For more poetry and prose, subscribe at http://www.peacelovefree.com/subscribe/
*************************************

So you say you want a piece of me?
only what you deem suitable, of course
Certainly not the part that loves a woman
No, best leave that one at home for a while
We wouldn’t want your daughter to see
You miss me, do you?
{but wait a minute, not all of me}
Not the rainbow bits, you’re cool without those
You want the girl you knew before
That tiny sliver of me that was safe to show
Come back into your life, please?
{but don’t rock your boat, thankyouverymuch}
It’s not about a debate, you claim
We’ll just wear our rose colored glasses
Special ones that erase all you prefer not to see
But I don’t look gay, you say 
As if that makes me more acceptable.
I’m confused.  What does gay look like exactly?
Is this relief that I don’t look like your imaginings of a big scary dyke
Or concern that I’m still 
the kind of woman your man might like?
The answer is no
{no, we can’t.  no, I won’t.  no, this is not negotiable}
Because it’s all or nothing now, darlin’
Time is limited and life is a gift
And to get either you’ve got to celebrate me with all you’ve got.

This is a matter of pride now. 
I’m all glitter and parade float,  baby
I won’t be tucked into the back of some closet
to keep you from feeling on display.
You really want this?
{think carefully now}
Because I’m going to push you
Far outside your pretty white heterosexual christian fundamentalist bubble
Past sunday school and rationalized prejudice and safe fences built to keep others out
You see, I’ve spent time on both sides your fence now
And let me tell you
The grass is pretty damn green over here too
So why are you so determined
To continue building barricades
To keep me out.
Let me get this straight?
You want to tell me 
who I can love
when I can love
and how I can love?
Fuck that.
My heart is too big for your boxes
and my soul is too damn feisty for your chains
And you don’t even want to try to contain
the ideas in this brain
And you need to know
{you really do}
I’m still soft as anything on the inside
But outside I’ve got an edge
And it might cut if you close in at the wrong angle
Because before I had no idea
{not a freaking clue}
What it would be to live a life
Where the random people who stand behind me in the grocery line
Are given the right to cast vote against me and quality of my soul

It makes you fierce, somewhere inside
When you gain history like Stonewall and Matthew Shepard and Harvey milk
And you’ve lost the privilege of kissing your lover without looking your shoulder first to gauge the safety of your company.
and where 11 year old babies are 
killing themselves because of the pain of being exactly what you are.
It makes you ferocious and solid and strong
And tender and gentle and broken and built anew
And you emerge quiet and careful
 and centered on exactly who you are.
So if you want to open your heart
{and your eyes and mind and the depths of your spirit}
Take my hand and walk into my whole life
Not just a slice of your choosing
Because I’m not leaving anything at home to make you more comfortable
So yes, we can do lunch
{and go shoe shopping and chat about the kids}
But let’s wait till you’re really ready to take me as I am
Because the cost of anything else is far too high
And sweetie, your benevolent tolerance just isn’t going to cut it anymore.
So think about it for a bit
{and I’m sorry if this seems harsh}
But baby, it’s gotta be this way
This is who I am
Take it or leave it.

So You Say You Want A Piece Of Me? ** By Jeanette LeBlanc ** Www.peacelovefree.com

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*************************************

What do you want, lover?

Tell me. What do you want? Right now. Don’t be shy. Don’t look away. I’m right here. I’m listening. There’s nothing else I need right now besides you. You, and the truth.

So, tell me every last thing. What do you want? Do you want love? Lust? The hard edge of a soft body? How do you want it? Rough and insistent? Like a gentle caress? Or again and again, until the heat and sweat and electricity are spent and you drift into a long, slow sleep? And where? In the depths of secret shadowed corners, or on a patchwork blanket under a warm noon sun?

Does it make you uncomfortable that I’m asking you this? Yes? Good. We need discomfort, sometimes, to get to the heat at the core of things.
And it’s that heat we are craving right now. It’s been a long, cold winter. So much has been dormant, both inside and out. The world is awakening. The ground is fertile. The earth moves and breathes and undulates with the energy of things to come. And here we are, right in the simmering crimson midst of it.

So, what do you want? Say it. Out loud. Even if you never have before. Especially if you never have before.

Tell me where your desire lives? What calls your want home to you? Show me the spaces where you are insatiable? What brings forth that low moan at the base of your throat? What touch makes ancient tremor and shiver rise along your spine? What brings you to your knees?

Name it lover. The time has come. To feel the weight and heat of it. To let it take shape and form. Feel it spiral deep inside you. Feel it gather force and radiate outwards. Hold the power of it, feel its mighty urgency, 
welcome its holy heat.

Are you afraid to speak it? Why? Has someone told you that this is not to be spoken of? That you mustn’t give it a voice. That you certainty can’t ask for it. Good girls don’t do that.

That ends now. Right here. Not for a second longer. This is a lie that has never served to do anything but keep you small and complacent. And you are anything but small.

So shed the shame of your sex, goddess. It’s not yours to hold. It never was.

Your desire is here to teach you. It awaits a response. You were born to answer its call. So, ask for what you need, lover. Take what you want. You were not placed on this earth to practice denial. Your pleasure? It’s what the universe demands. Anything less is blasphemy.

Don’t look down. There is no shame here. No shyness. Only the bold of speaking your truth. So raise your face. Open your eyes. Meet my gaze. Part your lips. Breathe deep. Repeat after me.

I am a sacred body of want. I am soft tissue, hard joint, hallowed skin. I am a consecrated vessel of desire. My body is the answer to the questions of the cosmos. I was born for this. I am holy in my insatiable need. I am holy in my animal submission. I am holy in my fiery control.

There is no bargain to be made between wholeness and goodness. Between desire and divinity. You need not choose. They are the very same thing. They have always been.

So tell me what you want. I am listening.

Tell Me What You Want :: By Jeanette LeBlanc :: Www.peacelovefree.com

We don’t, not any of us, get to this point clean.  No.  We’re all dirty and ragged.  Rough edges and sharp corners.  Fault lines and demolition zones.   We’ve got tear gas riot squads aiming straight for the protest lines of our weary souls.   Landmines in our chests that we trip over every time we try to hide from the terrifying tremble of our own war torn hearts.   

It gets messy in there. 

We are dirty mirror reflection.  Rusty razor blade heartbeat.  We cut and we bleed.   Smash down barbed wire barricades with bloody fists and hastily throw up brick walls when happiness gets too close for comfort. We stay stubbornly still in spaces that do not serve and run the hell away from the beauty that could finally save us.

God damn, we know how to fuck up the good stuff.

We are echoes of pain born from a lifetime of push back.   We radiate it out, tender and exposed, hoping against hope that someone will finally not get caught on our rough and see all the way to our gentle.  That someone will come along with outstretched hands in the darkest night and say,  “Here, love. let go. I know your heart. I’ve got this.”  

We stumble and fall – our demons doing a fierce tango around the piles of broken baggage and empty hope chests we’ve been hauling around on weary shoulders and hunched spines.

We hurt.   We ache.  We cry.   We go down to the ground, over and over, till our kneecaps are bruised and bloody from bearing the weight of our eternal fall.   We break and rip and tear and bleed, until our patchwork of scars appear to be the only things holding us together.  
 
