:
I am one who is healed through poetry.
I believe poetry to be a powerful force of healing.
I believe in a Poet God.
Poetry is my medicine-offering of healing for others.
I have written before, “poems were like guide ropes when I was lost in a blizzard of pain” and “I tucked lines of poems, like prayers, into the crevices of my body’s wailing wall.” I have made the statement with no hint of the overdramatic—“Poetry has saved my life.”
I write to reach for the rope, trusting its salvation. The rope is made of words itself. Each true word towards freedom, hand-over-hand on the rope. Poetic words that are threads of energy, energy of a different way of being—a poetic way.
Living the poem allows for all the contradictions and swirl inside to just be. A glassy lake of calm that is always moving and always still. The poem doesn’t try to explain “with the part of your mind that has all the answers.” (David Whyte) Living the poem, I am free of fear. Living the poem I feel expansive permission. Living the poem I trust the unknown, the blank page, the waiting shimmer of the only glimpsed.
I write to heal myself and I share it to offer my medicine gift towards greater healing. I write believing deeply in The Poet Healer who writes with us all.
What to expect…
By subscribing you will receive a monthly soulful poetic offering to savor in your email inbox off the scroll of social media.
Why upgrade and become a paid subscriber?
Your contribution to my work helps me to embody a space of presence, attention and creation by giving me time. Your support allows me to live more deeply into to a sustainable artistic life and thus share my gift to the world.
When I go into the woods or sit at my desk with a blank page I don’t know where I will go, where I will be led. I start this project with a similar posture of curiosity and I hope you join me in that stance. I do know that I commit to share from the truest place in me. I hope that this sharing speaks to and allows for attention, curiosity and healing for the truest places in you.
With gratitude,
Julia