"Unfinished #1" Original painting

It’s been years since I felt ‘myself’. It’s like trying to catch water in my hands - the person my life demands I become, the role I tried to step up to, the foundations I tried to build, all shift and crumble and feel irrelevant suddenly, as the realisation hits me that even though I’ll always be a mother, those precious finite years of ‘mothering’ are already almost over. My nest will soon be empty. Where did the years go so fast? While I was trying desperately to find the answers within myself so that I could be a better parent, be whole and present, they are already almost grown, they are already becoming - as they have been from the very beginning, on their way to being their own people. Have I done enough? Have I given enough love, enough safety, enough nurturing? I am finally finding MY missing pieces but is it all too late - the nest already abandoned?

(Words by Lucy)

*

This bird has landed. (Words by Ange Woolfall - A word slinging Woolf)

I have always had
A strong urge
To fly
But the where to
Fly to
Has
Gone
For to return
To the innocence
Only felt at birth
Like a dream within a dream
Safe inside your mother’s arms
Is to travel so far
And they don’t speak the same language
They are all behind bars
Their lives that we read about
Inside of the books
That we read before
We lived our lives
Outside of the page
Like the first time
I read the words
About the fig tree
And how her future could be chosen
By choosing one fig
Just one
But she couldn’t choose
So they died
Every one
But me
I am still here
More alive than the figs
And with so much more
Of me to give
More than I ever have
But with far less time
In which to give in
But I won’t
I will not give in
I must create
That which I need
Within my own self
More than the words
And more than choices
Until the flight
I’ll take
Is within my mind
And not my body
So that any time
The urge to find
A silent embrace
For the bruised soul arrives
All I need do
Is close my eyes
And I’ll find myself there
No need to move
Not even a hair.