Here love, let go.  I know your heart. I’ve got this. 

Because still, you are full of radiance.  Still you turn your face to the sky and say with shaking breath “I’ll take more, even where it hurts”.   Still you return and say yes, I will try this love again.   I will rip down this wall and sit in the vulnerability of this space where everything is at risk.  Still, you coax out the shadowy remains of hope and nurture them into something beautiful and alive.  Still you say “Okay, universe, what is it that you want?  I am here.  I am open.  I will trust.”

Still.  Always.  Again, you burn.
Still.  Always.  Again, you rise. 

These things, love,  are the aesthetics of your grit.  

This is the birthright of your holy flawed humanity.  It’s in the beauty of your breakdown.  The brilliance in the center of your shatter.  The exquisite truth of your torn apart.  The graceful moan of your damned.   The tumbled brick and broken concrete of your dashed dreamscapes.   The hard-earned gravel in your angel voicebox.  

It’s the loss layered on loss.   The clench in your gut that says ‘no, I am not done yet’.   The fire in your flee.  The desperate fight of being the one with nothing left to lose.  It is the brutal courage it takes to say a holy howl of a yes and follow it right to the terrifying edge of all that there is.  

Love, beauty can’t always look pretty.   Your perfect is so often inherently flawed.    Grief can be a clumsy ghost.  She runs headlong into all your tender parts and wails her regrets for everyone to hear.  But it is your history that delivered you this roadmap of scars.  Those healed wounds and their jagged edges are proof of your infinite ability to survive, to knit broken back to wholeness, to refuse that the end is every really the end.

The end, lover, is never really the end.

Own your stories, you back alley angel.   Hold tight the truth inside of your ugly.  Bite your lip bloody and embrace the humble hard knee grovel of your mercy plea.  Snake charmer yourself out of your own too tight skin and wear your heart on the outside, especially when it wants to cower in dark corners.  Raise high the crucible of rejection that has built you into what you are.  It is, in the end, the alchemy that transforms.   

Make friends with your teardown.  Do not run from your bar brawl for forgiveness.  Sit with the times you’ve fucked up and the times you lost all and the days your redemption was delivered by the hand of the last person you ever expected to give anything but darkness.   And through it all know that your walled up and torn down, graffiti-covered heart is still the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

So do not practice denial of self or past or grief.   You don’t need the façade right now.  Rip away the false face.  Open wide the locked door museum exhibit of your holy history. Demolish your crumbled brick walls, your dumpster daydreams, your rusted chain link fence.   Don’t deny your kaleidoscope heart.  Without the broken it could never be so beautiful.  

Stand naked, in the middle of the vast empty space, arms wide, inviting in all that will come.  

It’s true.  We don’t, any of us, get to this point clean.  We don’t get to this point whole.   But your prayer flame of a heart burns steady and true.  Through the darkest nights.  Through the most terror filled lighting strike.  In the grit and the broken, in the blood and in the fire you still arrive.  And every time you are the personification of the most holy grace.

You still arrive, lover.   Every time.  Exactly as you are and exactly as you will be.

Again and again.  Terrified.  True of heart.  Full of grace.  

You still arrive.  

And still.  Always.  Again, you burn.  

And still.  Always.  Again, you rise.

Again, you rise.

And Still. Always. Again, You Rise :: Jeanette LeBlanc :: www.peacelovefree.com

Let Me Know When You Get There

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*************************************

It is no secret 
That this heart
of mine
Has broken
Enough times
That I’ve made
A serious investment
In a variety
Of materials
That promise to patch
Things up
For good

Many of the breaks
truthfully
My own doing
Fault lines I was born with
My unsettled and relentless seeking
leading me to look beyond
What I have for what I need
Then there is the leaving 
The being left
The cold nights
On hard ground
The sobs that come not
From me
But from the center of the earth
The grief that twists 
and pins me to bed while the sunlight
arcs all the way
across the outside sky
and I just wait the night
to come again
because the whiskey pours more smoothly then
and the heavy dark is the only place
left that feels like home

but then there is this
the hope rising
stubborn and persistent.
the longing
the still beating heart
that says to hell with probability
I’m still here, and I’ve got a job to do.
the knowledge that this loving
it is the purpose of our placement on this earth
the chance we take again and again

so no, this is not a story of heartbreak
although you may have thought it was
and I couldn’t blame you
not really
my own heart has been toast for months now
and the words I spill repeating themselves
like a skipping record that is stuck on the sad songs.
because sometimes broken is the easiest place to stay

but no
this is a love story
a story of how all those breaks
and all that grief
and those unsuccessful patch jobs
place us there
right where we need to be
so when the love comes

and it does
it does and it does and it does

when it comes
if we are brave enough
to lift our eyes
and hold out our hands
and listen to the universe
when she whispers
this one.
this one for you.
and we say okay
again
again, I will try

no matter the risk
no matter my fear
no matter the grasp of grief
no matter the ridiculous odds
no matter that this one too
may leave me shattered

again I will try
because those eyes
are the ones I want to wake to
and that skin feels like a space my 
hands were born knowing
and that heart, in all it’s own
history of broken glory
sounds exactly like the beat that has 
always called me home.

So yes
This is a love story
the one that gets told in the midst of the war torn rubble
where the buildings and bodies are casualties of a battle without end.
And happy seems a figment of imagination
Where hope is the only thing
That keeps us alive

This is story of two souls
Who are all of us, really
Who will stand today
And promise
Not as naïve children
But as fully formed hearts
Composed directly from a hundred thousand breaks
and love stories too many to count
And those two
They’ll stand there with all of that
And say yes

Yes we will love
Yes we will try
Yes we will fight and bleed and hope and live.
Yes we will slow dance and run away, and return.
And she’ll say yes, your broken is part of your beautiful to me.
And he’ll remind her that her scars are map that tell a story
that he loved before he heard a word.
And they’ll know that they alchemy of loss
Was part of the magic that brought them here
To this space today
And they will give thanks for all the ways
They were brave enough to break

So yes
This is a love story
Its theirs.  Its yours.  It’s even mine.
And here’s a secret
That even I forget
It’s all a love story
Every last bit
Even the parts that you think 
you’ll never survive.

Because look at them
Those two
Standing there today
They are all the proof I’ll ever need.

All The Proof I Will Ever Need

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*************************************

Look at you,
beauty
Sitting so quietly
I see you there
The way the light hits your face
The way the wind filters through your hair
How the curve of your neck is the definition of grace
How your story lingers just beneath the surface.

I know you have things to say.
Things you must say

Didn’t anyone ever tell you,
That we have to speak our truths

Our stories are where the revolution begins.

So, unlock it, poet
Let loose the words
Unconstrain your endless restraint
Seduce your muse
Release your wild
Welcome this rebellion
Usher it inside
Sit it down by the fire
And dance into the night.

You are warm blood,
hot skin, tight words
You are history
and future
and magic and make believe
You are deep and raw and real

You are an uprising
A revolution onto yourself
The scarcity is over
The rationing has ended
and there are words enough
for all of us

So go mad now, poet
let the power of the story
take you over
take you under
carry you home.

