Heart-fixing: Sewing New Stories.
Clare Bowditch and being okay.
I took myself out on a date on Friday night because I am the love of my own life and I intend on romancing the shit out of myself. I had dinner and went and saw Clare Bowditch perform. I love Clare. I love her brain and words and service to her own and others creativity. Every time I watch her perform, or speak, I have some kind of profound revelation.
When I left my marriage I played her song One Little River like to was a hymn. The lyrics felt like the very prayers I wanted co-conspire with the universe. When she sung this song on Thursday night, I wept, happy tears. I am not the same woman I was four years ago. I am free.
'Cause your heart wants to speak the truth…And your heart wants to be loved…It wants to be loved by you…Gonna let it all out, Go on, say too much…Let someone know you.
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I held onto these words like gospel, and I approached life, art, love and my next relationship with this intention; to speak the truth in my life and my art, and to let somebody know me, to let my heart be known.
And how beautiful it has been.
One of my adolescent stories that is woven deep into the fabric of my being was sewn through infidelity and metastasised into thread that wove a story that would lead me to believe that no matter how brilliant someone is, no matter how deeply you love them and they love you, they will let you down, and they will inevitably break your heart. I’ve done a lot of therapy, and the occasional woo-woo ceremony, around this story. I’ve done a lot of work. I am consciously and wholeheartedly unpicking the threads of this part of myself, or at least just acknowledging its existence, and no longer letting her drive the foot pedal at the sewing machine of my life and relationships. This part is all about protection, because the deep fear that lives in this story is feeling the way I did when I was fourteen and my heart truly broke for the first time. This part wants to protect me from this deep pain from ever happening again, and she’s been fucking exceptional at her job. She has created behaviours, picked lovers, people pleased, minimised her needs all to avoid this pain ever happening again.
And then this year it did happen again.
Infidelity strolled into my life and this adolescent part was furious with me for going against her advice and letting myself be known truly.
“SEE, I FUCKING TOLD YOU SO!” it felt like she was screaming. So, out came the mech suit, battle mode activated, so we could navigate this next bit of life. And navigate it we have. We have survived.
The nostalgia ushered by early 2000’s Clare Bowditch ushered the deep desire to listen to the music I listened to when I was in my early twenties and at university, a babe just at the very beginning of learning about herself and her heart. Of course, Jeff Buckley’s Grace was the obvious choice and as I was singing my guts out in car I had a revelation…
I am okay. Like, really okay.
The supposed worst thing happened…and I am okay.
Because I am not fourteen, I am forty and I have done a lot of work, and I am okay. I was hurt, I was heartbroken, I was barreled over by the revelation, but I am recovering. I am resilient. I am not jaded. I am okay. The story can be rewritten. The stitches rethreaded.
Holy shit.
This, my darlings, feels huge. If we know, like deep in our soul places, in the stitching of our makeup, that we will be okay, despite circumstance, betrayal, the decisions of others, and life chaos, then we get to grant ourselves the grandest permission slip of them to go all in on this one wild and precious life of ours. We get to fall in love despite having our heartbroken, perhaps even in spite of heartbreak because the love bit is always worth it, I think. We get to try again, we get to let our hearts be known, to live boldly, to take risks. We get to say and do the true things because no matter what happens, we’ve got us, and we will be okay.
My darling, you will be okay, because you are braver than you know, and your fabric can be patched and quilted and re-sewn over and over again.
So, what are the threads that need acknowledging? What are the stories that need rewriting?
Let’s ponder this, because this is the grit…and from the grit there are pearls, darling, beautiful, beautiful pearls.
You can.
We can.
Let’s do it together, because our lives kinda depend on it.
For every heart break, there’s a heart fix…and it’s us who have all the tools, my loves.
Love Claire.
Pearler is written and created on the unceded lands of the Yuggera and Turrbal people here in Meanjin, and I pay my deep respect to First Nation Elders past and present. This always was, and always will be Aboriginal land.
I don’t believe I can wholeheartedly support sovereignty of this land I live, love and work on without acknowledging the liberation of Palestine and honoring the impacts of colonisation of Indigenous people everywhere else.