None of us are what I thought we were.
We are not bundles
of incremental striving for self betterment
with random heaps of cluttered failures
making for secret shame
and weighing down our efforts with inertia

We are not defined or saved
by one or two shining streams of virtue
which somehow breached the ruts
we thought of as ourselves

And we are not the patterns
we unconsciously lay down,
learned from our culture, over and over,
hiding our wounds and our power

What we are
in leaving all of this
is free,
what we are is glory,
what we are is here for us right now —
look how it rises up from the stillness,
look how it brings us home.

©Wendy Mulhern
October 21, 2016