Don’t dare tell me
You are not a writer
Because I’ve heard words slip
Honeyed from your lips
I’ve seen the sonnets form behind
Your graceful eyes
I’ve heard novels spin from the spiral
Of your goddess hips

Don’t you dare
Make this other
This is in you
This is why you are here

This is your story
Your vital spark
Your ache and your tears and your breakdown
Your joy and your revelry and your bliss
Your desire, your fierce longing, your unceasing want
Your utterly unguilty pleasure.

This is the root of your commitment
The space of your deepest promise
That eternal vow
To live out loud
To speak freedom
To own the deep
Of your existence
To know it is true
And good
And worthy and whole.

So unlock it ocean poet
Release it windmill dancer
Splash it on canvas watercolor darling
Play the strings, you maker of music
Breathe it in yogi, and then breath it out.

Unleash it, you goddess of words, and melody and paint and dance and sweat.
There are a million ways to tell your story

I’m ready for every last one.

Try me

Unlock It Poet || Jeanette LeBlanc {www.peacelovefree.com}

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*************************************

This is for women who howl at the moon.

This is for the ones who sing the song of the wolves. 

This is for those that hear and heed the call.

For the wild ones. The untamable. The unashamed.

This is for the truth seekers, the wisdom speakers. Those who can see.

This is for those who know their want as holy.

The ones who have learned to embody their own divinity and intimately know their connection to all things.

This is for the ones who speak straight and clear and true.  

Who court the shadows and dance with the muse. 

Who seduce, who stake claim, who look you straight in the eye without wavering. 

The ones who know exactly what they are worth.

This is for the ones who speak their truth and write the terms of their own existence. 

The ones who lay claim to the wilderness, who beg, who burn, who ache, who bleed.

This is for the ones who speak incantation and trust the gut wisdom and the red-hot blood that pounds in their veins.

This is for those who are called relentless. Who are labeled too much.  Who are called the names they have called women like us since the beginning of time. 

Witch. Enchantress. Sorceress. 

Who are shunned who are shamed who are burned.

This is for those who have burned so many times they no longer fear the fire.

This is for those who have learned to rise.  

This is for the ones who have survived.

This is for the ones who when pushed against the wall, do not cower, but run – for the mountain, for the forest, for the sea.

This is for those who need freedom like most need air.  

For the ones whose hearts sing far off train-whistle lonely.  Who crave the edge and the burn of the needle, of the knife, of the sweet hit of what tastes like craving.  Who like to dance at the edge where danger lives. 

This is for those who honor their intuition and the ancestors and the wisdom that lives on the wind.  

This is for those with appetite.  Those who refuse to be satisfied with less than whole.  The ones with cravings that lead them to hunt and prowl and ask and know.  

This is for the insatiable.

This is for the ones who raise their young as warriors on a path of truth.  Who are tied to tribal wisdom.  Who honor the pack but do not bend to its will.

This is for those that hear the rhythm of the earth snare drum steady in their bones.  

This is for those who light the candles, who call the ancients, who speak in wild whisper under the light of the blood red hunters moon. 

This is for the ones who own their fierce and their bite and their hunger.

This is for the seduced becoming seductress, for hunted claiming her place as hunter. 

For those that have fought long and hard for agency and ownership and who have refused all the rest.

For those who have crossed the killing fields to get to where they are.

For the ones that bring you to your knees with just a touch.  

For those who know their power.  Who honor their truth.  Who give voice to their desire.  

For those who cannot be contained. Who must live uncaged. Who will never be subdued.  

This is for the ones who howl at the moon. 

This is for you.

This is how I honor you.  

For more poetry and prose, subscribe at http://www.peacelovefree.com/subscribe/


This Is For The Ones Who Howl At The Moon. || Jeanette Leblanc || Peacelovefree.com

We start out on this earth wild. Unfettered. Free.
You did. I did. We all do.

We speak our needs. Cry our hurt. Kick and scream our anger. Sing our joy.

Do you remember it?

Do you feel that tingle way down low when i remind you – does that rooted memory of your innate wild spirit whisper back – yes – i am still here?  

Do you feel the stirrings of spaces inside you that have been shoved down, made quiet, pushed back?

{read this post at: 
http://www.peacelovefree.com/2016/02/05/wild-time-begin/}

Wild This Time: Jeanette LeBlanc :: Peacelovefree.com

In our community we use the word family to mean someone who is like us. Who is gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer, non-binary or questioning. Someone who claims one of the stripes on the rainbow flag. This is a means of identification and inclusion. This is the coded language of our own solidarity.

"Is she family"  "I think he's family".  "Don't worry. They're family"

In a community forced to the margins, this is how we create our own connection. This is how we build a home.

This is a letter to my family. 

Pulse Orlando :: A Letter To My Queer Family

Oceans Of Words.

when she finally leaves, you will not want to let her go.
when she finally leaves, you will not be ready.....

Steady Up Girl.

Don’t think too much. Don’t think at all. This is not one of those exercises that requires much forethought or preparation. You can’t back your way into this one, all neat and tidy buttoned up. 
 
There’s no clean way to do this. Not this time.
 
This is one you’ve got to blast your way through - close your eyes and jump, light the match and burn on the way down, get pummeled by the waves, upside down and spitting water, freight train all your way through to the other side. 
 
And by all those overused, layered metaphors what I really mean is, you’ve got to fucking write. 
 
Not think. 
 
Just write.

Write The Truth Of Yourself.

Making beauty from the wreckage. 
Creating life from the unliveable. 
Cause that's what we do, babe, me and you and everyone like us
We make beauty out of the worst possible things.

Creating Beauty From The Wreckage Jeanette Leblanc

This is me raw. No makeup, no attempt to pretty up. Just me, bare and real in the morning light. 

Sometimes I need to show up like this, to remember that I can. 

And today I'm not going to carefully craft a post, any more than I wanted to put on my game face, because that's not where the energy lies. 

Today my heart is pounding truth, and I want to say every cliche thing I can think of to shake us all the fuck awake. Today I want to remind you of what we've all written or known or spoken at one time or another and what we all too easily forget. 

It's all too short, my love, too brief, too rare, too delicate, too transient, too impossible to hold. The whole of this life, our loves, our spirits, and souls and bodies and beings. 

Here and then gone. Just like that.

We get to have what we have, and then we don't anymore, and sometimes there is warning, and we can prepare, and sometimes there is not, and one tsunami of a wave knocks us over and tumbles us up and spits us out on the sand. 

But no matter how it goes down, love, none of this lasts forever. 

We don't know how long we get to be here. We don't know how long we get to love, or laugh or dance or sing or write or cry or show up for those who need us. And while we are here, we're almost guaranteed to fuck up every last one of those things, just by virtue of being so impossibly, frustratingly human, fragile assholes that we are. 

So my god, dive into the cliche with me, right now. Sit for a second and remember how slippery our hold on all of this is. Remember how fucking blessed you are to love and be loved, in every second of every day. 

Remember that nothing is promised to you, but everything is possible. 

Don’t act out of fear or scarcity. Not out of anxiety or grasping. Just act because it’s all too precious and all too delicate and all too important not to give our all and our everything. 

If you love someone, good fucking god, say it and say it and say it again. 

If you need to leave to save yourself, then leave and do not look back. 

If your heart and soul are forever connected to someone, and you know it in your bones, for the love of all that is holy, fight for them with all you have. 

If there is a place or a person or a dream or a love calling to your soul - move mountains to get to where you need to be. 

