Day 1

[Leanne Matton]

Where does your heart go?

Your heart is the softest
place on earth.
Take care of it.
–
Nayyirah Waheed

Welcome to day 1. We’re starting off gently with a writing prompt that will take you to where your heart feels safe and alive. Future prompts will be more involved and may take you to more difficult places, but for today, let’s take one small step together.

It was a different mother that gave me my heart.

I was taken from her at birth and the second mother gave me a poem saying I didn’t grow under her heart but in it.

But it wasn’t true.

She pushed me out of her heart before I had time to grow there. She says it was me who turned my heart against her, but my heart was hers.

My heart was created with a great love of life, and it has been encased in a wall of armour that has stopped this love of life being realised.

I gave both mothers my heart and both rejected it – one as a child and one after reunion.

I stopped giving my heart to anyone because it seemed too small and inadequate to be worth anything or even acknowledged.

I kept it wrapped up tight and safe in my chest under a suit of armour where it grew lonely and invisible.

I gave it to animals instead because they melted the armour and embraced it without question or judgment.

My heart returns to the places where there was deep connection – with the earth and her inhabitants, with music, nature, and the empty pages of journals waiting to be filled.

It is reflected in the eyes of a child in old photos looking out at me across the years, the child that I was before the darkness fell over her life.

It lives in the places where it remembers the possibility of love.

If you put your ear to my heart, you would hear it whispering hope.

Tell us, where does your heart go?

• This topic was modified 4 years, 1 month ago by Leanne Matton.

[seadreamer60]

My heart is burrowing in. Trying to find safety. To find somewhere soft and dark and hidden. It’s looking for time to beat softly, gently, sweetly. People seem to keep finding it, my frightened heart, to wrench open the cupboard door and expose it to the harsh light. To yank back the bed covers and leave it frozen with pain. My heart is sad and terrified. It wants to go home. To find a place. It’s own place. Safe from the crowd. Safe from cruel exposure.

[Leanne Matton]

That soft dark space, that safe place. I hear the longing for it, the way that wrenching exposure touches everything, leaving nothing sacred for your sad frightened sweet heart 💖

[Rosie]

My heart goes to ground, into hiding, fearful of the outside world and the traps lurking in the corridors of power.
My heart goes soft when in the company of my little canine, unconditionally loved out of the hardness.
My heart lives a lot in the darkness, beyond a high wall of protection, sad so very sad to be there.
My heart knows many armours and feels the loss of love deeply.
My heart never gives up even when my mind would have me do otherwise.
My heart knows a truth beyond the imaginings of my tormented mind.
My heart goes on just waiting for me to be brave enough to share it without fear of rejection.

[Leanne Matton]

The absolute truth and beauty of this, uncensored and so real.
And the company of your little canine, the unconditional love.
All this and your dear heart never gives up ❤️
Listening and nodding x

[Anonymous]

My heart travels to longings and desires of things that ‘little me’ doesn’t believe are ever possible. It dreams quietly within me and I’ve stopped listening as the dreams it has, as they seem so out of reach.
I stopped listening to it after it got wounded so badly I thought I’d never recover. And maybe thats part of the problem, I’ve been stuck so long in “recovery” my heart is so buried away, I’m not even sure what it looks like – I’m scared to look because when I do, it wants and desires things I can’t bring myself to consider without grief, regret, feelings of violations and tears.
But sometimes, if I’m caught “off-guard” I might hear it murmur with the faint whiff of happiness when I drift off in the sunshine or catch a happy memory floating past, before I’ve had the chance to ruin it and compare myself now to who I was then.
My heart is only truly alive when I’m sleeping and it continues its dreaming inside me without interference or interruption.
I have become disconnected from my heart, separated from it, yet I feel its grief, sadness and loneliness and it brought me here. 💜

[Leanne Matton]

Your dreaming heart 💓 I posted a fragment of a poem the other day which your writing reminds me of – this great sadness doesn’t crush me, I let it sing, I let it be – I hope you can find a way to make space for your whole heart now, the sunshine and the grief, its desires and its loneliness. They are all welcome here 🙏

[seadreamer60]

Rosie
My heart knows a truth beyond the imaginings of my tormented mind.
I love this. Thank you.

[seadreamer60]

Andrea: Yes, a dreaming heart, so, so beautiful. I am quietly excited to think of my heart that way if you don’t mind me adopting your words. It feels like a magical thing to have beating inside me, putting out little furls of green, growing gently stronger and steadier. <3

[Rosie]

Dearest Andrea

My heart is so grateful that your Brave Beautiful Heart has brought you here.

As I read your post my heart was reaching out with a great big YES of acknowledgment for your bravery.

I hear a deep connection to your heart – ‘you feel its grief, sadness and loneliness and it brought me here’. That level of presence for me speaks of such a life affirming connection with your heart. Yes there is great wounding and it can seem like knowing how to live beyond that is unfathomable – I get that and I get the ‘comparison thing’ – I do that all the time. But recently I read this “the answer to how, is YES”. I certainly don’t currently feel like I know the ‘how’ of living an authentic life, but I try just to remember at least sometimes to be okay with not knowing and just say ‘YES’. ‘YES’ for me right now is endeavouring > to allow glimmers of possibility, hope, truth and transparency to shine from my being, instead of saying a BIG FAT NO all the time, when I stop feeling and just close down instead.

As we learn to be gentle and kind with ourselves, I say YES to getting to know our heartsong and singing it loud.

Blessings.

Rosie

[Leanne Matton]

Thank you for the way you all support each other so compassionately and generously 💝

[Anonymous]

Thank you 🙏🏼

[Maria Delaney]

What beautiful expressions you have all shared. I have the heart of a lonely, grief-stricken, shocked and traumatised child, but this child has also had the determined heart of a warrior. It’s taken me on great adventures and into many battles to ‘heal the world’, but lately I’ve realised that more time healing myself makes me a more gentle and skillful warrior. And I’ve also started to choose more realistic battles and more sustaining self care, including community care. I think that’s what we have here. A community with heart, that holds each other with reverent acknowledgement and understanding of the darkness. Love to you all.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 1 month ago by Maria Delaney.

[Leanne Matton]

Maria, I recognise your heart’s descriptive words and all the different ways of being which can all be true at once – the lonely grief stricken child who is also the great adventurer and battle warrior. All these things and a community of other hearts who know the truth of this 🧡

[seadreamer60]

“reverent acknowledgement and understanding of the darkness”

beautiful, deep and wise <3

[Author]

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