Poem for my highly sensitive daughter
(from her highly sensitive mother)

You

I want to crawl into bed with you

For hours

And stroke your hair

And let you cry

Just cry forever

Cry it out

Until you can’t cry anymore

I want to teach you where the tears end

And the laughter begins

I want to show you

How to live fully you and freeeeee….!

A message to my highly sensitive daughter from her highly sensitive mother
Who has finally learned to navigate the world
And is ready to unlearn it.
For all the times I said “be nice” “calm down” “get a hold of yourself” “don’t cry”
I am sorry
For all the times I said act right, be a good sport, be calm, roll with it, let it go
I am sorry

You are a gift wild and wonderful
Filled with rage and love and largesse
You the tiny little flower who roared at older kids when they touched your toys
You
Who wants to understand how not to cry
When others are so cruel
You
Who feels the unrest and the anger and the frustration
How do I teach you to be wild and free and untamed
In this this one world we are a part of 

You
You know what’s right
You see
You know where
You are celebrated
And where you aren’t
The places where your tenderness
Screams weak screams target
And where you start to think it just might be
And you say NO
I don’t want to go there
That school is wrong for me
And you are right i know you’re right
I hate it too
My love

I want to crawl
into bed with you
For hours
And stroke your hair
And let you cry
Just cry forever
Cry it out
Until you can’t cry anymore
I want to teach you where the tears end
And the laughter begins
I want to show you
How to live fully you and freeeeee….!

But I am caged
My sweet little bird
I too am caged
The power in me has collapsed is hiding
Crouching waiting yes I know
But that’s what you are feeling
Me muted
You say
That I am beautiful
You want to look like me

I say
You
You are beautiful
But it’s all twisted up in there
And it’s all twisted up in here
I just want to hold you and let you let it out
Let all that disappointment and negativity and rule making and rule breaking
Pour out of you

Write my child
Draw
Dance my child
Stretch your body in every beautiful way
My sweet bendy girl whose feet can touch her head frontwards and back
Inside and out

I don’t bend that way
But I am ready to find the way
To stretch and twist and scurry

To my beautiful daughter
Take my hand
I will take each step slowly
But I promise to keep taking the steps
So I can
walk into the fire with all of you
hand in hand breath by breath word by word
Protected only by what’s true
The guidance of the heart

Staring fiercely into the blackness of the unknown
Knowing only this
Not that not that but
This this THIS
ALL ALL ALL of this my child
Is what it means
to  be alive