If you've lost yourself along the way, claw your way back to your own beating heart with the last bit of strength in your body. 

If you have work you need to do in the world, or a story you need to tell, or a truth that needs to be spoken. Do it or tell it or speak it like it matters more than anything else. 

Right now, I can't think of anything more holy than this. No larger imperative, nor deeper truth. 

Show up. Like you ever have before. Fuck the protection and old wounds. To hell with saving energy for another day, or letting our doubts or scars win the round. 

There's no time for that.

To hell with it. Just go out and love, as hard as you can. Be brave. Reach out and hold on tightly to what matters. Do it like you might not ever get a chance again. 

Because you might not. Do you hear me? You might not.

Be Brave. Love Hard. Dive Into The Cliche   Jeanette LeBlanc

There is so much dismantling going on inside of me right now. Seismic shifts and wild epiphanies and quiet truths that well up in the smallest moments that crack my heart wide open.

There are beliefs I have held, consciously and unconsciously, for longer than I know. Many years, or even many lifetimes. I’ve held them tight, fists clenched around them - as if the ideas themselves needed protection from the onslaught of the world.

Those beliefs I have carried, core truths born from wounds, they have kept me separate, have led me to create a story about myself that echoes a line from Rumi. I was, I believed, the lover of leaving. The one who could not stay. The breaker and the ender. The one who walks alone.

For the past five months, truthfully, probably much longer, I have been in the midst of a depression. In the end, it was one of the deepest depressions of my life. I didn't recognize it or name it because it looked and felt different than what I had experienced before. I was depleted and in a spiral of negativity, completely unable to access my own capacity for sustainable joy.

In the center of this darkness, I became so convinced of my own woundedness, so attached to the idea of inevitable separation, grasped so hard to my own isolation that I pushed and pushed and pushed hard against those who loved me the most. I listened to the voice of my depression, asshole of an unreliable narrator that it is, tell me that I could not trust myself, nor my heart, nor my choices. I caused hurt and harm, and I lost people, and I broke my own heart.

Depression enacts a brutally wicked cost. This I know to be true.

But also, in the space where things shift. When a heart finally cracks back online. When the light penetrates the fog, and we take off the scratched up lenses and that asshole of a narrator shuts up for the first time in months, it all gets really clear, really fucking fast.

Love is all we’ve got.

And my god, people, if it isn’t worth all that we have.

Life has reminded me lately, of how brief and fragile it all is. How the mistaken notion that there will always be more time keeps us listening to that unreliable narrator, lets us continue to allow our wounds, instead of our hearts, to lead the way.

This is such a fucking waste, my loves. Such a god damn waste. For me, for you, for all of us.

How many of us believe that for healing to be real it must be solitary, a space we must endure in silence and without relationship or community? How many of us are walking around with our hearts full of a love that we will not name or speak or act on because we are afraid, or because we were told that we had to fix us before we could love someone else? How many of us listen to the experts who assure us with great authority that we have to heal all of our wounds and walk alone and find unfailing self-love until we are all-the way-whole and can finally move that love into the fullness of expression.

How many of us have bought into this idea so hard that we turn away from the love that is right in front of our faces, begging us to acknowledge it?

I know I did. And I did. And I did again.

God damn it, but I don’t believe any of this shit anymore. I want to light this whole idea, a cultural wound itself born In our society of individualism at any cost, on fire and burn it all down.

The hurt in my heart was born in relationship to other humans, of course, it was. That’s what we do…we love, and we hurt, and it all gets tangled and then, my god, if we are lucky, we heal. If we are really lucky, we get another chance and another chance and another chance again.

Love Each Other Whole Again - Jeanette LeBlanc

Sometimes we have to step way back to see the whole picture. ⁣
⁣
Sometimes more is revealed in the shadow than in the light. ⁣
⁣
Sometimes what we think is the entire deal is just waiting for a mirror or a surface to raise an imprint or the right angle of light for a shadow. ⁣
⁣
Sometimes we need an entirely different perspective in order to see. ⁣
⁣
Sometimes we don't see the entire picture until after the light goes down. ⁣
⁣
Sometimes it's tempting to call that failure or too late or mistake. ⁣
⁣
Sometimes it is all of those things. ⁣
⁣
Or sometimes life just calls for patience. For breath. For a willingness to sit with the entire scene — eyes and heart open — without blaming yourself for the light that has already left. ⁣
⁣
Just stay still there in the dark. Sit steady. Root into the earth. Keep looking. Keep watching. ⁣
⁣
Just wait for the light to rise again. ⁣
⁣
It will. ⁣
⁣
It always does, love. ⁣
⁣
You know this. It always does.

Listen Up, Self (a Tough - Love Pep Talk For One)   By Jeanette LeBlanc

You can remember that you’re here to love, and the only way you ever want to fight for anything is with unclenched fists and a wide-open heart. And yeah, open hands are good at letting go. But sometimes letting go is the only thing (fuckery of a cliche that it may be) that allows for the fullness of truth and the only way to allow space for a thing to return.

And you know what else open hands are good for? Grabbing possibility and holding on tight when love arrives.

You can remind yourself that you’ve written your own instruction manual many a time before, finding almost decade-old words in the deepest recesses of your brain, floating toward you as if delivered. Back then you thought you were writing to another, rather than freezing in time for yourself to breadcrumb your way back to one day in the canned goods aisle, but no matter. They are here now for a reason.

“Find your way to living in that sweet spot – between grief and acceptance – welcoming the ache but not nurturing it, holding the angst but not feeding it – and you’ll come to a different place.“

So when this happens, because in high likelihood it will, you’re going to have to put down that can of fire roasted tomatoes and you’re gonna have to reach deeper and deeper into the place where the love lives. The place that is the foundation and bedrock of you. The one that trusts and believes and hopes and knows. Sink down into that, because I promise it is here.

What do you believe? What do you know to be true? What does your heart tell you is still possible? Just how big can you love?

Whatever the answer to the last question, I guarantee is exponentially bigger than you can imagine. It always is.

A Story Written Lasts Forever   Jeanette LeBlanc

When all that you hold is too impossibly heavy, let’s find somewhere beautiful to lay it down together. 

When the hurt runs so deep and so high that the dam threatens to burst, let’s cut a swath through the terrain and thunder our way to the ocean. 

When you think that you’ve never felt more alone, let’s play marco polo at the top of our lungs until we can find each other in the dark. 

When it’s all just too much, let’s remind each other that we are always and forever precisely enough. 

When protection and walls and hurt have barricaded your heart, invite me over for a demolition party. 

When the demons speak loudly and try to convince you that you do not have worth, you call me up and let me remind you that you are priceless. 

When the silence fills the room, let’s turn up the music and dance. 

When it seems like there is no chance, let's paint the walls with an endless list of just how many second chances got us to where we are right now. 

When the loss is too much to bear, let’s redistribute the weight and find a different way to carry the load. 

When the light threatens to go out, let’s light a thousand more candles until the whole world glows. 

You’re not meant to do this alone. 
You’re not meant to bear this alone. 
You’re not meant to live through this alone. 
You’re not meant to have to keep all the lights lit or the demons at bay or the questions answered alone. 
You’re not meant to suffer in silence or deny your pain or hold it all inside alone. 
You’re not meant to walk this alone, nor survive this alone, nor heal this alone. 

