Writer, Won't You Get On With It, Already?
A letter to YOU from a clinically depressed woman who chose to stay...
As you know, May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and THIS is my love letter to all of you writers out there who might need to hear that YOU matter, your suffering matters, and your ART matters.
This is the thing I didn’t want to write. Not because I don’t have enough adoration for you, dear reader, but because what I am about to share with you is—if this were Victorian society—akin to lifting my dress to reveal the sullied petticoat and bare feet beneath. But, you know, I am so dedicated to authenticity and truth-telling and namely reaching souls, that I am going to go ahead and lift my tattered petticoat anyway.
And besides, it’s probably of no surprise to anyone that I am a barefoot kind of girl.
So, I hope you’ll sit and stay awhile—because this letter is for you— written in three parts with the additional offering of a poem in each meditation.
MAKE IT COUNT The are no dreams being dreamt and no lives being lived in graves. Oh, they are coming— a grave for each of us— but until then, dear soul, GET TO DREAMING AND LIVING while you can— and do it NOW! This is your one and only chance to make it count. -Kimberly
PART 1: THE DARKNESS
“The endurance of darkness is preparation for great light.” —St. John of the Cross
I nearly died two times.
The first time was in 2012 because of the unbelievable torment I suffered because of secret traumas and my resulting mental health crisis. The second time was in 2022 as I writhed in my bed—after losing my ability to work, walk, and bear more children. If you’ve been around here long enough, you know this story. And this one, too.
Both times, God saved me—even though I wished he didn’t at the time.
Since the age of about eight, I have not lived a day without pain. And without the words or help to process my grief because of what was done to me in a hundred broken ways, my mind, body, and soul were left to write their own stories in an attempt to survive.
The details about my personal trauma, dating back to 1990, don’t matter in this context because I need you to see yourself here—not me.
What does matter in this story is the swelling undercurrent that sings, “You are not alone.” Today and always, this is my song to you. But far more importantly, it is God’s song, too.
The souls who gather around these words I write, like the campfires of old, have seen death, depression, abuse, addiction, disease, and more. None of us—if we live long enough—are ill-acquainted with grief.
And as I write this singular truth, I wish to the Heavens that hell on Earth wasn’t a thing—even though it is.
So, dear writer, what are we supposed to do with this pain? How are we going to survive it? Make sense of it? And then put it to good use?
GARDEN VESPERS by Kimberly Phinney published in Of Wings and Dirt I. My God, my God: Do you hear my prayers? These midnight vespers I am whispering? In my soft hallelujahs— gently mouthed and cupped by tears that drop from my cheeks and travel down into the soil below in these gardens you know too well? II. I wonder if only the lilies hear me? Or maybe just the lantana? Because I can scarcely summon anything more than, Though you slay me, I will trust. And I still wonder, though I can’t pray it, When enough is enough? Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. III. I sit under the moon and swaying palms as I listen for your voice, but it’s the night train’s aria going south— a clear bell in the silent air, singing over us. And I don’t know why, but it makes me remember what I read so many years ago, that if you sing to your house plants, you help them grow. IV. Then, I wonder, in my doubt, if my prayers might help us all— the songs I’m singing out to you, God, and over the flora before me— without a choral response. Though you slay me, I will trust. And if maybe my tears will help, too, as weary and broken as they are, to grow these garden things to life and to somehow revive my faith again— even in your silence.
You can purchase Of Wings and Dirt, a #1 NEW release and best seller on Amazon, here.
PART 2: THE LIGHT
“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” ― Rumi
The night I prayed to God to let me die and he didn’t answer my prayer was both the darkest and lightest night of my life. As I look over my shoulder now—to catch a glimpse of that memory two and a half years ago—I can see it with a keen insight that can only come in retrospect:
I am on the bathroom floor, unable to walk. I am bleeding through my sutures from a third radical surgery. I have not slept for almost three days straight. I am terrified I will get sepsis again. My brain is broken, and I am begging for my husband to help me—to say something—so I can go on.
Dawn is coming. I finally raise my head and catch the sun cracking through the blinds to outline his dark silhouette as he stands over me.
Even here, the light breaks in.
“Say something,” I beg. “Because I can’t do this anymore!”
My husband looks up into the coming light. Flings a silent prayer at God and then says the most urgent thing he’s ever told me:
“You don’t have a choice, my love. You can, and you will do this! You have a daughter sleeping in the other room. You have a husband who can’t do this without you. Get yourself together. We need you! We love you! Do you hear me?”
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