Something about my guests: guilt and Joy

Sometimes, after posting something, after sharing one truth or another about my experience of being human, I am left with a tinge of doubt or as Brené Brown would call it, a vulnerability hangover. That feeling of wondering if I shared more than I should have or wanted, or whether my words are out of touch for this moment, this context. I wonder.

This morning as I encountered Trump's words on my phone and the ensuing rage and grief and calls to action across a number of accounts, I was confronted with this precise combination of feeling and questioning.

How violent life becomes when guilt appears as a persistent guest in the presence of joy and curiosity. For we cannot hide from the very fact that so many people's right to joy and curiosity will never manifest. Or that perhaps they will,

But only in the ruins and rubble, in the dust and bloodshed of those who they'd have liked to share their joy and curiosities with. In my own sharing of joy yesterday,

For a moment I was a young girl playing in her room again

Rediscovering the excitement of seeing my own things

The objects that started making my new house feel like home.

But there came knocking, Guilt.

And we've been sitting together,

this morning.

She's been asking me, once again, to reconcile my joy with the violence of his words, of his power, of his own untouched grief and all of the life, threatened and wasted. Manipulated. Stolen.

So we've been sitting together this morning, and I've been whispering through a choked up throat and eyes welling up, that we must continue this way

We must feel our joy; we must dance, we must create and we must laugh

and she, Guilt, is welcome too.

She is welcome and she is honoured

Because guilt reminds me everyday

That my heart is connected to yours

My joy and my freedom is connected to yours.

So we will dance, and we will sing and laugh and make art. And we will always do this together.