We are not made to be alone. 

We are made for a complex and infinite web of love and family and community. We fit inside of it all, each a puzzle piece with a million possible placements, but not a single one that doesn't fit somewhere and everywhere all at once. 

This is it, I am learning. The whole fucking reason for the whole fucking thing. We are in this together. 

We have to be, or it all ends. 
We have to be, or what’s the point?
We have to be, because if not, we just keep wounding each other. 
We have to be, because that is how we were made and this is what we were made for. 

So lay it all down, just for a moment. 
The pain, the hurt, the grief, the depression, the trauma, the heartbreak, the anxiety, the strain, the loneliness, the fear. 

The all.

All is not lost. 
You belong to something greater. 
I promise you this. 
We all do. 

We belong to each other. Fumbling caretakers though we may be. We belong to each other. 

So, lay every last bit down right now. 

And come find me, out there in the vastness of this world, this lifetime, this night. 

Come find me.

Come Find Me - We Heal Together | By Jeanette LeBlanc

come here.
come closer.
feel my breath?

good.

do not 
look away
right now you are
mine

right now 
i am 
lifting hair 
from neck  
running my finger 
gently there.  across 
the line of 
clavicle.  
down curve of rib
following
concave of waist
coming to rest on
the hard of hip.

revel, now
in the shiver that 
rises
along your spine

it means you are awake.

stay awake , lover
because this
is  
a treatise of touch

this is 
a dedication to
the divinity
of want
this is an ode
to the fierce hunger of 
your
animal skin

so bless your righteous body
bless it’s ancient hunger
bless it’s sacred need
bless the magnet pull
the utter madness 
of want
and the selfish haunting
of desire

right here
on electric hipbone
right here
on staircase spine
here on nape of neck
on hollow of throat
on line and curve
on slick and sweat  
here in the space where
body meets body
where want answers want
where primal, exalted lust
delivers 
you
to your 
knees

we all 
pray best 
on our knees

so let us pray

sanctify the body holy
the wicked desire
the backroom covenants of flesh
the slow slide of acquiesce 
the hallowed space of want
the heavy shudder of yes
the burn of craving
the bliss of the fire.

find now
the center of your 
longing
meet it where it lives
coax the tender tremor
tease response from 
edge to depth to surface
to bone
to salt
to sweat 
to skin
to teeth
to yes
to this

this is the
consecrated profanity of 
seduction
this is the space where
shame is shed

you are a vessel of want
you are a master of desire
you are the fierce of supplication
the gentle of domination
you are holy
you are holy 
you are holy

ask for what you need, lover
take what you want
bring it home
refuse the disgrace
with which you were raised
claim your untamable
unbind your wild
petition the air for your
every desire

this body is not the enemy
your sex is not a scandal
your skin needs no censor
you are not here for denial
your pleasure is 
what the universe
demands
it is the purpose
of your
creation
anything else
is 
blasphemy

so tattoo want along your rib
name it religion and church
and the rite of communion
take the body and the blood
sprinkle it with holy water
let the salt steam rise

and listen
just listen, lover
always
our bodies tell us
where to begin.

{jeanette leblanc. 2013}

A Treatise Of Touch. Jeanette LeBlanc

listen,
you, with your beach glass heart
you, with your moonshine teardrops
this is a poem for the world
and this is only a poem for you
both of those things are true
and neither, really
but either way
you, love
are holy

so, hold your capacity for melancholy 
and name it strength
hold your righteous anger
and name it the pathway to peace.
honor your translucent skin,
your bone truth bruises
worship your geography of bones and scars
that roadmap of veins
the path to the center
the pulse of spirit
the gateway of want

Light torch to
bonds built from lies
let the flames build
ignite truth
and let it burn
merge ashes into melody
knit moments into worlds
howl visions into open skies
fold yourself into the endless rain
and call the wild things home.

sing rough croon
spill blood fever
coax magic spiral
nuture the fierce in your belly
let it expand
release the song in your pulse
let the explosion push outward
and rock your standing ground
let the quaking earth birth you anew

rise up, now
accept your catalogue of regret
gather close your imperfect history
this life can be violent crucible
grace doesn’t always look pretty
and grief is a complicated ghost
we are all 
in some way haunted.

but this?
this is an invitation
enter your life now
build a home inside your hollow
cast a spell into the ether
evoke your own divinity 
turn the music up loud
let it build
feel  the reverb 
settle deep in your bones
until your spirit
pulsates
until the heat of it
permeates
your entire existence

and listen, you startlight seeker
listen jackhammer goddess
you’ve been holding on too tight 
to things no longer yours.
loosen your grip, lover, 
ease open your palms.  
come out with your hands up.  
this is not arrest.  
this is the beginning.

and you 
must not 
be tamed.



Poem for the world. By Jeanette LeBlanc. www.peacelovefree.com

Oh, sweet girl.  Come here and sit with me for a minute.  Right here, this chair has room for two.  Rest your head.   Let me wrap you in my arms.  Close your eyes.  Take a breath.  Now another.

Let it go.  Let the tears fall.  Relax your shoulders.  Relax your face.  Let your heart unwind, just for this moment.

“Let us not forget, that we never stop loving silently those we once loved out loud.” ~Oriah Mountain Dreamer

You’d like to tell you it’s just a matter of time, and then you’ll get over her and she’ll cease to occupy this space in your mind,  in your heart, in your life.  And that might be true.  It really might.  But there are some people we never really get over.  It does get better, or at least it gets different.  But there are certain loves that remain with us always.  Places that ache for the things we left behind, all that won’t ever be ours again.  And it ebbs and flows and changes and sometimes it helps to accept that some love really is eternal.

“When the karma of a relationship is done, only love remains. It’s safe. Let go.” ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

As for your girl, the one who has your heart, nobody can tell you to stop loving her. And you cannot tell yourself to stop loving her. The heart loves what it loves. It cannot always have what it wants, but it loves what it loves. See if you can’t hold that close and steady and dance with it for a while until the ease finds you.
Yes, you love her. Yes, you might always love her.  And no, you can’t have her.   Not right now and maybe not ever again.  These things are all true and real and solid.   And there’s a sweet spot somewhere in the center of those truths where you can find peace. Trust this. Know this.

That does not mean it won’t hurt and you won’t long and ache and cry for what you’ve lost.   No, it doesn’t mean you can turn your back on the very real grief that lives inside of you.  But if you find your way to living in that sweet spot – between grief and acceptance – welcoming the ache but not nurturing it, holding the angst but not feeding it – you’ll come to a different place.  A place where you can find the path of opening your heart to another, or better yet – to yourself.

To be your own lover, in all the ways that you can be. To be exceedingly kind to your heart, and your soul and your body and your spirit.  To know and hold all the ways and people and things that you love, all the loves that feed and sustain you. To recognize what is toxic to you without judgment, to set aside what does not serve. To know you can love, deep and long and hard and true, and still walk away to save yourself.  These are all tremendously difficult things. But worthwhile. Necessary.
Loving yourself first is the path to wholeness.  And from wholeness, we can open to loving others in fullness – even those who are not ours to have.  This I know to be true. And that this is good. You are good.  And yes, even this love you still have for her, it is good.

