With Astonishing Tenderness - Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

When, in the middle of the night,
you wake with the certainty you’ve
done it all wrong, when you wake
and see clearly all the places you’ve failed,
in that moment, when dreams will not return,
this is the chance for your softest voice—
the one you reserve for those you love most—
to say to you quietly, oh sweetheart, 
this is not yet the end of the story. 
Sleep will not come, but somehow,
in that wide awake moment there is peace—
the kind of peace that does not need
everything to be right before it arrives.
The peace that comes from not fighting
what is real. The peace that rises
in the dark on its sure dark wings
to meet you exactly as you are.

What I loved about this poem in the light of it being a Thinking Environment poem is the idea of our having a “softest voice”, like “the one you reserve for those you love most”, that we use towards ourselves in times of trouble as opposed to the inner critic voice.  And the idea that we can meet ourselves “exactly as you are” – and how this is something we learn to do as we reclaim our independent thinking.

Shared by Trisha Lord