don't let your skin become so thick that nothing can hurt you anymore getting wounded is part of the experience the scars you collect are all part of your story take off your armor and give vulnerability a chance to paint your naked form feel the sunlight on your shoulders let the wind move through your hair give your tears a chance to be counted allow us to be swept up in your smile ~ you see, my love, you weren't born to be hidden behind a towering wall you were formed out of an ancient whisper to become a natural wonder where we all visit to listen to the songbirds sing through the pines of your evergreen beauty you were given this skin to be kissed softly - don't let it grow scales you were given your eyes to reflect starlight - don't close them to keep us from seeing your soul you were given your hands to lace inside another hand - don't keep them constantly folded in your lap my love, I know this world can be a sharpened spear that will often pierce you but when given a choice bleeding is always better than apathy someday when we meet in the moving cosmic river that exists on the crawling fringe of everything let's take turns washing each other's scars while saying the same prayer over and over: "I got this wound for caring and I got this one for having an open heart but that is the cost that comes from being a living work of sacred art." ~ John Roedel

We are kindred spirits! lol

Boopsy! I’m completely capable of shifting around like a lady if it comes to that. 🫣🤣

I hope you are better after a goodnight's sleep! 🖤 I always seem to push my recovery too fast myself. I can't stand being down with anything. My worst habit is I will stop taking medications too soon and then try to get moving again as soon as I can stand. lol Not usually doctor's orders. 😅

*attempts to twist around a bit and gets a few scratches* So, is anyone going to let me out of this trap before I go as mad as the rest of you? Or at least, whatever happened to that drink I was promised? Perhaps I won't mind so much then... 🤔

*runs through swinging her glittering mace and spraying everyone with black sparkles* I hope you are feeling a bit better after your last few weeks, Oh Great Lady of Darkness! 🖤

I can completely relate to this. I also tend to shut the world out and even my closest friends will start to loose touch. I would love to say when I withdraw I am doing something productive but honestly I think I just shut down. And that is at the best of times. I think it has something to do with my adrenal disease. When I get stressed it also shuts my body down, so I become poorly as well. Not always in an identifiable way, but more subtle things like not being able to eat and sleeping almost constantly to the point of being unable to wake up. These are of course signs I am heading towards an Adrenal Crises and need additional doses of my medicine but I often don't see what is happening unless some one intervenes. I have had steady friends over the years that have helped to pull me out and eventually I realized that I needed to be sure to maintain my friendships, as they were the only things that seem to counter act it. It's why I returned to DM after so many years away. The connections and playing about on the boards, the deeper, more thoughtful conversations we have here together remind me of who I am as a person. It's a bit ironic that the very thing that tends to help me is the very thing I pull away from but the energy just stops being there. I am also not much of an abreactor. Challenging me won't get a response. But if something or some I love or care about is hurting or being hurt I will set aside everything to try and fight for them. Unfortunately, even that will exhaust me physically again until I just don't have it in me to even do that sometimes. I have come to the idea that I have to have some sort of support network that helps me feel alive again and then I start looking for fragments of who I had been prior to the depression starting (usually started by an event or series of events). Then when I find them, I try to start putting the pieces of whats left of the person I remember back in place. 🤍❄️

Just a reminder that anyone can post anything that has been a moving quote or poem! 🤍 I found this lovely one today... ❄️ We need to teach the children the old words, words like brabble and grubble, twitter-light and clinkerbell; words which dance and trip and slip and drip like honey off the tongue Teach them that a hazy halo of cloud around the moon is called a moonbroch and that swiftly moving clouds are named cairies; how a vixen’s wedding is a sunny shower of rain, and that a single sunbeam breaking through thick cloud is known as a messenger Teach them to know the seasons and scents of queen of the meadow and bride of the sun, how to tell Jupiter’s staff from fairy fingers and which roses bloom with the strawberry moon Teach them to spot pricklebacks in the tottlegrass, how to recognise a smeuse or a bishop-barnaby, when to watch the sky for flittermice and yaffles, and to pay attention to the dumbeldore and mousearnickle as she graces the lazy leahs of summer Teach them a few of the old Sussex words for mud, like gubber and slub and stodge and pug, so they know that the precious soil beneath their toes is anything but worthless dirt Teach them to be users and keepers and makers of the words which bring the land alive: a storybook, where everything has its rightful place, including us; where the wilds are fearful and filled with magic and people do noble things, and nothing is impossible In this world of harsh new words — words like planetary dysmorphia and solastalgia, extinction debt and grief mitigation, megadrought and megafire, anthropogenic, pyrocene, words which alarm and get stuck in our throats describing a world which our hearts cannot grasp — we need to teach the children the old words, so that if they should feel lost, the old words might colour for them a warm and breathing, living map, a light to guide them safely home. - Caroline Mellor

*snuggles* I am so sorry to hear this Boopsy. Thank you for telling us about her so that light lives on. 🤍

Hiya Rhea! Could I have an S please?

It's beautiful Boopsy! Thank you! What do you think? *twirls around in her new dress*

*Stares wide eyed at the poor pink elephant* Hmm.... perhaps I should just be sure to eat all the Marshmallow cake, just in case. We wouldn't want that happening again... 😉

I know, you never intended to be in this world. But you’re in it all the same. So why not get started immediately. I mean, belonging to it. There is so much to admire, to weep over. And to write music or poems about. Bless the feet that take you to and fro. Bless the eyes and the listening ears. Bless the tongue, the marvel of taste. Bless touching. You could live a hundred years, it’s happened. Or not. I am speaking from the fortunate platform of many years, none of which, I think, I ever wasted. Do you need a prod? Do you need a little darkness to get you going? Let me be as urgent as a knife, then, and remind you of Keats, so single of purpose and thinking, for a while, he had a lifetime. ~Mary Oliver (Book: Blue Horses)