A friend of mine once said this: “Whatever you long for, even if it has no name, I would trust that. As you wind down and through this spiral may that longing inside you be guide and companion. And the only thing that can be said for reaching the bottom is that then you know where your solid ground resides” – Isabel Abbot

Trust in your longing. Even the part that longs for her. Because that is a longing for her, but also a longing for love. For that spirit or energy or spark that you shared that is about her, but not really about her at all. It is it’s own thing, and it exists in many different ways inside of many different people you will meet. And it will not be the same – no – it will be infinitely, excitingly, thrillingly different each time.

So  let the floor fall out from under you.  Nothing big ever happens, good or bad, unless the floor falls out first.   Let your longing wind you down through that spiral. And know that falling can be the most wickedly awesome and totally safe thing you’ve ever done.   Down, down, down – and when you hit that solid ground you’ll know. And you might touch down softly, or you might land in an ungraceful thud. But land you will. And then, when you’re ready, you can stretch your shaky legs, stand up, dust yourself off, raise your hands open, toss your head back to the heavens and say ‘Here i am. All that I am, and all that I will be.”

And your heart will still love what it loves.  And you will remember that was good in you, and in her.   And these memories will comfort and will serve you as you move through life, open to love – wherever and whenever it finds you.

http://www.peacelovefree.com/2012/02/16/the-heart-loves-what-it-loves/

The Heart Loves What It Loves

this is for you. for all of the women who come to me, defining their worth by their actions at the weakest moments.  the ones I have wronged and the ones i once believed had wronged me.  for all of us, in the midst of creation and destruction, in our too much and our not enough.  today, i sing your redemption song}

*******

Have compassion for everyone you meet, even if they don’t want it.  What appears bad manners, an ill temper or cynicism is always a sign of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen.  You do not know what wars are going on down there where the spirit meets the bone.”
~Miller Williams

We are all, at the heart of it, selfish assholes.   And we are all, at the heart of it, good and decent people.

full text at: http://www.peacelovefree.com/2013/05/22/redemption-song/


Redemption Song by Jeanette LeBlanc @ www.peacelovefree.com

It is all going to crash down
you know
everything
brick by brick
glass shattered
foundations 
crumbled

there is no way to save this.

there 
is 
no
way
to 
save
this.

the ending 
was written
long before
you ever heard
the tentative starting notes
no last ditch efforts
no swan song redemption
there is no rescuing
to be done 
here

so, let it fall
let it all come down
crumble like earth quake
like forest blaze
like armageddon times
stand amidst the rubble
with trembling legs
and stardust skin

survey the damage
hold your grief close 
usher it inside
name it truth
and go ahead
let it twist you
it has to
there is no other way

there
is
no
other
way

fall to the ground
let it take you down
on your knees now
so that the debris presses deep
into tender bone
marks your skin
with the harsh truth of
never again

because this?
this was fated
like the falling was fated
like the bliss was fated
like that night where 
infinity touched your soul
was going to happen
no matter what
you could not have changed things

you
could
not
have
changed
things.

it’s not just good things
and beginnings that are meant to be
sometimes
endings
are written first
and we live
just to catch up
to the inevitable
finish

you know this
you know it lover
you held on
you repaired
you patched
and you kept it all together
as long as you could

but 
now it is time
to let it fall
to release fists clenched 
tight around emptiness
to open
to let go
to admit
that it is done

now
it
is
finally
done

forgive yourself 
this ending
this aching unmet dream
do not name it
failure
or
catastrophe
it is not 
another mistake
for you to own

it is simply
is what
it is.
it is what must be
what was always 
going to be.

lift your eyes
let it all out
all the full moon howl
and the primal wail and
the grief 
you’ve kept locked
in bones.
let it all come
down now

let
it
all
come
down

release your walls
now
invite the potential 
of wide
open spaces
all the way in
and know that
after endings
come the beginnings of things.

begin again, lover
always
always
begin again.



Always, always begin again. By jeanette lebanc

Today I bring it all down
on the side of love
and I’ll tell you now,
yes, you should fly across the country just
for 48 hours in her arms
spend your last dollar and borrow more
to get there
steal words from the past and
ink them along  your lower left rib
in a promise to never risk this.
then risk it.
let it get fucking messy.
get naked and swim around in the
havoc you’ve brought forth
by loving
claim fiercely only the brief moments
you are given.
then take more
take everything
take with relentless fury
take until the taking looks like giving
and the giving looks like a prayer.
love like holy looks when it says your name
like a confession booth redemption.
and like on your knees supplication
to gods you don’t believe in
then see what happens if you believe in them.
love like the cadence of poetry.
like nails down your back
like a battering ram
like a mother holds her child.
like a consecrated temple
and like a seedy hotel room affair.
love like everything depends on it.
because it does
and it doesn’t
so love them both
love wrong till it’s right
love like they tell you
you could not
should not
can not
and then do.
love like you had the chance and didn’t take it
love like you did and didn’t make it.
and in the quiet, desperate moments
before giving up everything.
love like you’re just about to come…
undone
now hold on.  don’t let go.
love with your hands
just like your grandparents, arthritic knuckles clasped tight on their 50th wedding anniversary
like a newborn baby
palm curled around your index finger with a  grip so fierce you’d swear he could hold the weight of the world.
then let it all fall down.
and love like a fist fight
like a palm reader
like fingers trailing across braille.
like rock paper scissors
and like sign language speaking silent truths from across a crowded room.
love with your mouth.
like the sweet expectation of  the moments before your very first kiss
and like the screaming match where you hurled words like they were the weapons that would set you free.
love like the taste dark chocolate and red wine mingling on your tongue
and licking a cherry popsicle on a hot summer day.
love like leaving bite marks on pale skin
and like swallowing bitter truths so you don’t hurt him anymore.
Love like the past
like wandering through an antique shop and feeling the whispers of long ago memories in dust of discarded things.
Like old, soft leather and the hard crack of a whip,
Like a long forgotten love letter slipped in the back of an old book.
Like a typewriter with sticky keys that keeps on spelling his name no matter how many times you tell them you’ve moved on.
love like the day you walked down the aisle and the day you signed the divorce papers
like the way you drew in that shaky breath right before she touched you for the first time and
like you stopped breathing the day he went away forever.
love like you haveall the answers to all the questions you’ve ever asked and like you’ll never know a single one.
love like a tangle of hands and mouths and limbs
that goes on forever
and like it all ends.  Right now.
so love in the brutal tearing apart of everything you’ve ever known.
and like your scattered pieces are finally being gathered together.
like your wholeness matters more than your goodness.
Love, your wholeness IS your goodness.
love like you loved Superman when you were five
like you loved New Kids On The Block when you were twelve
like you loved that boy in math class when you were 16
and that girl at the bus stop when you were 22.
love like you learned to love yourself yesterday
like the way you’ve found only yourself at the end
of every choice you’ve ever made.
love is at the end of every choice you ever made.
love like maybe possibly mmmmm ok,  sure. If you wanna?
love like Yes! Yes! Yes!
and like saying “Hell no. I am worth FAR more than that”
and meaning it.
love like long lost soulmates
and like fucking someone who
could not tell you your own name.
love, you need to know your own name.

