Let Goddess

A poem by Layla Saad

Image Credit: William Stitt

Remember in your early 20s
when you suffered from
anxiety and depression?
And that dark, scared,
stagnant energy was always
stuck in your body,
but you didn't know
how to get it out?

You would smoke.
And party.
And be reckless
with your safety,
your education,
and your health.

You would stay up all night
staring into the abyss,
praying for the ground
to just swallow you up
into the darkness
so that you wouldn't have
to feel that pain anymore.

You would listen to
sad songs on repeat
hoping that somehow
you could vicariously
get those emotions
out of your body
by hearing an artist
emote theirs.

You tried everything
except the thing your
mind, body and soul
needed most:

To surrender
and allow yourself to
fully feel all of your emotions.

You never gave yourself
permission to sob
like you were dying inside.
Permission to roar
like you were raging.
Permission to stomp and stamp
like you were fighting for your life.

You kept trying to
rationalise your pain
instead of feeling it.

You kept trying to
question your pain
using logic as your sword,
instead of your
body's natural instincts.

It's now a decade later
and you've learned
this important lesson:
that pain, sadness and rage
cannot be bargained with.

They are jealous lovers
and will not be satiated
until you have allowed them
to course through your body
unimpeded and unjudged.

So now,
you welcome the holy tears
the holy roaring and the holy
stomping and stamping.

You say to your body,
"Show me how to move
these energies through you.
Show me how to transform
this chaos into calm.
Show me how to not be afraid
of the power of my own emotions."

And your body,
grateful that you have finally
learned to trust Her says,
Give them all to me, Dear One.
You don't have to 'do'
anything, except let go
and let Goddess.