Letter to Myself at Twenty-One
What is it that shines through all this withering?
—Kim Rosen, “Grand Finale”
You would be embarrassed of my body.
You would never believe contentment
is possible with a belly this soft
and legs this thick, but sweetheart,
I promise you I love being alive
in this time-ripened body that still
carries me into the garden to plant
snap peas, this body that cradles
my grown girls, that explores
the familiar terrain of my husband,
that walks through spruce forests and thrills
at the scent of evergreen and rain.
It is so much easier now to be gentle
with myself, even easy to be gentle with you.
Easy to forgive you for thinking you needed
to starve these bones. The irony is
you never felt beautiful, did you, and now,
when I am so far from your ideal,
I’ve never felt more lovely—
which is to say there is something
inside, a radiance, that beacons through
the crumbling walls of the body,
and the real beauty is being in service
to that shine, becoming less and less
a vessel and more and more that light.
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer in A Hundred Falling Veils
Invitation: “I’ve never felt more lovely —”
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I love this poem... it is so worth passing on to any 21 year old who rarely see that "something inside, that radiance, that beacons through..." Thank you, Jean and Pat for sharing these wonderful words. Thanks to Rosemerry for creating them! 💗💗
"It is so much easier now to be gentle
with myself, even easy to be gentle with you."
In her poem Letter to Myself at Twenty-One, I appreciate the perspective of gentleness that Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer offers to us. May we be gentle with ourselves in this moment, at this time in our lives, and gentle with ourselves as we look back at who we were in the past.