Pulling versus Pushing

A few weeks ago, I mentioned changes were coming. If you are on social media with me or on CBAW’s mailing list, you’ve likely already seen it. If not, here’s a link to the announcement. It was difficult to write, and doesn’t contain the images that are etched in my memory about this long beautiful experience of discovery. In the past two weeks, as I’ve been doing the work under the CBAW umbrella (I literally turned in my ID card on Friday and then came back to do almost all of the same work the following Monday), it’s felt exactly the same and completely different. I’m trying to find the image that captures the difference between being weighed down by an institution I don’t believe in versus being responsible for carrying an organization that I believe in so fully. They are perhaps the same weight, but pulling something forward feels a lot better than pushing against something that is trying to crush me.

I think letting go of the story of pushing against is perhaps the thing I’m most looking forward to, the thing that I’ve focused in on this week. I had to tell that story honestly while I was living it; otherwise I’d be boiled alive by it. But now that’s over. I can rewrite this story from my own perspective, and the story I want to write is one of growth and possibility and all the incredible support this work has gotten from clinicians and participants and family members.

I read this poem by Jennifer S. Flescher in the February 2019 issue of Poetry Magazine and I loved it very much. I hope you do too.

Sisyphus and the Ant

The story tells us Sisyphus is being punished.
Over and over he has to push that boulder

up and up. The mountain and God glaring.
And you, you have

your avalanche of moods.
Pills the size of stars to nearly quell

cascade and tumult.
And still you step

gravity amplified by incline, each hazard
in the way of a boulder a reminder

it should be easier. There should be
a hot fudge sundae at the top. A long nap in the shade.

The story forgot to tell us, though, Sisyphus thrived.

He learned to guide his wrists
and shoulder girdles safely to protect himself.

And later he worked to safeguard every insect
from here to the crest. Considers this his calling.

Even as the sun and the weight of time bears down.
Your strength is kingly.

Your prompt: Consider the story you need to rewrite, shift perspective on. Could be one of the classics, or it might be some personal story that’s at a turning point. Begin with summing up the original, as Flescher does above, “The story tells us…” and then allow the poem to turn, the perspective to shift. You could signal the volta with something as simple as “But…” or “The rest of the story is…”

And, one of my favorite songs in the whole wide world. Turn it up and spin around if you need. I needed to many times this week.