In the year 2020 I grieved with the world at the loss of so many beautiful Beings, was furious at the injustices in our country perpetrated on People of Color, wrote a book of poems, and found out that the spiritual teacher who I had followed for 48 years had been a sexual predator and so much more. I have taken a journey of reflection, meditation, therapy, and a deep dive within in order to make sense of these revelations about my teacher (now, 14 years passed) and to make decisions on how to move forward. The changes to my dress and physical appearance have been evolving over this past year, but it is the internal changes, the grief, anger, feelings of betrayal and loss that are the ones that may be a rest-of-my-lifetime endeavor. I will not shy away from the challenge, because if there is anything I have learned in all of this, it’s what Mary Oliver so elegantly said in her poem, The Summer Day asking “ Tell me what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” For me a constant source of strength and solace is to write and thus this website and blog.
I’m going to start writing my truth, though I hardly know it, can barely look it in the eye, though I’m terrified of what it will reveal, what I’ll need to do to live up to its unflinching beauty and strength. “There’s no going back,” is the mantra I live by right now. I know that truth, but what is “now” and what is “future” perplex me, run me around in spiraling circles of possibility and “Oh, my God, what’s happening here?” Well, here’s the ongoing story, the narrative of myself, as I know it, as I think I know it, realizing that tomorrow every bit of it could shift slightly to the north or south, could run off the page and never come back, but I’ve got to start, which is always the toughest moment and the moment the laundry needs to be folded, the broccoli chopped, a nap needs to be taken. It’s my nature, most probably human nature, to obfuscate when it comes to baring the soul. I have compassion for that scared little girl inside who’d rather not come forth and put herself in front of the microphone. I will go slowly, give her time to acclimate, allow her to feel her way, open her throat wider, her voice grow louder, sing out from her belly, the place that cinches into a knot and begs to be unwound, to be a cloud, hovering above, floating in blue space.
Hari B Poet 