so love like a car crash
like a hospital emergency room at 3am
like a war zone
like a bomb shelter.
like a selfishness
like a submission
like a saint
like a sinner
like happily ever after
and like the sweetest one night stand.
just love.
stop pretending you can’t,
stop pretending you don’t want to
stop listening to them when they tell you shouldn’t.
love because you must
because you can
because you don’t really have to
but by god, you know that you will.
bring it all
down
on the side of
love

Bring it all down on the side of love. By Jeanette LeBlanc

We sit on the bed; crossed legs and open hearts. It has been a long night and an even longer morning.  I curl myself around you as you weep.  Shoulders heave and cleansing tears fall.  A truth too long held is released.
Confession.  Omission.  Anxiety.  Fear.  Agony.  Comfort.  Compassion. Love.   These all live in the small spaces between us.
Comprehension crystalizes mysteries that had surrounded us in undercurrent.   One fact arched over a span of years and a lifetime of hurt and delivered right here; to this bed, in this room, on this tender morning.
Despite the rest, there is always hope in the truth.
~~~
Oh, sweet baby, you are not broken. Not in the way that you think.
Yes, it’s true.  Your heart is cracked in a million jagged pieces.  You have carried memories of dark nights and trust betrayed. Your body has tenderly sheltered a lifetime of shame.   You have buried your wounds beneath scars and your scars behind words unsaid and pain unseen.
And you feel broken.  Oh love, of course you do.  Your soul is patched – holes stuffed with unmet hope and despair and desperation.   You have being viewing your reflection in a mirror broken over and over again by pain and shame.  You consider all of this your due.  Your secret.  Only yours to bear.
That ends now.  It must end now.
Because yes, you are broken.  And yes, you are perfect.   And you are never, ever alone.
~~~
We are in this together.  None of us truly walk in isolation, even when we cannot sense the presence of another for miles upon miles.  Even in the worst of our desolation.  Even during our coldest 3am breakdown.  Even when we shut out the world and spin in circles until we collapse.
Even then the light still gets in.   Even then the heart still opens and reaches, tendrils of hope curling and bending toward slivers of light.   Upward, outward, in all directions – seeking light at all cost.
One way or another, we all grow toward the light.
We are resilient like that.  Our hearts are stubborn like that.  Our spirits – even under the heaviest of burdens – ultimately wild and free. And eventually, when we least expect it, the light finds its way in.  It always does.
And then everything is illuminated.  And all of our aching pieces, all the shattered bits, all the places we think we must tuck away from the world are bathed in radiance.  And only then does something become clear….
The closer you get to broken, the more it begins to look like whole.  Like beauty.  Like breathtaking truth.
And the truth is that we are all beautiful.  And we are all broken.  And even when you consider all of our hopelessly fractured pieces, all of us inherently whole.
Life cracks us into unrecognizable shards of former incarnations.  Slivers of our hurt, and our pain and our shame nestle next to fragments of our truth, our divinity, our fierce reclamation of power.
It is this very brokenness that allows us to knit together, kaleidoscope style.  And we spin and shift and turn to the light until we appear brilliant, lit from within.  Suddenly we are revealed; unexpected beauty born directly from brokenness.
We have to be willing to break in order to become.
~~~
Your sobs have quieted.  I hold you in my arms and radiate as much peace as I am able, hoping that some of it transmits directly to the center of your aching heart.
I cannot heal you.  I cannot fix this.  But I can help you gather the scattered and broken parts and hold them to the light.  I want you to catch a glimpse of what I see, a kaleidoscope configuration composed of color and geometry and all of your broken pieces arranged in imperfectly perfect symmetry.
You are broken.
You are whole.
You are beautiful.
I honor you.

Willing to break

Blessed be your longing. Your endless ache. Your sharp crystal shatter. Your sea glass heart.
Blessed be the long, slow slide into desire.  The swift plunging wound to the heart. The bleeding out onto the kitchen floor.
Blessed be the fierce of want and the howl of despair and the swan dive of surrender.
Blessed be the indignation of right and the never more naked of wrong.
Blessed be your strong smooth body and your roadmap of scars and brittle bones that give way under the weight of lives unlived.
Blessed be the unmet passion, the ruthless boredom, the absolute certainty of regret.
Blessed be the sweet laughter.  The hard fuck.  The bitter fight.  The soft  impossible forgiveness.
Blessed be the restless seeker.  The relentless urgency.   The unanswered call.
Blessed be the giving up.  The hope unraveled. The void at the end.  The clenched fists and the desperate grasping and the way it all slides away when the time comes.
Blessed be your trembling breath and your strong knees.  Blessed be your siren song and your briny tears and your frantic prayer.
Blessed be your violin body, your electric hipbone, your staircase ribs.
Blessed be your slaughtered dreams and your cynical projection.  Blessed be your fire of initiation. Your ritual of comfort. Your secret shame.  Your whispered confession. Blessed be your primal roar.
Blessed be the rejection.  The hollowed out, disregarded heart.   Blessed be the end of the rope, the absence of expectation, the way it all gives way eventually.
Blessed be the blood and guts and gore of it all.
Blessed be the wanton emptiness of greed and the brutal havoc of love and the way peace grows in between cracks in cement.
Blessed be the dirty street corner hustle and the pretty surface of things and where they meet in the most sacred center.
Blessed be the harsh divinity.  The winged flight.  The salt skin.  The symphony of lust.
Blessed be the holy and the worship.  Blessed be the sacred mother. Blessed be the faithless edges. Blessed be the ritual of liturgy and agnostic devotion.  Blessed be the profane and the provocation.
Blessed be the brazen orgy, the unabashed revelry, the stained glass cathedral of your hungry flesh.
Blessed be the solitary pilgrimage and the long journey home.
Blessed be the one who contains herself. Blessed be the one who contains us all.
Blessed be the truth that demands reckoning and the goodbye that wrenches secrets from behind closed lips. Blessed be the sucker punch bruises.
Blessed be smooth slide of sun behind the mountains.  Blessed be the wise desert and the pounding sea.
Blessed be the sweet swell of words. The luxury of punctuation. The silent spaces between bodies. The ragged sigh of breath on bone.
Blessed be the poet and the poem and the one between them who has no words of her own.
Blessed be the plagiarism, the thievery, the rash disregard for origin, the gratitude for the beginning of things.
Blessed be our free fall into destiny. Our slow burn.  Our consuming fire.  Blessed be the breaking and the becoming.
Blessed be the ugly.  Blessed be the sweet sin. Blessed be the rage. Blessed be the grace.
Blessed be. Blessed be.  Blessed be.
In the end, all words are just another way to say amen.

Blessed Be. By Jeanette LeBlanc : Www.peacelovefree.com

It’s scary.  This love thing.  The sweet vulnerability of extension.  The naked of ‘here I am’.  The tentative reaching of outstretched arms.  The wide open of hope.

We all get a little lost here.  Wish we knew how to do it better.  Wish it were cleaner and more gentle and a little easier to understand.
We welcome the head long rush of it just as we try to run away.

Teach me how to be loved. We all say this over and over again, in different words or with the shift and sway of our bodies or in the silent spaces where words are left behind.

Teach me how to be loved.  Let me show you how to love me well.  School me in the workings of your heart, in the language of your bones.  Let my open palm memorize the shape of your face.  Tell me the stories of your scars so I can trace them with the honor of understanding.

