A Voice of One's Own

Text random tidbits on a gorgeous friday afternoon.

-sometimes, i do yoga in the shower. i swear the hot water makes the stretching even better.

-i miss singing so freaking much i can hardly restrain myself from singing all day every day.

-today was the warmest day since i’ve been back, yet it was probably cooler than any day i experienced in bangkok, even in “winter.”

-animals bring me extreme amounts of joy.

-i even missed doing dishes and laundry. something about these chores is therapeutic for me.

-i thought, coming back, i would want to buy everything in sight, but i am so pleased to have all my clothes and shoes back, i am, for perhaps the first time in my life, (temporarily, i’m sure) unenthusiastic about shopping.

-no matter how many times i watch Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part Two, i still cry.

-i may be in limbo, which comes with its own set of anxieties and stresses, but i feel extraordinarily calm and at peace in my own skin (…most days anyway).

Quote 72504
Notes

"Stay close to anything that makes you glad you are alive."

Hafiz (via viage)

sometimes this takes an astonishingly long time to figure out.

(via sloanfinley)

(Source: shaktilover, via tylerthelatteboy)

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unadoptable:

tuesdayblouse:

natashakline:

For all the artists out there. xoxo

need to remember this

Good advice!!!

yes.

(via tylerthelatteboy)

Quote 3344
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"The problem is that you don’t just choose recovery. You have to keep choosing recovery, over and over and over again. You have to make that choice 5-6 times each day. You have to make that choice even when you really don’t want to. It’s not a single choice, and it’s not easy."

Carrie’s Blog Post (via oddi-tea)

(Source: heal-by-hope, via tylerthelatteboy)

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(Source: staydirtymyfriendz, via byebyewiththebathwater)

Quote 146
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"The wound is the place where the Light enters you."

Rumi (via jazzylittledrops)

(Source: buddhistwitchery, via jazzylittledrops)

Photos

my week in pictures…

1) 2) and 3) overjoyed to be back in baltimore!

4) this is what heaven tastes like.

5) i have fallen in love with this dog.

6) nothing makes me feel more kickass than lace-up, knee-high boots.

7) matching manicure and pedicure surprise from my big sissy. :)

8) the state of my journal after a year in asia. whoops.

9) just finished my favorite book ever.

10) a word of gratitude for all the support i received this week and over the course of the past 3 years that i have been sharing my writing! words can’t express how thankful i am! <3

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omg yes. so writing? and exercising? and cooking? and advocacy? and activism? and burying my face in gender issues?

i fuckin knew it.

(via jazzylittledrops)

Quote 2831
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"You will be stupid. You will worry your parents. You will question your own choices, your relationships, your jobs, your friends, where you live, what you studied in college, that you went to college at all… If that happens, you’re doing it right."

Ira Glass (via ceedling)

something i really needed to hear this week.

(Source: wordsthat-speak, via byebyewiththebathwater)

Text 2
Notes a journal entry: 20 april, 2013.

“i was still mourning, still sick, still living partly in another place.”—Barbara Kingsolver

i remember watching Eve Ensler’s TED talk, “Suddenly, My Body,” and as it ended, the only clear thought running through my mind was that i wanted to come home to myself and come home to my body. badly. i suppose in some ways her words ignited a mission within me, a mission to come home.

like Eve Ensler, there were many reasons i, too, had left home, many reasons i had left my body, and many reasons that i had come all the way to thailand on my escape route. i was still mourning a variety of things. i was still, in some ways, defined by them. my identity was all tangled up in my mourning. i was still horrifically and entirely affected in the depths of my bones, in the core of my being. i was still considering myself a broken, fucked-up, and damaged little girl.

i was living in a place—metaphorically of course—where things were as good as they could possibly get. i thought i had reached a place of healing, and i, naively, thought i had a clue. i didn’t. i was still sick—sicker perhaps than i could have possibly realized at the time.

i look back to that girl who got onto a plane headed for thailand a year ago, (tears still in her eyes from the brief phone call and goodbye with her baby sister, fears of weight-gain and a million other insecurities still consuming her distracted mind) and see that she was so young, so timid, so stupidly thinking she was grown. she was a girl, a child wanting nothing more than someone to love, protect, and care for her. little did she know that over the course of the next eleven months, she would learn to love, protect, and care for herself.

i would be lying if i told you that i won’t always mourn bits and pieces of my life’s story. to say otherwise would in fact dishonor my own reality and my own pain. forgetting these things completely, i fear, would distance and detach me from my own humanity and, therefore, from the rest of the world, which is something i am absolutely unwilling to do. but i can also say, with just as much confidence, that i am not sick anymore. i am well enough to come home—back to america, back to my roots, back to my family, and back to the hope i once had of creating my own beautiful home—the place i know in my heart that i will be most content and at peace.

until this moment, i am not sure that i have ever been ready, and maybe in some ways i never will be completely ready—whatever that even means, but i am all in one place now instead of a woman half in and half out of her own body. i have finally found the way home into myself, into my own skin. i am mary theresa—daughter; sister; friend; fierce and generous lover; passionate dreamer; over-caffeinated energizer bunny; honest writer; uncaged bird; wild dancer; timid singer; smiling wanderer; extreme questioner, thinker, and feeler; nurturer; and occasional loner. i have been transformed both by the love of myself and by the love of the people in my life. i have hit rock bottom and, by the grace of a higher power, made it back out to tell the tale. i have discovered love so strong that has knocked me off my feet, joy that utterly consumes me, pain that all but paralyzes me, and laughter that moves through my body like a wild dance. i have been changed by things i didn’t choose, but i have learned that i get to choose how i change. i have learned to love my olive skin; my multi-colored, starburst eyes; my strong legs; my wide hips; and my sometimes bitten-off fingernails. i have given of myself and learned to take sometimes, too. i will never be any more or less than the woman i was created oh so purposefully to be, but i have learned that, in my own right, that woman is so totally and perfectly lovely. this year has opened my eyes to my own limiting perceptions and helped me to start to rid myself of those perceptions. this year has begun healing me and allowing me to exist, finally, all in one place, in my body, in my home, in my skin, in myself.

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