Meri's Musings

Do you ever have the feeling that you're somehow outside yourself, just watching things unfold, somehow both present and outside time? Have you ever felt that you were outside, looking in, feeling like no matter what you do, you'll never fit in? Have you ever wished for the power to shape shift? Or a cloak of invisibility? Or a titanium case to protect your heart? Tell me all about it. I'm working myself up to do something that is the right thing to do, but will come at great emotional cost. I'm wishing and feeling a lot of things in the process. Has this ever happened to you? Maybe your story will fortify me for what lies ahead.

From my poetry chapbook Calypso Red Lesson Learned Once my name was Made-Herself-Invisible. I conjured my disappearance not through incantations or potions concocted from essence of larkspur and eye of newt but by hiding my light in a man's shadow. Now my name is Never Again.

I have a friend who once told me about a dream she'd had. In the dream, she looked into a mirror and much to her dismay, there was no "her" reflected. She was gone. Vanished. Invisible. She was absent from her own life. At least, that's what her dream told her. One of the risks of being female in contemporary society is losing our authentic selves. When we let the expectations of others dictate how we live our lives, we become invisible. When we don't take credit for our unique gifts, when we don't use them and nourish them and celebrate them, we discredit ourselves. When we are so concerned about what makes others happy that we can no longer remember how to create our own happiness, we are lost. There are so many ways in which to vanish from our own lives. Are you absent from your own life? Why did you decide to pull a disappearing act? What efforts are you making to become PRESENT and take up your allotted space in the ...