Burning old energy: a practice of letting go.
on practice
on practice
Last Monday, as the Strawberry moon, near full, rose out of sight, I burned old poems and notes in my sister’s fire pit. I meant to say something cleansing or releasing, but nothing came forward. Dismantling old energy doesn’t require much effort; you’ve just got to be ready to let it go.
I’ve been sorting through things: old emails, notes and files in the digital space, printed photos, and now the two boxes of journals I had Mom bring with her when we met up a few weeks ago.
Many of the spines are labeled by year, and the older, pre-2016, have been scanned and saved digitally, though I couldn’t bring myself to read them at the time, and now, now, I’d like to throw them (or at least some of them) into a fire pit.
The journey started as a release of old energy. To use things up. To downsize my digital and physical imprint, if I organize the external, the internal follows.
I started with 26,000 emails, including the archive, and am down to just under 5k, at that particular email address. I packaged up the first round of ephemera I’d collected and sent it off gleefully, hopefully to folks who enjoyed receiving it.
I didn’t know how this endeavor might play into my writing projects, but the hundreds of drafts and notes that are spread across digital and physical spaces lingered in my awareness. I knew this practice would bring my attention to them, something I’d been frequently called to do, but for whatever reasons, resisted.
What I didn’t expect to find were so many worthwhile bits of writing in the emails themselves. But there they were. Documenting that transitional time in my life between 2008 and 2013, in which I moved from Fargo to the UK and then back again. Spent another couple of months in the UK, hoping to stay, then back again. Then, in August of 2011, off to Chicago for a couple of years before returning once again to Fargo.
While also being fun and expanding, there was a lot of chaos in all that movement. A representation of where my nervous system lived at the time. I never got a chance to sink into a place, call it home, one foot always in whatever old life I had come from, and one anticipating the transition to come. Rarely fully present or rooted.
As I work with and share the already formed poems from this time and sort through these emails, saving bits that seem worth mining for language or points of reference, a collection started to form in my head.
And while pilfering the boxes of journals, looking for the notebooks from this era, I found my first collection: single edition, hand-lettered in Bic and multi-colored gel pen, with a jean cover, published circa 1998, and folks, there were some pretty awful poems in there.
However, I was struck by the quantity. The notebook is full, and there’s a whole stack of drafts I’d completely forgotten slipped into the jean cover that were edited from my story.
I’d gone so off considering myself a poet somewhere in undergrad when I started to feel not enough in comparison to the deconstructions we were meant to do of Frost and Whitman in English 101, that I started writing micro-fictions I later tried to make into a novel, and wrote poems I didn’t call poems.
Stunned, I was stunned to find all those drafts tucked away, calling me home all this time to my true self-expression.
But some of them needed to go. The mean things people did to me and how I responded, with grace and probably feigned understanding, was just heartbreaking. I’m no longer available for that trauma energy. So I crumpled them up and burned them under a full moon.
Are there things you’re ready to burn?
in gratitude,
a hello
The other day, I posted this drawing in progress. If you’ve been around, you’ve seen it at different stages. The response has been overwhelming. And a fair few have joined me here.
Let me re-introduce myself: I’m Libby, an intuitive poet and abstract artist who likes drawing circles and lines. I’ve a number of master’s degrees. I live in Minnesota. I meditate a lot. I’m neurodivergent. This is the only job I can do and also take care of myself.
I share poems and drawings and little bits of living present. I send art and poems in the mail. I publish other folks regarding their practices, and I love publishing poets. I understand animals better than I understand humans, and if you upgrade to paid, I’ll send you a handbound journal until supplies are out and donate money to an elephant sanctuary.
invitation to guest-post
What art, writerly, mind-body, or life practice are you leaning into? What does your creative life look like? What were the inspirations for your favorite pieces? What is poetry, art, mindfulness, practice to you? If you’d like to share about your creative, poetic, spiritual, well-being, or otherwise living life practices, please get in touch. unraveling, unmoored seeks collaborators. More info can be found on the About Page. Please message or email with questions.