Do you see this fault line?  It is where I was broken, over and over again, by the ones who came before you.  Are you willing to take that in?  My wide open eyes?  My truth lives there, if you look for it.   I have been loved by those who didn’t care to discover all that I am.  Will you be the one to see me whole?

It gets tangled sometimes.  The purity of beginnings become a hazy twist of expectations, the intermingling of past hurts and future fears.  We are the product of all that has already been, and of all that we hope will one day become.  We carry with us the bone memory of the loves that we have held and all that has been lost.  We don’t ever come into love without the echo of our past singing it’s siren song.

Can we do this?  Can we find in this love a gossamer thread of redemption to coax into a late night tangle of limbs and lazy Sunday mornings?  Will you follow me into the interplay of light and shadow?  Will you dance with me here, where the light and dark within me can mingle with the good and bad of you?

Teach me how to be loved.  It is a relentless forgiveness that allows us to return here, again and again.    Past the tears and the leaving and the broken spaces.  Back into the hope of more, the possibility of again.

We are made for this.  For the sweet vulnerability of now, for the outreach past fear and into unknown.  For the extension and unwrapping.  Even for the fault lines and the bittersweet of no longer ours.
We are an ancient sort of resilient.  Made for the falling and the rising.  Made for rose colored glasses and honeyed lips and finding new home in another.  Made for the burning down and rebuilding from ashes.  Made for the holy wonder of beginning again.

Teach me how to be loved.  Show me how to love you well.  Our hearts speak fluent optimist even when we try to cloak the hopeful whispers in layers of pessimism masquerading as protection.

We are here to love.  To speak our mother tongue to lovers who may stay or may go.  To learn the body rhythms of forever and of just for now.   We are here to open to the bliss and the risk and the possibility inherent in every beginning.

Teach me how to be loved.  Let me learn how to love you. Start now.  I’m paying attention.  I was made for this.

So were you.

http://www.peacelovefree.com/2013/01/22/1645/

Teach Me How To Be Loved By Jeanette LeBlanc

i have spent
far too long
standing in the shadow
of my own
perception.
loathing
lip curling
at my own
reflection
in the mirror
in the store window
in the eyes of
satisfied
lovers
disgust
unmet expectation
endlessly comparing
and rejecting
myself
and now?
and now.
and now I will
own it.
posess it.
revel in every
soft/curvy
hard/angular
perfect/imperfect
inch of it
of me.
for my daughters
for my daughters daughters
for my lovers
for the kind-eyed stranger
behind the counter
at my neighbourhood
coffee bar.
who serves me
the perfect chocolate pastries.
for myself
i will own it.
before
i gave it away
threw it away
discarded it in the clouds of a million smoky bars
and on the floors
of unfamiliar rooms
next to dirty socks
and forgotten paperbacks.
did not want it
could not hold it
choked on the weight
and taste
of it.
i spit it out
with
revulsion.
and now?
and now.
i will hold it high
and touch it softly
and kiss it gently
and give it away freely
but
only to those who
deserve it.
i will be solid in my space
and soft
in my space
i will move
with intention in this space
and I will walk with purpose through
this space
with purpose and truth and
with
direction
i will dismantle
the walls
and tear down
these artificial
boundaries
designed to
protect
but serving to
distance
and i will crack myself
wide
open
open
open
open to experience
to pain
to love
to hurt
to the brilliance
that could be
my life,
that will be
my
life.
i will own my physicality
and I will own
my fluid
sexuality.
and I will look you in the eyes
with clarity
with no apology
or inhibition
for myself
and i will get right
to the
point
no more time
to waste
and I will dance with
passion
and I will live with
acceptance
and I will embrace with
abandon
and I will love
and I will love.
because
I will own it with my walk
and with my
talk
and with my body
language
and everyone will watch
because,
i will own it.

I Will Own It. By Jeanette LeBlanc

**I invite you to stoke the embers of your inner fire.  Coax the flames from your center to the edges of all you reach.   Make peace with the parts within you that crave that burn.  Let the flames get high.  Burn bright.  The world needs your light.**

there is a girl

she is wise
and wary of flames
but still, she knows
she will survive the fire
life scorches sometimes.
she has been a phoenix before
and every time
she burns to ashes
she knows
exactly how to rise
again.

she carries
destruction grief
carved river deep in her bones
specializes in
wrecking ball
knows how to bring
the whole thing down
surveys the broken
claims it as wholeness
and names it all good
she knows well
the holy necessity
of beginning again.

she has gone mad
for beauty
found rapture in shadows
calls poetry her religion
she seduces uncertainty
like a dominatrix
bows to no god
names herself goddess
builds alters
to the divinity
of heat and sweat and sex
and claims righteous ownership of
the body she has been given.

she once held her truth
in bone marrow,
locked deep.
but she was always
prone to fracture
learned that words flowed best
at the broken spots
she wrote splinter point novellas
told shatter stories
knit words into worlds
and worlds into heat
and heat into breath
and breath into medicine
and she learned her voice
had the power to heal.

she lives transparent now
welcomes the feel
of air on bare skin
throws arms wide
holds out her heart
and says here
take this
all of it
she figured early
that far too much energy
is invested in veiling
truth
in hiding bodies
in cloaking love
she refuses
to cultivate shame
she saves her effort
for vital things.

she knows that
love is expensive
and always worth
the price
she knows home is not
where she lives
but something
inside held
and sometimes
only found by leaving
she knows that walls
are imaginary
and that open doors
are everywhere
and that eventually
we will all
make our way
back to the sea
back to the crashing waves
back to salt water truth

she does not believe in one day
no happily ever after
or black and white
hard truths
her forever is now
she finds her rapture in the fullness
of this moment
humanity is her only dogma
kindness her communion
and church a mountain top
in the center of the desert
while the city pulses below
she speaks amen
in every holy fragment of existence.

she always knew she’d have daughters
knew she would mother them well.
she teaches them the value of their
outside voice
their no voice
their yes voice
their my entire being is a temple voice
she teaches them that their spirit
is truth
and their truth
is strength
and their strength
is vulnerability
and their vulnerability is a gift.
she knows too many girls
are broken before they
become
she has done battle in the name of rebirth
carries her scars with fierce grace
she finds beauty in the breakdown
and wholeness in the shatter
strength in the fault lines
and goodness in everything.

she is not afraid to name her gifts
knows the magic in her words
knows the spiral in her hips
she has a vital spark
at the center of her longing
she has secrets behind her eyes
and will share them
with anyone
who asks
but she only wants those
who commit
to asking.

she knows that compromise
is for vocations
and that spirit
is non-negotiable
she accepts no labels or limits
build her a box
and she will dismantle it carefully
use the pieces
to create a stage
and sing her own wild song
knows there is a power
in the melody we carry in our
bones.

She knows the lotus blooms
in mud
she knows the phoenix
goes down in flames
she knows the rapture of lust
and the escape of captivity
she knows the center of the paradox
is where the truth is found.

she is full of sky
full of starshine
full of goddess flame
bleeds words
speaks truth
welcomes it all
howls at the moon

she is a girl on fire
she is stoking the flames
she is lighting the world
she burning to ashes

And always she is rising

And rising

And rising again.

JeanetteLeBlanc

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